if I get it right, Empathy is when you can recognize what the other person is feeling, AND you also take on some of those emotions, like, if someone is sad, you become said, when someone is happy, you become happy, etc.
Compassion is specifically for when you learn someone is in a negative situation, and you feel concern and sadness about the fact itself.
Thus, if someone has low empathy, they don’t just have a harder time recognizing what the other feels, but also have a harder time taking on those emotions, is that correct?
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Empathy is understanding why someone feels that way but compassion doesn’t require understanding why.
Compassion is wanting others not to feel bad. Simple care for someone’s wellbeing.
Empathy is understanding the emotional state of another person, being able to place yourself in their head. That’s why empathy often breeds compassion, because an empathetic person can internalise the suffering of another as if it was their own.
So yes, you had that correct.
I wouldn’t worry about trying to define the differences too precisely. Both are pretty broad words with multiple shades of meaning, many of which overlap quite a bit. Empathy tends more towards being about the process of feeling another’s emotions, and compassion tends more towards being about concern for the suffering of others, but you can’t really draw bright solid lines around words like this. Depending on the context or who is using them, they might mean exactly the same thing, or rather different things.
There are 2 types of empathy: affective empathy (the ability to respond with an appropriate emotion to another’s mental states.[30] Our ability to empathize emotionally is based on emotional contagion:[31] being affected by another’s emotional or arousal state.) and cognitive empathy (the ability to understand another’s perspective or mental state.).
Affective empathy is strongly related to compassion. However, it is possible to learn to have compassion without having affective empathy. You won’t feel what other people feel, but you still care for them. It is also possible to have affective empathy without compassion, but simply by being distressed in presence of the distress of other, that’s common with infants.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy
A friend is depressed and either tells me or I recognise it. I’m also depressed so I can understand from personal experience what they’re going through so I offer my support from a place of understanding. It makes me sad that they’re sad. That’s empathy.
A friend is depressed and either tells me or I recognise it. I’m not depressed nor have I ever been but I care about them and want to help them if I can. It might make me sad that they’re depressed but ultimately I have no personal experience with what they’re feeling. That’s compassion.
The summary that made most sense to me when I was a kid is that empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Compassion is caring about their perspective.
Empathy is about understanding on an instinctive level how someone feels and feeling a bit of that feeling as a response. You see someone sad, you become a little sad, even if your life is generally pretty good.
Compassion is caring about the wellbeing of others and wanting to help. You see someone sad, you want to help them with whatever is making them sad.
High empathy, low compassion example:
Your friend is going through a tough time because their hamster died. They keep crying all the time and it’s really bumming you out. It makes you want to cry when they bring it up because you just get weepy whenever anyone cries. You’re not going to invite them out this Saturday because you just want to have fun and there’s no way you can have fun with your friend like they are.
High compassion, low empathy example: Your friend is going through a tough time because their hamster died. You decide to bring them some food and talk it out with them. You don’t really get why they’re so upset about their hamster dying since you don’t even like hamsters, but it matters to your friend so it matters to you. You mostly just listen and nod. Afterwards, you feel good because you could help your friend.
High compassion, high empathy example:
Your friend is going through a tough time because their hamster died. You go over and cry it out with them. It’s not like it was your hamster but you almost feel like it was because of how your friend talks about it. When you go home, you feel exhausted and sad but also good about being able to help your friend.
Empathy doesn’t mean you actually feel those emotions or even give a shit about the person. You’re thinking of sympathy. Empathy is just being able to understand their emotions and why they feel the way they do.
it’s just the difference between mental and emotional…lots of people have compassion (a hurt when they know others are hurting, even when they have no experience in what the other person is going through) —- empathy is being able to understand what they are going through, they can still have compassion (or not) but they know on a mental level what the person is enduring
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