Sympathy vs Empathy and Other Annoying Stuff

Let’s talk straight here.

It’s really hard to be surrounded by dumb people who make the most outrageous, clueless, and insensitive comments.

And if we want to perfectly honest—which other people feel they have a right to be when they are making these outrageous, clueless, and insensitive comments—then who are we kidding? These people are often the ones we bump into each and every day. Our worried parents and in-laws, our well-meaning but misguided siblings, our children’s smarter-than-you teachers and therapists, the harassed pediatrician, the irate saleswoman in the clothing store, the nosy neighbor, and your favorite yammering yenta.

All of them are experts at one particular skill, of which many of them are not even aware they possess. The incredible dexterity of putting their foot in their mouth.

You know what I mean, don’t you?

The concerned person who has never had a special needs child but who feels that because they have sat for two hours at wedding yesterday chatting incessantly with a physical therapist, they now have a complete college education and have the exclusivity to TOP SECRET important information to impart to you. Information that they are sure you must be waiting at the edge of your seat to hear. Information like, “Did you try X therapy with your son? I think you should call Therapist X and find out how she can help you.”

Other concerned persons say different, but equally brilliant things.

The neighbor that meets you outside your house as you take your special needs child to the bus. “You are such a tzedekes!” she says, her face scrunched up in weird ways to express deep sympathy, “I could never do what you are doing!” (Exclamation point, exclamation point.)

“I know,” you want to tell her, “I wouldn’t be doing this either if I didn’t have to, but I don’t know if the right word here is tzadekes. Maybe just mother?”

Your daughter’s teacher who calls you in for a meeting. She’s adorable, your daughter loves her, she has her Masters in Special Ed; and she’s enthusiastic and unstoppable (especially her mouth). But when she talks to you, her condescension comes through. She is disapproving, judgmental. “I don’t think you realize,” she says, “that your daughter needs you to help her at home with [xxxxx  fill in this word because I don’t know what would fit] in order to succeed in this program.”

Right, of course you wouldn’t know. Because, while she has had 20 years of working with special needs children in this super-fantabulous program that you are working 3 extra jobs to pay for, this is your oldest child and have never had the experience of putting a special needs child into the educational system.

Or, of course you know this because you are also a highly educated teacher at the Masters level with incredible success in your field. And of course you have been instituting xxxxxxxxxxx with your own beloved child; but you know—as she should—that what you know and do doesn’t translate into immediate results. Which is why children go to school for at least 15 years.

Because, Miss Enthusiastic, progress takes time and patience; and lots of compassion for the parents who are your partners not your adversaries.

And then there are those people who are so uncomfortable in your child’s presence that if your child was the pink, ten-ton elephant in the room instead of a little smiling boy drooling slightly in his adorable outfit in his wheelchair, they could not done a better job of pretending he didn’t exist as they talk to you in a slightly louder voice, their eyes looking upward into the sky or behind you at some mysterious shadow instead of directly at you or your child.

So, the problem we now know.

You are special parents caring for special children under special circumstances, uniquely yours. You are doing the best you can, with the child you have, with the information you have, with the resources you have.

You do not need random advice, sugary sympathy, condescension, rudeness, or a cloak of invisibility.

But because this article is in Sparks Magazine and not in the magazine for Dumb People, we can only talk about what you can do and not what they should do. Got it? Good.

All parents face similar challenges parenting their children whether they have able-bodied children or special needs children.

These are universal modern-day challenges from which no parent, no matter how successful, frum, educated, or rich are exempt; and beautifully articulated on a blog called Toddler’s Den.

Firstly, the act of balancing family and work. There probably isn’t a parent who isn’t constantly measuring how much work versus how much family needs to happen to strike the perfect proportion in which I get what I need, the family gets what they need, and we have enough money for food, tuition, camp, and even fun stuff like a Chol Hamoed trip.

And for those parents who don’t work out of the house, volunteer work would absolutely fall into this category as would hobbies and me-time like art, music, yoga, or coffe-time with friends.

The second is the culture of blame with which parents struggle. Is it my fault my child has special needs? Did I do something wrong before birth, during birth, after birth to create this problem? Make this problem worse? Stop it from getting better? Am I sacrificing one child over the other? Am I sacrificing my marriage for my child? Are any of these sacrifices worth it? Should I sue the doctor whose fault this was? Why do I feel my parents blame me for my able-bodied child’s report card?

Blaming one’s self is usually where people go, even when there is no blame, even when the blame belongs to someone else; even when blame is counterproductive to any positive change.

