Does your suffering X make you more or less sympathetic to others suffering X?

In My Humble Opinion
1

For most of the things in my life that have caused me suffering or unhappiness, I feel a great deal of sympathy when I encounter others who are suffering the same thing. There’s a special affinity because I’ve been there.

But there are a handful of things where I feel something more like “Yeah, welcome to the read world. Don’t whine to me about it.”

To use a common example, ex-addicts are sometimes very sympathetic to current addicts and sometimes completely unsympathetic. My husband quit smoking and lost all sympathy for smokers. I’ve (mostly) quit (most) caffeine, but I still have an enormous amount of sympathy for people who are hooked (mmm, delicious caffeine).

When do you have sympathy and when not? Is it harder to have sympathy when you feel it’s under the person’s control? Does your experience make you more or less likely to feel sympathy?

2

I think I usually have sympathy, but when the other person clings to an attitude of “That’s reality, and there’s nothing that anyone could ever do about it, ever”, my patience grows thin and I tend to lose respect for him.

3

This may sound harsh but I really don’t mean it to be because I am a very sympathetic person. I have suffered several losses in my life. When I was 25, my father died at the age of 49. I lost my first child, following her heart surgery, when she was just 7 months old. I have suffered the pain of a marriage breakup and divorced my first husband.

So, I understand what it’s like. I’ve ‘been there’ in all the situations above. I know how hard it is. Unbelievably so. And yet, I sometimes get a little impatient when I hear about people who can’t seem to move on. I know at least two people who seem totally defined by the loss of their parent, which happened to both of them when they were in their late 40s. The first lost her mother, the second lost his father. Both suffered what I can only term nervous breakdowns; they couldn’t cope. Years have passed and yet they still seem totally gripped by their grief.

As I say, I understand. I too have suffered. But at some point I just get impatient, as I say. You must move on. Your grief is not something rare and refined. Others have felt it too, and feel a little like by comparison, their suffering obviously wasn’t as ‘great’ as yours.

Then I get all morbid with self-reproach and tell myself that not everyone is equipped to deal with life’s trials as others. But you see what I’m saying, I hope.

4

This is significant for me. I try to remember it.

I think my experiences have made me more sensitive to other people’s suffering in general, regardless of whether it’s a similar experience or not.

That said, they have also made me less sympathetic in a specific way – in the sense that I no longer view that person as a helpless victim. I have had some really painful experiences in my life, and I’ve had some people, upon learning about these experiences, express shock that I have managed to become successful despite these challenges. I realize they intend this as a compliment, but underlying this sentiment is the belief that there are certain experiences that should just wreck you as a person. I call this the ‘‘I can’t believe you’re not a crack whore!’’ response.

The problem with the ‘‘I can’t believe you’re not a crack whore!’’ response is it undermines a person’s ability to determine for one’s self what that personal tragedy means in the context of one’s life. People have a tendency to grade experiences on a ‘‘bad’’ to ‘‘worse’’ spectrum, but the reality is that someone’s ‘‘worse’’ could be someone else’s ‘‘bad’’ or vice-versa. People are just different.

So I have had some experiences that some people automatically assume are just awful, when really they weren’t that big a deal to me. I have also had experiences that I found personally devastating that people want to minimize. Either way, I don’t like being told what way I should feel about my own life, and I wouldn’t want to do that to anyone else.

So if someone tells me a tragic tale, rather than assuming it was the worst experience ever, I kind of hold back to see how that person feels about what happened to them. Even if it’s something obviously devastating – surviving the Holocaust, being permanently disfigured, etc. – I reserve judgment, because I have learned from experience that imagining experiencing something and actually experiencing it are two entirely different things. The former seems impossible to survive, whereas the latter is not only possible to survive, it is often endured, imbued with meaning, and overcome.

5

That’s a yes and a no for me too, jsgoddess. I know what people are going through, and I know how tough it is, but I also know that you have to do the work to feel better, and it is possible to feel better, so I feel sympathy to a point. If things are under someone’s control, I think I do feel less sympathy; if you can make changes to make things better, I expect you to do so, rather than complaining that things aren’t the way you want them.

6

olives you articulated it much better than I could have. Thank you.

7

Suffering hyperemesis for 15 weeks of my pregnancy makes me much, much more sympathetic to other women in the same position. Until you have had constant daily nausea and daily vomiting for weeks on end I don’t think you get how awful it is.

On the other hand- I have a wonky spine (mild spina bifida) and have constant daily back pain since I was a child. It flares up into sciatica type symptoms with numbness in my feet and shooting pains in my back and legs every so often if I overdo it. For me my back pain is just a part of life and I have never thought about letting it stop me doing anything. I have not so much sympathy for people who use a “bad back” as a reason to put their lives on hold.

So there you go- chronic nausea made me sympathetic, chronic pain, not so much.

