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Why Helping Others Is Hard
Spoiler: It’s not about saying the right things.
Addison Collingsworth
May 22, 2024
Hey, I’m Addison. You’re reading Bigger Than Me, a newsletter about mastering the skill of compassion. Sign up or scroll to the good stuff.
Illustration by Bryan Arcebal
If someone is stuck in a pit, it doesn't help for me to sit down at the top and talk with them. It might make them feel better, but they remain stuck.
This is sympathy.
If I jump into the pit, courageous as that sounds, now we're just two people stuck in a pit.
That's empathy.
The only way to truly help is to pull the person out.
Now that is moving in compassion.
Sympathy feels.
Empathy understands.
Compassion acts.
Not understanding these differences will result in people remaining stuck.
So let's break these terms down.
Sympathy feels.
Sympathy is "an affinity or relationship between persons where whatever affects one similarly affects the other."
If sympathy emotionally moves the person, it moves the sympathizer. The feelings are the driving force, not understanding of the problem.
In the song Bridge over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel lyricize this dynamic well.
When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down
Sympathy shows that you recognize someone is stuck in a pit.
However, sympathy doesn't require understanding how they got there.
Empathy understands.
Empathy goes beyond feelings as "the action of understanding, being aware of, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another".
Some actors use their own emotions and memories to fully live as characters for extended periods, a technique called method acting.
This demonstrates empathy perfectly.
Empathy isn't about getting people out of the pit. It's about understanding and sharing their feelings from within the pit.
Empathy does not require action.
Compassion acts.
Compassion necessitates a "desire to alleviate" the distress of others.
It takes sympathy's feelings and empathy's understanding, then adds the crucial step of action.
This is Jesus comforting the weary, feeding the hungry and healing the sick.
You can't have compassion without action.
Sympathy feels
Empathy understands
Compassion acts.
I learned this the hard way.
Growing up, I was a people pleaser. Desperate to prove my value to others, I would say whatever was needed to make people feel better. I avoided all possible confrontations and used sympathy as my deflection tool to do so.
As I got older, I exchanged words of sympathy for empathy to accomplish the same thing. I prided myself on deeply caring and embodied their situations as the go-to shoulder to cry on.
As long as I was in the struggle with people, supporting their feelings and understanding their pain, I made myself invaluable.
It wasn't satisfying though.
My fear of rejection kept me quiet when people needed me to speak up, and I knew it. I let the excuse of "nonconfrontational = loving" rule my life, and I was miserable for it.
Then one day, everything changed.
Someone opened my eyes to who God truly is. Not the disappointed, reluctant God I knew previously, but one that deeply cared for me. I finally learned my value wasn't tied to others' opinions.
Soon after, God started convicting me to be honest and genuine. To respect people I cared about, take an interest in their betterment over my comfort, and seek to genuinely help.
As non-confrontational as I could be at that point in my life, this was not an easy thing to hear.
I wanted to obey though and I set my mind on it.
A simple enough task, right?
Nope.
I had lived as such an emotional teddy bear to people my newfound stance caused mental whiplash. Now that I wasn't validating others' feelings, I was seen as uncaring, leading to confusion and anger.
Despite how rough those first few months were, I kept learning to speak honestly in love.
Eventually, it led to a realization...
I made "helping" about me.
When others were stuck in pits, it didn't help them for me to sit and talk. It made me feel better. It was a low-risk way to appease my obligation to help while feeling good about it.
In the same way, jumping headlong into pits was actually about me, not the people in them. I had mistaken the problem with sympathy as not feeling enough. Empathizing through grand gestures and sweeping emotions made me feel I was doing more while avoiding the risk of being rejected.
My need for approval had kept me from doing the compassionate thing when finding someone in a pit:
Racing back to my house
Changing into boots and clothes I didn't mind getting dirty
Wrestling my giant ladder from the clutter in my garage
Throwing the ladder into my car
Driving back to the pit
Lowering the ladder and climbing in to rescue them from the pit.
Now my fear of losing approval wasn't unfounded. As I mentioned before, doing the above doesn't guarantee a cheery outcome, sometimes quite the opposite.
I've found I can do everything possible to help someone, only to have them be offended because they don't recognize they're in a pit, resist because they like the pit they're in, or simply reject me because they don't like me.
And that's okay.
The outcome is not the reason I act now.
I act because my purpose is to unconditionally love others first, just as God loved me first before I ever recognized it.
Sympathy feels, empathy understands, but only compassion acts.
"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what benefit is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."
Until next time,
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