It's funny where epiphanies hit you. Sometimes they come in moments of deep reflection, and other times they strike in the middle of a conversation with a good friend, weaving through traffic on the backroads of El Salvador. This particular epiphany was the latter. It’s fascinating how conversations with people who make you feel at home can lead you to unexpected insights. “That’s the difference between sympathy and empathy,” my friend Chip said. “It’s one’s ability to have compassion for another’s situation but not take their pain on as your own…” boom, epiphany.
Chip’s simple words created one of those moments of deep illumination, a mind explosion where I found myself frantically trying to piece together the puzzle of the fallout that remained. It seems juvenile, but when words matter, the subtle nuance of sympathy and empathy has profound effects on how we show up in the world. Am I sympathetic to your plight, or do I feel it deeply with you? If I feel it deeply with you, have I chosen to carry this weight with me? So many questions arise from such a simple distinction.
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When I think about sympathy, it reminds me of how we often react to someone's bad news or tough situation. It's like sending a comforting message or a gentle pat on the back, saying, "I'm sorry you're going through this." Sympathy doesn't require us to dive deep into the other person's feelings; it's more about acknowledging their situation and offering support from a safer distance. It's necessary, of course, because it keeps us connected and shows we care, but it doesn't drain us emotionally.
Empathy, however, is a deeper connection. It's when you see, but also feel the world through someone else's eyes, at least for a moment. When a friend is heartbroken, and you feel that pang in your own heart, that's empathy. It's a beautiful and powerful way to connect because it shows you truly understand. Empathy is my superpower and a critical part of how I connect with the world, but it also causes me to carry far more than I should. I've learned the importance of holding my own space. I can share in your sadness without losing myself in it. This balance is vital because it allows me to be there for you fully, without compromising my well-being.
The challenge with empathy ultimately comes down to our ability to create boundaries that prevent enmeshment, a term I only stumbled upon a few years ago but one that explained so much of my earlier life. Enmeshment happens when those boundaries that keep empathy healthy disappear. It's when I start feeling not just with you but like you. Your problems feel like my problems, your emotions flood into my day, and suddenly, I'm not just sharing your burden—I’m carrying it. This isn't just exhausting; it's unsustainable. It took me years to understand that in losing myself to your emotions, I wasn't really helping either of us.
This progression from sympathy to empathy and then slipping into enmeshment nudged me towards a realization about why we sometimes go too far in our connections. When we get stuck in a cycle of enmeshment where we generate our self-worth on other people’s emotional state, we have now entered into codependence. In codependent relationships, there's this underlying desire to be needed so deeply that we start trying to heal the inner wounds of others as if they were our own. It's a way of proving our worth, of ensuring we're indispensable. But this is a perilous path of self-abandonment, perfectly highlighted by therapist and human behavior specialist Britt Frank:
“Codependency is an effort by our inner child to rescue someone else’s inner child.”
-Britt Frank
The epiphany came when I realized that in trying to 'fix' others, I was avoiding my inner work. I was using their needs to avoid facing my fears and insecurities. The truth hit me: You can't emotionally support someone else if your need to fix their pain is truly just a scaffold for your self-worth. Dang Chip, the thread you pulled had me veering off on a deep tangent into the very essence of how I show up in the world.
Learning to distinguish between these emotional states has been a journey of self-discovery and boundary setting. I've realized that you can be deeply connected to others and still maintain your emotional integrity. In fact, the clearer your boundaries, the more genuine and helpful your connections can be. Whether it's offering sympathy from a place of kindness, sharing empathy from a place of understanding, or recognizing and correcting enmeshment, each plays a role in how we interact and support each other.
I don’t pretend to believe this is easy. As a recovering codependent and someone who far too often falls into enmeshment with good intentions to help, I often remind myself that it's not just about feeling for others, it's also about feeling for myself. By keeping my emotional boundaries intact, I can be a better friend, a better listener, and, most importantly, true to myself. This balance isn't always easy, but it's the key to healthy, supportive, and sustainable relationships. Ultimately it’s about the empathy I choose for myself. Taking a step back and feeling for the person inside of me, that wounded inner child, that brave, honorable, imperfect, loving, caring human that deserves as much empathy as he gives to others. It’s ultimately this balance of loving oneself enough to invest in the construction of constitutional boundaries without the need for physical walls that leads to isolation. As we learn to protect these open boundaries with values, respect, and a clear vision of self, we can begin to deconstruct the deeply painful walls of protection we built early in life.
It was the final epiphany that brought this full circle. Symbolically, it was that moment when you have one puzzle piece left and one clear spot where it goes, that made my soul feel most whole. The puzzle piece was a moment of recollection back to one of the most painful weeks of my life last year. The last time I had seen Chip, I was in tears. Not small ones, but the kind of tears where you cry your eyes out and end up wearing sunglasses for a hot minute. As I looked across a room full of people, Chip stood also in a deep moment of recent loss. Despite the chaos we were both living through, for a moment, there was someone else in this world who was feeling the pain of deep loss. I’ve never felt more seen than in that moment. I later told him that was the best hug I’ve ever had. It was the realization that having someone hold space for you, but not need you to take on the weight of their struggles felt like the final puzzle piece falling into place, the deconstruction of a wall being built.
It isn’t about the semantics of sympathy vs. empathy, or being perfect in the boundaries to prevent enmeshment and codependence, it’s purely about being strong enough to hold space for yourself even in times of great hurt while simultaneously witnessing the pain of others with nothing more than a hug. Thank you Chip for teaching me so much about myself. I admire the man that you are.