8

The older I get, the more I live, the more I am sympathetic to everyone, even when I haven’t been exactly where they are. I have become sympathetic with people who are considered beyond sympathy, such as the drug addict ex-con who murdered the 16 year old daughter of someone I am only a degree of separation from. (gasps heard all around) Not to such a degree that I don’t think that people who do terrible things shouldn’t be held accountable, not to such a degree that I am without sympathy for the people who suffer from such acts. I just see the suffering on all sides. Had that man had a different life path, he would not have ended up with a life so small and dark and worthless that he could find himself killing a young girl for money.

My sympathy comes from the same place for everyone: we are all born fresh and new with the potential to be many things. We are all weak, in different ways, we all hurt, in different ways, we all struggle, we all fear, we all strive… life is not easy.

If you are born with a certain condition, be it spina bifida or psychopathy, you had no choice and that is your burden. It will make your life painful and difficult. If you are born with all your parts intact, both mental and physical, but you get less than ideal parenting from people who themselves are the product of less than perfect parenting, or life deals you some other blows…then that will make your life painful and difficult.

No matter how terrible someone’s acts are, there is a human being in there who is suffering too.

How zen is that? But it’s my real, organic, unbidden feelings.

Which is not to say that I am completely free of personal reactions to people whose life path has turned them into something I find objectionable, because I’m not. But that wasn’t the question.

9

I think it depends a lot on whether you are still suffering, or whether you have overcome that particular obstacle. When you are in pain, or in a bad marriage, or addicted, you feel bad and can generally sympathize with others in the same position. But once you’ve overcome (or learned to live with) the pain, or gotten out of the bad marriage and rebuilt your life, or recovered from the addiction, you might still understand what it was like to be there, but you also see that there is a way out, so you have less sympathy for someone who is still stuck.

10

No, I get less sympathetic because I’ve beaten it.

11

I grew up suffering from American-style poverty, and have no sympathy for the American poor. (I still have sympathy for people that are truly poor in other countries, though.)

12

I’ve experienced the pain of X. Pain is inevitable.

I suffered from X too, but soon found that continued suffering was usually optional.

I’ll empathize with others who also experience the pain of X, and also empathize with their suffering, up to a point.

Many people choose to extend their suffering for their own secondary gain.

13

Stoid, I understand what you’re saying about people acting badly because they have had bad things happen to them, but I’m not as likely to give them a free pass for their actions. They weren’t responsible for what happened to them, but they are responsible for how they respond to it. There has to be some responsibility at some point, or we’d all just do whatever we felt like, whenever we felt like it, and claim that some incident or situation made us do it.

14

What I find I have less sympathy for, in general, the older I get, is people who want sympathy from others for their suffering (whatever it be) all the while without showing the least get-go in fixing or ameliorating their problems. Like, the constantly-depressed who don’t want to see a therapist, take medication, etc. I’ve been depressed, and I made an effort to get myself out of it. Hence, the “bask in my ennui” approach isn’t something I can sympathize with.

I am in the relatively-fortunate position in life to have had very few major “sufferings”. Probably the worst has been major weight-loss and a year+ now unemployed. Being unemployed for so long does, it so happens, make me incredibly unsympathetic to people whining about minor job issues. “The mid-morning glare from the windows in my corner office gives me a headache!” Grrrrrrrumble rumble-rumble… That being said, I’ll probably have tons of sympathy for the long-unemployed, during recessions, for the rest of my life.

15

It depends entirely whether or not they’re using X as an excuse for doing/not doing something. If they’re all “I can’t do anything about X and it’s soooo terrible,” but I’ve experienced it too and got past it, then no, I’m not going to be very sympathetic towards them. On the other hand, if they’re trying to work though/out around whatever it is, then yes, I feel for them.

16

Well, I think I was clearish about not looking at it as a reason to give anyone a “free pass”. We have to take responsibility, and I think we have to try our best. But I also know intimately the very specific pain involved in having problems with self-control, which most people tend to dismiss.

I have fought with myself my whole life about self-control, and it wasn’t until I really understood both that I really actually do have attention deficit disorder, and I really understood what that really meant, that I came to understand why I fight myself so much. And while I don’t see it as a pass for whatever I want whenever I want it, it helps enormously to understand what it is so that I can deal with it, and it is also enormously helpful in taking the shame out of it.

I think people often have a terrible time improving themselves because they have so much shame tied up in their behavior that they can’t bear to confront it in order to do whatever work is needed to address it. Contrary to widely (and bizarrely) held belief, shame is about the worse possible motivator for change.

And I also believe that the lack of sympathy many people feel for people who still struggle with things that they have themselves overcome has far more to do with how people feel about themselves than anyone else.

But then, that’s true of nearly everything when it comes to emotional responses.

17

I tend to have more sympathy for people going through what I’m going through or worse, but less for what I perceive as easier than my dilemma. And even then it depends on circumstances, including whether I well or poorly of the person in general.

