There’s a qualitative difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy isn’t the same as empathy. Empathy connects on a much more personal level. You could say, on a much more visceral level. Empathy doesn’t wonder how something must feel; empathy knows how something must feel. Empathy makes an emotional experience the central point of understanding. It’s saying, “Yeah, I know how that feels. I know what that’s like.”
I would say that if I were going to talk with someone while going through a difficult time, someone who has been through the same thing is much preferred over someone who hasn’t. I would feel as though they’re carrying the load with me if they had an emotional understanding of the situation. And isn’t that the point of empathy: to feel like someone is helping to carry the load?
It’s something how support groups are always made up of people going through the same exact thing. They don’t put a bunch of people with different kinds of problems together. They place people who are dealing with the same thing in the same group. And in this, they’re not marginalizing everyone else, or compartmentalizing a group of people, but they’re using those same experiences as a starting point—as a point of healing—to let them know that they’re not alone. It’s a means to get people to open up. You’re much more forthcoming when you believe you’re in an environment where you won’t be judged. Understanding tends to burnish those sharp edges and barbs of judgment. Whatever you’ve had the misfortune of experiencing, removes you, by default, from your high horse of superiority. You’re no longer reaching for ineffective quips full of shallow advice. You’re not giving quick answers that bear no reflection in reality. You’re not giving answers where, maybe, some aren’t even being sought. You’re just lending an ear at a time where, maybe, words can’t even penetrate.
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But I also believe empathy is, at its heart, hopeful. It’s an acknowledgement of the power of two or more working together. It’s saying, “Let’s hit this thing together. Maybe we can bust down the enemy’s walls together. What we couldn’t do individually, on our own, we might just be able to accomplish together.” Empathy places you in the position of another person, and in that, empowers you to be a force in the journey. That is, if you so choose.
It may just be that all of what you’ve been through wasn’t just about you. It wasn’t just about you learning something, or appreciating something, or even seeing something. You may wonder why you ever experienced the difficulties you have in life. Even looking back it might not make sense. But it might just be that there’s someone still in the future, who you haven’t yet met, who needs to know they’re not alone. It may be that they need a point for the healing to begin, and you might be that one to provide it.