The Truth about Empathy

Empathy is not feeling sorry for someone in physical or emotional pain—that’s sympathy. Rather, it is mentally putting yourself in the suffering person’s shoes to feel their pain. It’s the difference between “Get well soon” and “I can imagine how much discomfort you must be feeling right now.” 

Empathy can “make us worse at being friends, parents, husbands, and wives,” because sometimes an act of love involves doing something that causes pain rather than relieving it, such as confronting an awful truth. 

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic