Let's say a friend tells you their mother has died. You respond, "You must be very sad. What are you doing this weekend?"

Your friend gets upset. Why? You understood what they were saying and acknowledged how they were feeling. What more is there to do?

Does that hit home? If not, switch roles, so that your friend is the insensitive person who does understand how you feel, but doesn't feel the same way, because it's not their mother. Being able to be sad for a friend, for their loss, not yours, is a basic human capability, and refusing to exercise it when it is called for is indeed callous and insensitive.

What I feel and how I act are two different thinks. You don't have to be emphatic to act in a reasonable way in your example. I would not ask about going out, not because I feel the same pain, but I know that my friend is hurt and I will hurt him more when I ask that. I don't have to feel the same way or similar to him to understand that. That's what rational compassion is about ...

Rational compassion: You understand the situation the other person is in and you make socially and emotionally the right decision (based on rational assessment).

Empathy: "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings" emphasis on vicariously experiencing !

Empathy is often used to express that you are feeling the same of similar feeling as somebody else. From the Grammarly post below (from another poster that didn't understand my point):

"By becoming “the wounded person,” he vicariously experiences their suffering. "

Now imagine two doctors, one is empathic to your pain and one understands your pain with rational compassion.

The doctor who "feels" your pain might not be able to operate on you ... as he emphasizes too much. His feelings towards you hinder him.

Not to say empathy cannot be useful and is interesting. Yet, I feel it's overhyped and there are dangers focusing solemnly on it.

I think I agree with all of that. I will say empathy is a lot "easier" for people, as rational compassion requires life experience that people don't usually pick up until later. But they're different skills and are appropriate and effective at different times.

As for overrated/overhyped, I think those are dangerous words. Totally dependent on how you rate things, how you perceive others to rate them, and how they actually are. It's almost impossible to have constructive communication about something like that because everybody is operating from different sets of facts.

From https://www.grammarly.com/blog/empathy-sympathy/

- Empathy is a term we use for the ability to understand other people’s feelings as if we were having them ourselves.

- Sympathy refers to the ability to take part in someone else’s feelings, mostly by feeling sorrowful about their misfortune.

I think you may have confused the terms.

The article underlines my understanding of empathy.

I think Empathy can be counterproductive ... because if you feel like the person (I mean feel like the person ...) you might be less likely to be able to help them.

"By becoming “the wounded person,” he vicariously experiences their suffering. "

I agree. Empathy is painful. It should not be the goal. I think the outcome for civilization would not be optimal if many more people were empathic right now, we still need a mix. But there are degrees of empathic ability. Only a very few people like me ( < 0.01% ) get the emotions of everyone around them without trying.

I think the general population is comprised only less than 20% of people who are "empathic" to the extent whare if they try, or, are relationally close to someone they do feel their feels. Then, more than 85% of people are "rationally compassionate" in that they understand how others feel if they make an effort, yet around a 1/3 of people do that automatically with no effort.

I think only around 10% of people are incapable of understanding how others feel at all. But if those people make some effort that number goes down to 1-2%. But while psychopaths are in that 10% they're not really in that 1-2%. And those people who "don't have subjective emotions nor do feel anything themselves" spread across all groups. The stronger statement, "don't have emotions nor feel anything themselves" are not present in the extreme empaths like me who can pick up emotions from around them.

Finally, people are not "set" in a particular group. It is plastic, to an extent, but not in entirety.

If empathy is painful to you then you have unhealed/unprocessed trauma that's been suppressed-repressed, and then being triggered.

"By becoming “the wounded person,” he vicariously experiences their suffering. " from the grammarly post.

Pain/Painful is in the definition of empathy ... "he action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy

So you don't have to have any drama. I have a very empathetic friend: it happens to him in any situation (meeting smb happy, sad, angry...). trauma is usually limited to a specific situation from the passed. Does not fit that case.

You don't know empathy (deep into others), what you say is deep into yourself. Not same. Painful is from their negative emotions, plus (for superempaths like me) emotions from all people round you, not you solo.

But understanding has an emotional part, and memory relies a lot on emotions.

Trying to get rid of emotions might be harmful.

again ... I'm not trying to get rid of emotions. That's not what I'm proposing. I just think the idea/concept of feeling the same as somebody else is strange and has its own dangers.

Understand the others feelings, try to understand their point of view (also emotionally) that's great.

Having exactly the same feelings probably not. "Empathy :: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings" from meridian webster.

Example: you meet a person who has a panic attack ... how is going to experience the feelings vicariously helping you?

Ah, yes, compassion vs empathy.

But both are needed, depending on the situation.

The idea that our mechanism for understanding how others feel recruits or works through our mechanism for feeling things seems a likelier and simpler explanation than one where those two mechanisms are entirely separate.