I recently gave a talk about empathy, and the difference between sympathy and empathy. A week later, while I was doing my nightly meditation, I received a download on the subject. (My downloads usually come from the group I work with - Nature Intelligences, my Ancestors and those working on behalf of the human race from a non-physical reality. I never ask “who is this?”, I just grab my notebook and write.)
They told me something interesting about the difference between the two, something I had not thought of before. They said, “Sympathy is where you connect and relate to people through a wound or a trauma. Sympathy allows a certain resonance with each others’ electromagnetic field. You can understand what the person is going through even if you have not had that specific experience, because you can enter the collective archetype of their pain. Sympathy is accessed through the victim/victimizer paradigm.
Sympathy, however, can be seen as a somewhat passive state. It requires deep listening and an ability to understand at some level what that person’s pain is about. It’s a way to acknowledge and validate what someone else is going through.
Empathy requires much more. Empathy is the ability to literally become the other. You not only can feel and relate to their pain, you can feel it in your body as though the experience was yours. This is why so many empaths need to learn strong boundaries first and foremost; otherwise they can become consumed by someone else’s pain and their body cannot tell the difference between “their” wound and “my” wound.
Empathy is designed to move us beyond this experience of matching vibration. It is asking us to clearly see how the other person has co-created the experience that is causing them pain. Empathy requires compassionate truth. Remember the phrase “Tough Love”? Tough love comes out of empathy. I’ll speak more about this later in the newsletter.
When is it appropriate to be in sympathy vs empathy? I recently saw a tweet by Alexander James (@DrunkScribe) that seemed brilliant in its simplicity. “Some years back my wife and I got into the habit of asking each other ‘do you want comfort or solutions’ when the other was having a bad time. That one sentence can save us from an argument 9/10 times.”
This seems like an excellent way to see if someone needs comfort (sympathy) or solutions (empathy). Now, I do not see this as either/or - after all, empathy is an experience of sympathetic vibration so you can’t actually feel empathy unless you feel sympathy first. Let’s say that empathy is sympathy put into action. It looks for solutions that take into account how the other person is feeling but also how they got to the place where they are looking for comfort or help. And that brings me to co-creation.
Those of you who have followed me over the years know I am passionate about the idea of co-creation. Co-creation means that we are continually creating our reality, moment by moment, and that nothing happens to us without our consent. Everything in our experience is being co-created with whomever or whatever that experience entails. Some people hate the idea of co-creation, because we are so steeped in the victim/victimizer story that the thought we might be creating something painful or traumatic implies a responsibility that can be terrifying. Some people love the idea of co-creation, because it empowers us to know we actually have some control over our life. Most people are confused by the idea, because, “why would I create something so painful/traumatic/devastating”? Let me answer this question.
Each of us came here with certain beliefs about life, relationships, our value, etc. Add to that the DNA of our ancestral traumas, then layer on the indoctrination we receive as children. We now have a fairly messy, incoherent and often oppositional set of beliefs. When we take an action, our conscious mind thinks we are making that choice based on certain criteria. Our subconscious however, is holding the bag of the unknown and powerful buried beliefs that might immediately sabotage our conscious action. Why would it do that? To get our attention and show us what is buried and needs to be examined.
So when I say, “Everything in our experience is being co-created with whomever or whatever that experience entails” this more often than not includes unconscious creations that are being manifested to grab our attention and point out a belief system that is at odds with our soul’s journey.
Let me break down the victim/victimizer vs creator paradigms. In V/V, someone “does” something to hurt us. We then go through life carrying wounds from this event, blaming the other person for our wound, and possibly spending years of therapy to try to get to a place where we can “forgive” them. Or avoiding anyone or anything that reminds us of that person/event. And yet rarely do we find satisfaction in this paradigm. It is costly, time-consuming and often does not heal the original wound.
In co-creation, the first question we ask is “why would I co- create this (awful, traumatic, painful) situation?” We immediately ask from the place of a creator, rather than the place of a victim. Turning the question inward opens the door to our subconscious, who then looks for ways to bring the answer to our conscious mind. Dreams, daydreams, synchronicities, all are ways that our subconscious uses to provide the information we are looking for. In my practice, the easiest way to get an answer is through emotional expression (you can look at the Anger page on my website for clues about how this is done).
Once I can see the underlying belief that is being expressed, I then ask that belief “If you could evolve to a higher expression, what would you like to be?” The belief is usually surprised, as it thought I was going to try to kill it, but I remember that this belief probably saved me more than once and got me where I am today. It deserves an opportunity to evolve with me. And yes, some beliefs absolutely refuse to evolve, demanding I stay in the victim/victimizer paradigm with them. These beliefs I starve by no longer giving them energy. We cannot evolve or starve a belief without knowing what it is first, recognizing its’ purpose throughout our life, and why it is now holding us back.
Back to empathy. Empathy requires strong self-knowledge, co-creative ownership, good boundaries and a willingness to speak the truth with compassion, no matter how unpleasant it may feel. I see many articles these days on social media about the challenges facing empaths, and I believe most of them come from meeting people in a place of sympathy vs. empathy. You can be sympathetic and meet people in a victim paradigm; you cannot be empathetic and meet them there without the possibility of harm to the self. Empaths are truth tellers, speaking with compassion of the co-creation of all harm. If you consider yourself an empath, be prepared to start with the self and look for the places where you still engage in victim/victimizer dynamics. Then change those patterns to conscious behaviors that you can commit to.
I yearn for and visualize a world where we all accept co-creation and ask, “why are we creating this particular story right now together?” How empowering that would be! Judgments go out the window, enlightenment floods in. I hope I will meet you there, in the field of potential, as we co-create a new way to come home and be one.
Blessings!
Cat