Impara l’inglese con i video – Empathy vs. Sympathy

Ti sei mai chiesto quale sia la differenza tra i concetti di empatia e simpatia?
Noi di ABA English sì, ed abbiamo trovato la spiegazione in un video originale che ti proponiamo di seguito.

Ma prima diamo un’occhiata alle definizioni di questi due termini:

Empatia – la sensazione di comprendere e condividere le emozioni e le esperienze di qualcuno.
Simpatia – la sensazione di dispiacere che provi quando qualcuno ha dei problemi, preoccupazioni, timori, afflizioni ecc.

Pronto per iniziare?

1. Leggi il testo
2. Impara nuovi vocaboli
3. Guarda il video

Testo

So what is empathy and why is it very different than sympathy? Empathy fuels connection, sympathy drives disconnection.

Empathy is very interesting. Teresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar who studied very diverse professions where empathy is relevant and came up with four qualities of empathy: perspective taking, the ability to take the perspective of another person or recognize their perspective as their truth; staying out of judgment, not easy when you enjoy it as much as most of us do; recognizing emotion in other people and then communicating that.

Empathy is feeling with people. And to me I always think of empathy as this sacred space, when someone is in a deep hole and they shout out from the bottom and they say: “I’m stuck, it’s dark, I’m overwhelmed”. And then we say “Hey, I’m down, I know what it’s like down here and you’re not alone”.

Sympathy is “Oh, it’s bad, huh? Erm, you want a sandwich?”

Empathy is a choice and it’s a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.

Rarely, if ever, does an empathic response begin with “at least”. And we do it all the time, because someone just shared something with us that’s incredibly painful and we’re trying to silver line it.

“I had a miscarriage”

“At least you know you can get pregnant”

“I think my marriage is falling apart”

“At least you have a marriage”

“John’s getting kicked out of school”

“At least he was an A student”

But one of the things we do sometimes in the face of very difficult conversations is we try to make things better. If I share something with you that’s very difficult, I would rather you say “I don’t even know what to say right now, I am just so glad that you told me”.

Because the truth is rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.

Vocabolario

Fuel – alimentare, fomentare

Drive – condurre a, spingere a

Relevant – rilevante

Stuck – bloccato, inceppato

Overwhelmed – schiacciato, sopraffatto

At least – almeno, quanto meno

>Silver Lining – lato positivo in una situazione negativa

Miscarriage – aborto spontaneo

Falling apart – sgretolarsi, andare a pezzi, crollare

In the face of – di fronte a

Rarely – raramente

Video

E tu, come reagisci di solito alle notizie o allo stato d’animo di chi sta vicino?