I wonder if Anthony's military training is reflected in his views???....he can be very direct and blunt....not as tactful as one would like at times .....

You know, I think our views change as our life experiences do....sometimes we can agree to disagree and sometimes there are differing shades of grey....not everything is black and white.

If it was me being told I was sympathy seeking, I would take on board what I believed to be true or perhaps only bite sized pieces and have a look at what was being said compared to how I was acting. Self analysis is good. If someone says they perceive you to be seeking sympathy I guess it is worth exploring if you want to grow.... it does not mean they are always correct but it does provide you with a platform for self evaluation. No-one is asking you to change who you are....only you can change the way you act if you want to.

Cyber .......

Thanks Nicolette!

Absolutely agree with you on that CJ. Emotional support is though a form of empathy, which is quite sustainable, natural, desirable even. We all need emotional support.

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.

I was wondering if it's possible for someone to describe a few examples of healthy empathy and emotional support? It's a difficult concept for me (in that receiving emotional support can be a bad trigger for me at times and I don't really know the difference between sympathy and healthy emotional support - I run away from all of it a lot of the time).

The best analogy that I have heard for the difference between empathy and sympathy is as follows;

You are walking along one day and find a guy down in a big muddy ditch.
sympathy is getting there with him, empathy is saying dude I've been there.

sympathy is feelnig the same thing as someone

empathy is understanding the feeling, having experienced it

It is often hard for us, myself included, to tell someone that I think I understand what you are feelnig without it sounding like I'm crawling down in the ditch.

I can see there is soem wisdom in the policies here. Anthony and others have put alot of thoguht into them over the years. I used to be part of a supprot group that was in person in an office on a Cdn Military base. There were a lot of rules there too, again some wisdom was in them. Anyone ever been to AA, lots of rules there too. Again wisdom.

I recall a guy saying to me years ago that no one can MAKE me feel anything, that anything I feel comes from inside. I still haven't mastered it but I am much better now with looking at things around me and identiying what feelings things are elliciting in me and then trying to connect that with what is underlying.

That being said, a person needs to figure out what they feel before they can show empathy.

Well said... and smart person to give you that advice. Well done on your own experiences by learning.

Sympathy has its places... sympathy works in some situations... hell, its warranted in some instances, however; when you have PTSD it is no longer warranted. Sympathy has a place upon immediate death of a loved one. If a person however lost a loved one and was still seeking that same sympathy a month on whilst drowning their sorrows still.... that is not sympathy that should be given, instead the person should now provide empathy that yes, they have lost a loved one, though life must also go on. They must take charge of themselves... this is the time sympathy would only continue enabling them, empathy would give them more a swift kick in the arse to continue grieving, though also take charge of their life.

Sympathy can continue in the death of a loved one in some aspects even, ie. the none willingness to begin dating. If they still love someone that died... who should really tell them to begin dating again when they love another so much they simply cannot bring themselves to it? Sympathy would still be warranted in such an occasion of an event, but not the event itself when the ongoing behaviour is destructive in nature to themselves and anyone else around them.

Sympathy truly does have a time and place.... but when PTSD has developed, guess what? You are now talking about past traumatic events, not current, not now... past events that a person is still wanting pity for. That is where sympathy no longer has a place and any person giving it at such a delayed time is only enabling the person to continue pitying themselves over what happened.

I hope one can see even further into why and where things have there place, though more why sympathy is often just not warranted here with past trauma. When someone has lost a loved one in the present and posted it here... that is sympathy and it is warranted at that time. If people continued to provide sympathy though as time went on vs. empathy, then they would only enable the person to be destructive. Again, that doesn't mean grieving must cease... just how it is done.