The willingness to resist the misfortune of another with him is not the same as the willingness to suffer together, although the term “empathy” is used in both cases.
When we feel bad and we suffer, it is important for us to feel the understanding and sympathy of another. Therefore, when they talk about empathy, they often mean sympathy and empathy for grief, mental pain. Most people perceive empathy as an unconditionally positive quality. Is this always true?
Imagine that you went to a psychotherapist for help and told about your despair in connection with some events in your life. Of course, you will be disappointed if you feel that your story left him indifferent and he reacted to your grief “from the outside” – just subjected it to cold analysis. But will it really help you if he also has tears from his eyes and he merges with you in a feeling of despair?
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If we are experiencing grief and are depressed, will the “solidarity” falling into depression of people close to us help us get out of this state? Sharing a sense of joy with our loved ones strengthens this feeling in us, and sharing with us a sense of helplessness caused by misfortune can carry everyone into an emotional abyss. If your friend or loved one cries with you and you feel their despair, similar to yours, will it make you feel better?
What then helps? In communicating with a psychotherapist, you feel his desire and readiness to understand your experiences, but at the same time the ability to rise above them and transfer this ability to you. What brings you closer to him is not that your grief has become his grief, but his desire to help in your grief. He wants to pull you out of it, just as a swimmer pulls out a drowning friend, not sailing away from him, but not sinking to the bottom with him, but infecting him with his efforts and faith in salvation.
I would call it constructive empathy. The willingness to help by sympathizing with the plight of another is not the same as the willingness to suffer together, although the term “empathy” is used in both cases.
During the last war with Hamas, the Israeli population’s empathy for the fighting soldiers was so effective and deep that people used their last money to buy them basic necessities – the soldiers even no longer needed to wash their clothes. Near the location of the troops there was a whole camp of volunteers, continuously producing delicious hot food, and the products were brought in free of charge by other volunteers. Even masseurs and hairdressers were present in this camp. (For themselves, these people built a shelter from mortar shells, which very often fell around.) One volunteer came up with a shower for soldiers fighting in hellish heat and dust. He came with a cistern and a shower and stood for many hours at the location of the troops while hundreds of people took this “best shower in their life.”
Apartment designers created (unexpectedly for themselves) a large cooperative, whose members, without any remuneration, did fundamental repairs in the rooms of wounded soldiers who were at that time in hospitals.
30 thousand people came to the funeral of a lone soldier. Thousands of people came to the relatives of the dead. The family felt the love and support of the whole country.
There was a case when a tired soldier, almost falling asleep, crashed into someone’s car and crushed, and the owner of the car looked at him, waved his hand and drove on.
When all this was shown and told on TV, the audience was inspired and proud to belong to such a responsive community. The number of volunteers was constantly increasing – many of them said that it helped them to survive the war.
The feeling of other people’s experiences as one’s own, on the one hand, helps the one who sympathizes – it turns on his own psychological mechanisms of protection from these experiences. On the other hand, thanks to the feeling of merging, this protection is transferred to the one who needs sympathy, arming him against stress.
It is impossible to help a person simply by sharing his pain with him, but attempts to isolate himself from other people’s experiences do not relieve pain. It can cause an instinctive desire to avoid contact, but then comes the feeling of guilt.
The willingness to resist the misfortune of another with him is not the same as the willingness to suffer together, although the term “empathy” is used in both cases.