Are you sympathetic or empathetic?
Do you sympathize with people or empathize for them?
Sympathy or empathy?
Empathy is understanding how others feel. You don't have to care about their predicament or feel sympathy for them to understand their plight.
Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone else. Empathy would help you feel sympathy, but you may not understand their feelings.
Sympathy is feeling compassion, sorrow, or pity for the hardships that another person encounters, while empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of another.
I stopped watching the news for many reasons. But the catalyst was the day I read a couple stories in the paper...one was about a child who died in a hot car after his parent had forgotten about him. All I could think about was his pain and fear. No one heard his screams and crying. He was completely alone, left to die. OMG!
The other was one of those sidebar dog rescue stories. Here was dog, laying 1/2 off a curb, clearly starving and dying, while people just walked by. A rescue group came by and when they approached the dog, he slowly, with all his might, wagged his tail. Just the thought of human kindness, even in his misery, made him happy. OMG!
By the time I finished that story, I was in tears. Actually sobbing. I felt awful.
The next day, Saturday, I told my fella I had to take a drive. Somewhere out in the boonies where there weren't any people and just stream music in the car so I didn't' have to hear the news or commercials. I felt like I really just needed a minute to detach from the world. We had a lovely day. And for the rest of the weekend, we listened to music and watched a couple really cheesy movies. It was good.
Since then I've stayed away from TV news almost completely. After a couple weeks, I started looking at headlines, online. Sometimes I'll read an article. I've had to stop doing that again. It's too heartbreaking. I can't take it. I finally figured out why...I have empathy. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be daunting.
