by Marshall Brown

Created on: July 22, 2008   Last Updated: November 06, 2008

Sympathy is an emotional attachment to a subject and is commonly associated with a irrational response. Empathy is the understanding of the emotion, recognizing the attachment, and dealing with the situation or event in a rational manner.
If we just succumb to sympathy, we open doors to create more problems. Such as, a doctor who performs surgery on a loved one is more apt to make a mistake because of the attachment that can be a disastrous distraction. Another example, a soldier alone looking out for a sniper will show more caution than if he had a battle-buddy with him. Being distracted with the attachment to such sympathetic emotions.

Now, take those same examples and integrate empathy into the situation in place of sympathy. The doctor now can stand back, look at the cause, and only the cause. Then, come up with a rational solution. The soldier now can protect himself and his partner better by having full control over the situation. You see, sympathy and empathy are one in the same. It's just how we react that defines them.
You cannot have empathy and not care. Empathy is caring in the most productive matter. There is time for the sympathy when empathy has done it's job. I have been a CNA for eleven years, and I struggled with the definition of empathy. "For how could I, care without caring?", I used to ask myself naively.
Then, years of experience made me realize, with rational observations of my patients health, that I was wrong. And these are my results:
When I showed sympathy to my patients in their moments of pain, despair, loss, or depression, it grew steadily worse for their health. They did less for themselves and relied on me more. Their physical health failed, their mental health failed, and their hope in life died. Now, was I to blame for all this. No, but I could have changed the outcome dramatically.....and I soon learned how to!
I started by realizing that my love for my work and my people was not only unhealthy for my patients, but was worse on me! My body was bearing more weight than it needed to, I was doing most of the work and telling them, "Here, I'll do that for you.", constantly. I really thought I was doing the right thing... the good thing. I was never more wrong!
Then I found the balance.... empathy. My love for my work and feelings for my patients did not change, it grew. I started letting them do what they could for themselves, and only aiding them with what they needed. I started encouraging them, not to let me do more, but that they could do more. I gave them hugs, as I'd help people learn to stand again who hadn't stood in years. I encouraged physical health and psychological health just by helping them see through just the vague responses they received from their doctors. When they came in and a doctor said they'd never do something physical again, I proved them wrong. With empathy!
Doctors only tell them such "realities" because doctors didn't know me. They saw the nursing home as a place where you get grouchy workers who are overworked and underpaid. The latter is true, but for us who really cared, empathy worked.
Every time I trained a new CNA, I passed what I learned along, and my residents spent the first couple of that CNAs' training days telling him or her how I healed them. I let them believe what they wanted and always insisted that it was them who healed themselves. But, to this day, I know in my heart the truth. Empathy healed them.
That is the difference, in my experience, of empathy and sympathy. Not just words, but reactions and how we react to events and situations around us.

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