Empathy is the ability to experience the feelings of another person. It goes beyond sympathy, which is caring and understanding for the suffering of others. To be able to empathise, the empathiser has to bear lots of sensibility, but for sympathy one needs only to be sensitive. The empathiser will be best placed to parform if he / she can relate similar experiences which were experienced first hand. Hence, the trauma of a broken marriage is best appreciated by another person who has gone through that.
Or for other ailments like cancer or addiction disorder ... all are best understood by the sufferers themselves. That is the basis of coming togather of sufferers of the same category of people and forming self-help groups like alcoholic anonymous etc. Did I ust say the best way to be able to empathise is through personal experience ?...of course Yes, ...but that is not possible always.…
