numa
caring for the spirit in viha
THE COST OF EMPATHY
It’s difficult to find an empathy card in the
greeting card aisle at your local supermarket. There
are plenty of sympathy cards but few, if any,
empathy cards. Why is that? As well, at funerals
you will often hear someone say to a grieving family
member, “You have our deepest sympathy,” but
you rarely, if ever, hear “You have our deepest
empathy.” Why is that you think? The reason can
be seen if we consider how empathy differs from
sympathy.
Sympathy means to feel with. We can see
someone in their pain and feel for them, feel with
them. We can acknowledge what they are going
through and say we feel bad for them. We are able
to do this because we ourselves have experienced
pain. We know what it is like.
Empathy means to feel into. When we
empathize with someone, we do more than
remember what it was like for us to feel pain. Instead
we seek to understand the pain that the other person
is experiencing. We imagine ourselves being them. In
so far as we can, we put ourselves in their shoes.
Empathy can only happen if the relationship
between the two people allows it. The person in pain
must be willing to accept the empathy of the other
Beautiful people do
not just happen.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
and be willing to share what they have gone through
and are going through. We do not open our hearts to
everyone.
For empathy to happen, both people must do
some work. The person in pain must do the work of
sharing their inner experience, and that is not always
easy. The person offering empathy must set aside
their focus on themselves, and work to understand
someone who is different from them, and that too is
not easy. There is a cost to empathy that both people
must pay. It calls for more work than sympathy.
What is the benefit of empathy? A person in
pain feels very alone in their pain. When someone
shows empathy that loneliness lessens.
One person illustrated the difference between
sympathy and empathy this way. Imagine being at
the bottom of a deep, dark hole. Peer up to the top
of the hole and you might see some of your friends
and family looking down at you, calling out words of
support and encouragement. They are anxious and
concerned for you. This is sympathy; they want to
help you out of the pit you have found yourself in.
www.viha.ca/spiritual_care/
numa – fall 2013
But that does not stop you feeling very alone. Now
imagine that one of those people climbs down into
the hole and stands beside you and holds your hand.
Suddenly you no longer feel alone. A great burden
has been lifted. This is empathy.
This is not to undervalue sympathy. We don’t
need everyone at the top of the pit to join us at the
bottom. One person may be enough. Having all those
people at the top shouting encouragement and
showing that they care about us is a source of great
comfort.
But there is an art to offering sympathy just as
there is to offering empathy. If not done the right
way, expressing sympathy can leave a person feeling
like an object of pity, inferior and disempowered.
Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centered
therapy, defines empathy as the ability “to perceive
the internal frame of reference of another with
accuracy and with the emotional components and
meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the
person, but without ever losing the as if condition.”
It is hard to teach empathy. It is hard to
educate people to be more empathic. Having
empathy for another is rooted in working through the
pain you have been through yourself. Elizabeth
Kubler Ross puts it this way: “The most beautiful
people we have known are those who have known
defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss,
and have found their way out of the depths. These
persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an
understanding of life that fills them with compassion,
gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful
people do not just happen.”
Some of these beautiful people work and
volunteer at Nanaimo Community Hospice. There
volunteers and counselors enter into the pain of
those going through the struggles at the end of life.
Many hospice volunteers have faced death
themselves and bring to the bedside a world of
understanding. This deep connection and empathic
understanding is part of what makes hospice
volunteers such a gift to people going through the
valley of death.
The capacity for empathy is part of the job
description of the Spiritual Health Practitioners
(Hospital Chaplains) who work for Island Health. But
it is also a quality displayed by many
others who work in health care. For all of those who
include empathy in the care they give, let us be
grateful.
For some inspiration on empathy, check out this video
from a hospital in Cleveland Ohio.
. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDDWvj_qo8&feature=player_embedded
For Suffering
May you be blessed in the holy names of those
Who, without you knowing it,
Help to carry and lighten your pain.
May you know serenity
When you are called
To enter the house of suffering.
May a window of light always surprise you.
May you be granted the wisdom
To avoid false resistance;
When suffering knocks on the door of your life,
May you glimpse its eventual gifts.
May you be able to receive the fruits of suffering.
May memory bless and protect you
With the hard-earned light of past travail;
To remind you that you have survived before
And though the darkness now is deep,
You will soon see the approaching light.
May the grace of time heal your wounds.
May you know that though the storm might rage,
Not a hair of your head will be harmed.
John O’Donohue
numa is a quarterly newsletter produced by VIHA
Spiritual Care Services to draw awareness to issues
of spiritual health in health care. The editor of
numa is Darren Colyn the coordinator of Spiritual
Care at NRGH (54022).
www.viha.ca/spiritual_care/
numa - fall 2013
numa is a produced by VIHA Spiritual Care