Many people believe they are empathetic, but the reality is they are not. Can you differentiate between empathy and sympathy?

Sympathy is feeling sorry for a person’s situation.  You see they are sad and you acknowledge it, but you really don’t connect to that feeling in yourself.

As an example, your friend gets a diagnosis. You’ve never had a serious diagnosis, so you will feel bad for them, and you wish them well, but you really don’t get what it feels like to be in your friend’s situation–so you can’t connect to those feelings.  You just know its a bummer, negative, sad and not good.

And then again, maybe you can.  Seeing your friend’s emotions stirs up a time in your past: You remember when you were sick and in the hospital once and felt helpless and hopeless, and lost and alone. The latter of these two examples is empathy.

Empathy is the ability to truly find that place in yourself that connects to how that person is feeling and to feel it yourself.  So when I see a friend truly sad and hurting, I connect to that part of myself and I can understand their pain. I can intuitively feel it. I know it. I connect to it, and hence connect to you.

The video above is a really good description–I highly recommend watching it (if you haven’t–I’m talking to you!).

Some people have highly active mirror neurons that fire when they see an emotion on another person’s face. Just by seeing it, their brain lights up the same emotional part in their brain and they begin to feel that emotion. Often times this occurs without awareness!

I’ve witnessed this many times in when I teach my classes. These people are highly empathetic people–extremely tuned in to other people’s emotions.  Not everyone has a natural mirror response.

In my training, I play videos with high emotional content.  When I am playing my videos, I often am reading email or thinking about something else.  I’ve seen them 100s of times.  And every now and then, when I am paused and thinking — looking around as I think, I feel a wave of emotion come over me, or I’ll feel my face literally go sad. And I’ll stop myself.   I’ve questioned, why do I suddenly feel sad?

What is going on is my mirror neuron’s have kicked in and I didn’t even realize it!!  As I become aware of what is going on,  I will inevitability find myself staring a person who is highly engaged in the video making a very strong emotional expression. And without even realizing it, my dang mirror neuron’s trip off in my head, induced the emotional response in me and I’m making the freak’n expression on my face.  I’m also feeling the emotion too!  It’s usually sadness that I key into.  Isn’t that wild?

I’m reacting to a person–who is reacting to a video I am not watching! I’m pretty numb to the videos too because I’ve played them so many times. It’s very powerful and profound.

So are you empathetic?  Or sympathetic?  Or both?

And do your mirror neurons fire and activate when you see other people’s emotions on their face?

If you aren’t  sure, next time you see someone displaying a very strong emotion on their face, pause yourself.  Is your face making the same expression?  If so, you’ve caught your mirror neurons at work!  You’re highly sensitive to other people’s emotions and probably extremely empathetic.

If you don’t respond, don’t beat yourself up. You are a not as emotional as some people, and that’s good too. We need people who aren’t as emotional in life to help society do the jobs those with emotions can’t do! And we thank you for that, too!  You are equally important!

If the world depended on me to do the work of a doctor, firefighter or policeman, we’d be in serious trouble!