What’s the difference between empathy and sympathy?

Question

I always thought I knew what the differences where but today I’m getting them confused.

In: 1

Answer 1

The difference between empathy and compassion is that empathy is a genuine understanding of the emotions, thoughts, positions, and behaviors of others, while compassion is more about emotional empathy with others; however, there is a real overlap between the two. Empathy is specifically about putting oneself into the role of another person in a given event, experiencing the other person’s feelings and logic in the context of the environment and one’s own physical and psychological state in order to be closer to the “other” in its place.