Oh, and shame, like guilt, is a good motivator–for small things. But both can overwhelm easily. Often, with a big problem, the first thing you have to do is get over your shame. But if you were completely shameless over an issue, you’d lose all motivation. And if you didn’t even have shame for little things, you’d be an unrepentant, sociopathic asshole–at least, that’s what I’ve found with every shameless person I’ve ever encountered.

Calling someone (or something) shameless isn’t a compliment, remember.

18

That’s the thing, though. Someone who doesn’t know how to fix a problem, can’t. It’s silly not to feel sympathy for someone who hasn’t learned what you’ve learned. And it’s counterproductive to go around assigning blame.

Basically, why do you think you get to determine how responsible someone else is? I know I do it, too, but I can’t find a good reason that isn’t selfish. It seems I do it to avoid sympathy overload, and being able to handle my own life.

Also, it really, really bugs me when the inability to think you can do something is actually part of the disorder, like in depression or anxiety. And if your sympathy is so small that you start kicking them when they are down (as has happened often around here), I completely lose sympathy for you, because I can do so unselfishly.

Finally, I find that my sympathy is really, really limited when I’m going through something. It’s like I have a limited amount of caring, and I’m having to use all of it to deal with what I’m doing. I’ve got so many worries in my life that, if I start, So, in that way, when I’ve actually finished dealing with things, my sympathy goes up.

19

Stoid, this is really beautifully put, and expresses very much how I feel too.

To me the more/less sympathy for X is a hard question, because I’ve always suffered from, some might argue, too much empathy. I’m one of those people who can become overwhelmed by others’ suffering. I can’t be in the same room with someone crying without crying myself.

There is one situation though in which I seem to lose all empathy. This is when people allow their experiences to make them bitter and start treating others badly, or people who take the attitude that their pain justifies their lack of empathy. I try to avoid people like this, because I can’t give them any support. I consider them weak. And it’s very much based on the dynamic **jsgoddess **mentions in the OP–if I’ve been to hell and back and held onto my compassion for others, goddammit you can too, and there’s no excuse for your hate. I’m not the kind of person who hates, but my attitude toward people who say to others ‘‘I’ve been through X before so suck it up and quit complaining’’ are the closest I come to hate.

No, it doesn’t make sense. I’m not entirely rational about this sort of thing.

20

This is going to sound terribly heartless, but I have very little sympathy for the chronically ill or disabled.

Let me explain…

My mother-in-law was diagnosed with MS when she was pregnant with her first child (my husband). Over the next few years, it was clarified into being of the Chronic Progressive type (Always there, always gets worse). She was given a 10-15 year life expectancy, and told that having more children would be a great strain on her body. She and my father-in-law had always planned on having three children. It was their plan, they wanted three kids. So, seeing as she’s the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, she went ahead and had two more kids. They WERE a great strain on her body. She went to physical or occupational therapy (depending on what insurance was covering this year) a couple times a week, kept up with cutting-edge research, pushed her doctor to get her enrolled in experimental treatments, and basically did everything she could to fight.

Since I’ve known her (going on 11 years now), she was already a couple years past that original 10-15 year life expectancy thing. She’s a fully-certified quadriplegic (which doesn’t mean she can’t move her arms at all, it’s just very difficult - she can feed herself about half the time), has some serious mobility issues, and the MS (and medications) has caused her to have some foggy memories and thought processes sometimes. However, she still makes it a point to get out of the house several times a week, to call friends and relatives (constantly!), to keep up with the news and her favorite TV shows, and basically live life as “normally” as possible. That’s not to say she’s happy all the time - she goes through pretty normal ups and downs related to her illness, and she once confided in my husband that she’s occasionally considered suicide because she hates being a burden on the family, but decided against it (She’s a very devout Catholic, so for her to admit that means she was pretty serious), and she’s gotten pretty frustrated a couple times in restaurants when she’s having trouble gripping a fork or whatever.

But, despite all that, she keeps going out, and trying to live life to its fullest. She went on a cruise in the Carribian last year, and is now saving up for an Alaskan one. She delights in meddling in her children’s lives, and has a large social network.

So, where the lack of sympathy comes in is when I see my friends talk about their relatives who have medical problems that “prevent” them from doing things, like going out to the store or the theater. If my mother-in-law can manage these things, you have to be seriously bad off not to, and most of these people aren’t, they’re just whiney. It drives me up a wall to see people who are wallowing in their illnesses, and letting that define what they can and can’t do with their lives. I mean, yes, be realistic, you’re probably not going to be doing marathons when you’re wheel-chair bound, but if you’re not controlling your pain well enough to join your family for a dinner out or a movie, then you’re not doing it right, and I don’t have much sympathy for you.

I know that makes me sound a little heartless, but I’ve seen someone who, perhaps not overcame, but dealt with significant restrictions on what her body could do. And instead of feeling sorry for herself, she just kept on keepin’ on, mostly through the gallons of stubbornness and spite that replaced her blood years ago.