Just received this and was moved so decided to share with you all

Some of this thread I can't make head nor tail of. It's a bit stap me vitals what's it all about. I'm not sure about the distinction of sympathy / empathy. At the moment I have a friend whose close relative is very slowly dying. I have been in a similar situation a few years ago, therefore I can empathise when we meet and there are brave smiles and I can sympathise when I provide an opportunity for weeping bitterly. That is my take on it. I can't say I ever read the verses in glittery cards so I bow to the judgement of those who do and can tell us what they are like. I expect I would be tearful if I read them as I am quite soppy - not kittens and puppies YouTube soppy but I was scorned for liking Tears idle tears I know not what they mean ' at an English tutorial in my teens and I still like it.i still like lots of Tennyson. Possibly not grown up.

The problem with empathising (as I tend to do) is that you end up seeing the other person's side of things and forgetting your own interests -- which can be fine, but can also make you dilatory and ineffective... it can also make you a sucker for a sales pitch!

The active compassion bit.

Bang on, when!

I have read and appreciated the definitions of sympathy and empathy on this thread. Thank you. I think I was beginning to confuse them a little because someone said last year that I was the most 'empathic' person in a group. I had to look it up to be sure what she meant. Perhaps it was a Scottish usage.

The group, btw, was fighting primary schools closures in Argyll and Bute.

When Rick Gervais saw Twitter messages saying that Beyonce and Rihanna were sending their thoughts and prayers to the people caught in the tornado recently, he quipped 'I feel stupid now, I only sent money.'

Empathy, pity, sympathy - all worthy in their way, but a bit of active compassion says volumes.

No, Elegran, it makes you normal! I am always baffled when politicians say about a grieving family, whom they have never met, 'Our thoughts and prayers are with them'. Oh, yeah? And what good will that do the family anyway?
Like most people, I feel very sad about the situation of people, especially women and children, who are repressed, violated, and abused throughout the world, but I don't know any of them personally,so other than signing petitions and organising my charity donations, there is nothing I can do and I can't pretend I lie awake thinking about it.

Aka says GN is not a nice place to be at the moment - I agree, and would cite calling people's comments "vulgar", being dismissive by saying one "doesn't care" what someone else (me) thinks and replying "Really?" when I felt it was not necessary to be insulting is precisely what contributed to that observation. Do as you would be done by.

Sympathy:- an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other.

Empathy:- the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

The terms are used more loosely than they used to be. In their pure form, both of these definitions imply a real suffering on the part of one person when another is suffering - crying, unable to move on, feeling depressed - vicariously experiencing their emotions. I would say that empathy is the more extreme. Someone with true empathy for another will sit with them and weep.

I would hesitate to claim that I have empathy for another, it would mean that I spent my days worrying about them, unable to think of anything else. It is enough to realise that they must be experiencing a dreadful time and send a little warmth and strength to them. It is NOT necessary for me to make a public scene of how much I am suffering for them and with them.

Does that make me hard hearted and callous?

I cannot empathise with the pleasant young woman at the checkout at Pac n Save this afternoon, other than sharing a rueful smile about the delays with the credit/debit card scanner caused by warnings of bad weather further south and agreeing that going home time will be welcome.

I can sympathise with the granny who feels hurt and neglected because her adult daughter rings her less often than once a month. I think she is mistaken when she says that she believes that this means she has been sidelined and no longer loved. I cannot empathise with her when she says she feels lonely, neglected, unloved and unwanted because I think she is over reacting and not thinking things through. Nevertheless those feelings are real, so I sympathise, not empathise with her hurt feelings.

I am at a complete loss to empathise with the young woman whose ex-partner was recently executed after several years on death row after being convicted of killing her child. I love her and value her - but suggesting that I can even begin to share her feelings strikes me as arrogant and dismissive in the extreme.

I started to write a very comprehensive reply to your posts explaining my feelings and experiences and how they would help me to 'walk in someone else's shoes' and then deleted it thinking 'what the hell' it will only get picked over, dissected and ridiculed so why bother.

Not a nice place to be at the moment is GN.

So will leave it for today at least and get on with real life.

Could the op have been directed at one person? It clearly fell a bit flat, didn't it?

Aka How can anyone, apart from the OP, empathise with the person who sent her the original chain e-mail - except, as I said earlier, on the most superficial level insofar as they are both human beings? It is not possible to share someone's feelings if you have no idea what those feelings are or how that person got to the point of feeling them. Sometimes it is not possible to share someone's feelings even when you do know, although you may still sympathise with them.

But it seems designed to put me firmly in my place so I suppose there's not a lot to add. Move over Grace!!

Really?

No need to be quite so insulting .

Ah that lovely word 'disingenuous' * Gracesmum*. If other people can be downright rude, then I'm quite happy to claim the moral high ground and simply be 'labelled' disingenuous and I really don't care what you think!!

There are two different issues going on here, really. I don't like the chain-mail element of the messages like the one in the OP, and I think them overly sentimental. However, this does not mean that I cannot sympathise with someone who is having a bad time. To suggest that the two are somehow inextricably linked is surely misguided?

It's a bit disingenuous to say you have found a "Very revelling (revealing?)insight into some people's psyche" (cut and pasted) in this mysterious way and not explain what you mean isn't it?

Some people like mission statements/twee exhortations/"uplifting" observations and some feel they can think for themselves without being told what to feel or do. Is there a problem with that?
I am finding more and more that gestures of sympathy or indeed empathy seem to be the norm, in fact their absence seems to indicate an actual lack of sympathy - viz the acres of rotting flowers still in their cellophane cleared from outside Kensington Palace after Princess Diana's death, the weeping and wailing in the streets and all that. What is more genuine? Thinking and feeling or wearing one's heart on one's sleeve?

Absent can you truly not empathise with people you don't know? Truly?

I have no intention of explaining my post Greatnan. I am entitled to reflect on posts I'm sure you'll agree?

I can't believe that anyone could be so obsessive that they feel they can comment in a pm on what another member has or hasn't said. Best ignored, although, these unsolicited and unexpected messages can be disconcerting. I think it's possible to bar messages from people who are harassing you.

It is easier to see who publicly posts messages of support than who sends a private email. Is our empathy level judged by how well we demonstrate our concern where it can be seen by anyone passing, or by what we say in private, which is heard and seen only by the recipient?

Do we have to wail and gnash our teeth and tear our clothes and rub ashes into our hair to be accepted as a proper mourner? In some cultures the level of conspicuous distress is taken as evidence of the level of private grief. Since the death of Diana Princess of Wales it is begining to be so here.

For Greatnan to be condemned in a pm for making her sympathy with friends private and not public seems to me to the same confusion of what is felt and what is displayed.

Could you tell us what insights you have gained into our psyches, Aka?
Until Movedalot chose to mention sending a pm which she said was friendly, all I can see is that some people don't like sugary sentimental exhortations to be kind. What a shame that all the people who send Movedalot pms of support rarely put them on the open forum - this must distort the discussion, surely?

I'm not sure how easy it is to tell who on Gransnet is empathetic and who is not. What is easy is to tell who is judgemental in the narrow sense of the word.

In passing, it seems to me that the word empathetic is bandied around these days to mean all sorts of other things in a Humpty Dumpty sort of way.