By Dr. Nur Azwin Zulkarnain
When someone dear to you experiences something that brings them down, leaving them disheartened or absolutely crushed, how do you usually respond? “I know exactly how you feel,” “I can imagine,” “That happened to me too”? If you’ve used any of these responses, or something similar, you might have mistakenly shifted the focus away from the other person, although it was well-intended.
We have to remember that sympathy is not the same as empathy. Sympathy costs very little of our emotion, time, and energy. But empathy? It demands your time, emotional energy, effort to think deeper, careful consideration, and sometimes even the courage to simply admit that we don’t understand.
Think of it this way. It’s easier to donate a sum after a disaster, but it takes much more than that to sit and listen to someone whose grief seems endless.
We have never been better at saying, “I’m so sorry to hear that” or “Hang in there,” but what do these words actually achieve? Do they help the other person feel better? Or are we trying to make ourselves feel more at ease? Or do we genuinely want to be there for them and comfort them when they are at their worst?
We often see on social media how the public normalizes displays of sympathy, but these gestures commonly end where empathy is expected to begin. Walking alongside someone in their pain, directly or indirectly, requires curiosity, lots of listening, and a willingness to be uncomfortable. Because logically, you are facing someone who is themselves uncomfortable with the situation. It takes a lot of courage for (1) someone to show their vulnerability to you, and (2) you, as someone they trust, to not just be there for them physically, but also emotionally.
A common misconception about being empathetic is that empathy means always agreeing with another person’s choice. However, that’s not always the case. Showing empathy is not a form of endorsement; it is the ability to understand another person’s perspective, other than your own, without necessarily sharing it. This is particularly relevant today, when disagreements quickly become divisions.
The difference between sympathy and empathy becomes even more apparent when society is under pressure. Take the current inflation in our country as an example. We talk about the rising prices of fuel, food, childcare, and housing. We discuss salaries that are unable to keep pace with increasing expenses. Yet amidst these economic conversations, people tend to overlook another cost—the cost to our ability to understand one another.
Those who express frustration over rising fuel prices and the increasing cost of commuting more than 100 km daily, while sacrificing precious time with their families, may not be well understood by those who have the luxury of living just a stone’s throw away from their workplace. We can’t always tell ourselves that we “can imagine” how other people live their lives—it’s not something that is easily understood every time.
Rather than quickly judging, we should ask ourselves, “What kind of day has this person had before arriving at work, before showing this commotion of emotions?” Empathy seeks answers before any kind of judgement is made. Maybe they have just received news about a sick family member. Maybe they are worried about unpaid bills. Maybe they are struggling to care for ageing parents while raising young children. In fact, research in psychology shows that chronic stress can reduce people’s capacity for perspective-taking, making empathy harder even among well-intentioned people. By recognising these possibilities, which might even be beyond our own thinking capacities, we are not enabling poor behaviour or allowing empathy to excuse it. Rather, it simply reminds us that behaviour often has a story.
The next time someone tells you they are struggling, resist the urge to respond immediately with, “I know how you feel.” Perhaps, we should take a second. Listen a little longer. Think about the person in front of us, the struggles they have faced, the courage it took for them to open up to us, and the vulnerability they have revealed. Sometimes people are not looking for someone to solve their problems—they are simply looking for someone willing to understand them. And perhaps that is the difference between making someone feel better and making someone feel truly seen.
— The author is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English Language, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya,
