Beyond the anecdotal twin stories living on opposite coasts where one knocks her head on the cupboard door and the other gets a headache, I don’t know that it’s possible. It’s all body language or voice/speech patterns.
I wonder something though… if they can sense a blunt head tauma, can they also sense really strong orgasms. 'Cuz that would be cool!
I don’t know about cool; I think it would be pretty unsettling.
I don’t think the real deal empathy exists, either. I’m very sensitive to how other people are feeling, but like QuickSilver says, it all comes from being very observant and putting myself in someone else’s shoes, not from me actually feeling someone else’s feelings.
I think that, in reality, most everyone has that kind of empathy, in that we feel sad when others around you are weeping, and to feel happy when you see that those you love are elated.
I know I often cry at funerals even if I did not know the deceased-- the weeping of the family is enough to send me into sympathetic tears. Likewise, I cannot watch an exuberant child or a frolicking, joyful puppy without smiling, too.
Sympathy is one thing, but empathy is an entirely DIFFERENT one!
Sympathy - in my understanding - is to have an awareness or an understanding (perhaps backed up by a personal experience) of how another person might be feeling in certain circumstances.
Empathy is to actually be ably to put oneself IN THE SHOES OF the other person, and to imagine/experience/feel how they might be feeling in that moment and how they might react in those circumstances.
If I have understood the difference correctly, (though perhaps not expressed it as well as I might!), then the one comment I would make is that whilst most people can sympathise, far fewer have the ability to empathise.
I think to do so takes a great understanding of human emotions and also a wealth of experience for other peoples situations. Most people these days only have an awareness of their own, or those similar to their own.
But can you ever really know how another person is feeling, or are you only deluding yourself into imagining that you do? I must say I always resent it when I’m in the throes of crisis and some well-meaning person says, “I know just how you feel.” No, I don’t think you do.
My stock phrase for grieving friends is something to the effect of, “I have no idea how you must be feeling right now. The only thing I can say is that I’m terribly, terribly sorry.”
If someone loses a child and are emotionally destroyed, I can truely say I sympathize with them and their pain but I am sure I have no idea of what they are going through. I have never had to face such a horror.
To someone who has lost a parent or a spouse and feel a crushing grief that they think they cannot bear, I am empathetic to what they are feeling as I can feel it again also. I can understand. I believe I feel what you are feeling.
I doubt many people feel they are empathetic to all people in all situations and those who do I have my doubts about.
Me too. When I was 19, I had no idea what it felt like to have a broken heart. When I saw someone with a broken heart, I felt sad that they were sad, but I didn’t know what they were going through. I wll never forget when I had my first broken heart and realized what that is. Suddenly, I felt so bad for so many people. Bryan Adams in particular. He was always on the radio singing his usual idiotic songs about nothing except now I realized they were about something very important! Now when I see someone with a broken heart, I remember the pain and I can imagine something of what they’re going through.
But the hard part is, what if they aren’t going through what I go through? I’m only really guessing that they feel like I felt. Maybe Celine Dion is very empathtic to my broken heart, or maybe she is just mouthing the words. Who knows?
i think we digressed to the first definition, “empathising”
I’m not talking about know specificlly how someone feels as if you were in their place. I’m takling about raw emotion.
Personally i can’t not belive in it. I’ve always been able to feel others emotions. For some people like strangers or people i’m not very close to it’s weak and intermitant.
But for my friends, and especially those i have given my heart to, I do not need to see them to know when they are happy or sad or angry. The closer i am physically to them the sharper and clearer the “taste” of the emotion is. However here have been times when i have woken in the middle of the night because my second Girlfriend had a nightmare and immediatly called her before i was even truelly aware of what i was doing.
Sympathy: a. A relationship or an affinity between people or things in which whatever affects one correspondingly affects the other.
b. Mutual understanding or affection arising from this relationship or affinity.
Empathy: a. Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. See Synonyms at pity.
b. The attribution of one’s own feelings to an object.
It’s a fine line, as far as I can tell. It sort of looks like sympathy is one person actually feeling another person’s pain (see sympathetic labor…which I’ve only heard of). Empathy is understanding a person’s pain.
Sorry if I was being unclear…I was operating under the assumption that to be able to feel the precise mixture of heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, nausea, and diarrhea (with a dash of sorrow mixed in!) that someone else feels, you’d have to have a fairly exact knowledge of their emotions. This might be inaccurate, though…maybe empathy is a bit more vague than that?
(FTR, everyone always tells me I’ve loads of empathy…pish. Don’t believe a word of it. )