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<s class="aside-in"><em>mentioned in 3 evergreens</em></s>
#### [[Disambiguation - empathy, sympathy, compassion, pity]]
Many people misunderstand [[empathy]] as feeling what the other person is feeling, and [[sympathy]] as feeling bad for the person. If you are feeling what somebody is feeling purely because they are feeling it, that can be unhealthy.
^[[[Having extreme and uncontrollable empathy is dangerous]]]
True empathy is not a blind taking on of emotion, it is putting yourself in that person's shoes and understanding what is causing those feelings. Sympathy may be a reaction to empathy, but you can also empathize with someone without having sympathy for them:
[[Empathy does not disallow judgment]], [[Empathy isn't understanding how you would make the decision it's understanding why they made the decision]]
#TO/EXPLORE/RESEARCH and #TO/PONDER/IDEA wiki's definitions of these things
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**Status**:: #EVER/SAPLING
*edited 7:35 AM - July 08, 2022*
**Topics**:: [[human experience]], [[empathy]], [[sympathy]]