Yes...pity and sympathy actually are insulting to the person in pain. It's patronizing and rather fake. Being sympathetic doesn't really require any action in actually helping comfort the person, and the way most people sympathize with someone is to pretend to agree with him which only serves to reinforce the pain instead of to help heal it.

Empathy and emotional support require hard work that most people just don't want to do either because they don't think they can or they simply don't care.