The third is wanting and accessing the right education. Parents agonize over finding the most suitable education experience for their children. One that fits their religious and cultural needs first. Parents are concerned about how the school provides for their children’s emotional needs; and today, with the outpouring of school-based therapies available, parents want their children’s physical needs addressed as well. How much more difficult this is for a parent whose child has special needs and the likelihood of getting all of these needs met in a single institution is almost impossible.

The fourth is sifting through the overload of information available. Sometimes, too many choices leave parents paralyzed with indecision; or even worse, frantic to use all the information and resources for fear of hurting their child by omitting any or part.

And the fifth challenge of parenting is saying no. When is it okay to say no, when is it the right thing to say yes, strikes a chord in the heart and mind of every single parent cooking in her apartment in Brooklyn to the Bedouin mother sweeping the dust out of her tent in the Sahara desert.

And as each and every one of you battle through these universal conflicts, they are compounded by the needs of a special needs child and the multi-faceted ways in which they impact the family, the marriage, and yourself. The interplay between the educational pieces, the physical needs, the social needs of all the individuals involved, the finances, and religious lives you lead.

These are things you know; not anything you don’t.

Which is why, when people in your community communicate in such hurtful ways, it bears down on the most sensitive areas of your life, almost crushing you beneath its weight. And when these people are the ones closest to you—family members, neighbors, and your children’s teachers—the hurt cuts sharper and more deeply than a knife.

Sometimes, you may even be confused why you are hurt, why you are angry, why you are so furious that a tsunami seems too mild to describe what you are feeling. Especially when the comment involves sympathy.

Let me explain something about sympathy, how it’s vastly different from empathy; and why it’s awful to experience (so don’t blame yourself!).

When someone is being sympathetic, even as much as they mean well, they are talking from their own experience and perspective. A person who acts from an empathic place is able to communicate from a place of understanding the other person. Which is why it may leave you confused when two people say what seems the same thing and your reaction to one person is anger and to the other gratefulness. The difference would be sympathy versus empathy. It is condescension and pity (however unintentional) versus sincere commiseration and respect.

“Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection,” says Dr. Brene Brown,who is a research professor and author famous for her work on shame and vulnerability.

Empathy is about perspective, putting yourself into someone else’s shoes. It’s about suspending judgment and hearing the other person. But most importantly, it is allowing one’s self to access one’s own emotions and communicating to the other person that recognition. Even thought the situation may be different; the emotions are the same. And that means that being empathic, versus sympathetic, requires vulnerability from the person communicating it.

A person that is speaks from empathy is saying, “I know what you are suffering, not because I suffer like you do, but I recognize the emotions that come with the suffering because I have those emotions, too.”

This is in sharp contrast to the person who speaks from a place of sympathy. Their message is, “I can imagine you are suffering because if I would be in your place, I would suffer too, but because I am not in your place, I can just tell you that I am imagining it.”

You can see the disconnect that occurs with the sympathetic person as she removes herself from the relationship in her comment. And it is hard, because these people are so often close to you and mean well; they even consider themselves nice people.

When someone shows up at your door with a potato kugel for Shabbos the day after your son’s medical emergency, the kugel tastes different when the shaliach is sympathetic versus empathic. No?

So what do you do when confronted with the dumb things not-so-dumb people say?

You may not be able to do anything differently, but you can feel differently.

Have compassion for their limitations. Admire yourself for your ability to have empathy for her limitations. Laugh inside your heart, imagining yourself repeating their fabulously dumb comment to your spouse or friend. (I know, it’s Lashon Hara, but still….)

And maybe you can do something different too.

I would caution you against explaining yourself, excusing yourself, blaming yourself, promising to do better, or attacking the other person. Such responses not only are unhelpful, but they also turn the tables that you come out disrespecting yourself.

Instead, you can say confidently (even if you don’t feel that way), “I don’t know if you realize, but that comment came across as condescending and disrespectful.”

Maybe you can say assertively, yet gently, “There is a difference between sympathy and empathy and your comment is hurtful with its lack of empathy.”

The nicer your delivery, the more true your arrow will hit its mark.

Brene Brown firmly believes that saying something is not better than saying nothing at all. “Rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.”

That’s because when you are confronted with the difficulties and realities of a special needs child and all its ramifications, there is no magic word that will change the situation you are in. There is no magic word that will even make you feel better about it. But what will most definitely help is connection. Talking to someone who cares, who makes you feel you are not alone. That’s the only magic. And that would mean only an empathic, not a sympathetic, relationship.

Either change the relationship with those people who are sympathetic or insensitive; or find those that are empathic and connecting.

Or write an article for Dumb People Magazine.

(Although they probably don’t read it.)

Originally published in Sparks, a division of Rayim