Sympathy v's Empathy

Empathy is a feeling different from sympathy. When one is sympathetic, one implies pity but maintains distance from another person’s feelings. Empathy is more a sense that one can truly understand or imagine the depth of another person’s feelings. It implies feeling with a person, rather than feeling sorry for a person.

Empathy is a translation of the German term Einfühlung, meaning to feel as one with. It implies sharing the load, or “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes,” in order to appropriately understand that person’s perspective.

When speaking about this in class today i took myself back to a situation i was in on my last placement. I was taken out to a clients home with the careers adviosr, the client had developed a brain injury through an illness which she contracted later in her life. The client was back in employment and seemed to be coping remarkably well with what had happend.....well thats what i was lead to belive anyway.
The client turned to me and said ' I want to die, i dont want to live anymore, i have nothing to live for'

The client directly said this to myself and the careers advisor also turned in my direction for some 'sympathy' or 'empathy' advice or really just something to say to take away the akwaredness of the situation.

I was shaking inside cause the clinet seemed genuiely stable and happy...but clearly wasn't 100% . What i then said to the clinet was ' I am sorry you are feeling like this, i cant begin to fully understand what you have been through, and why you feel this way, im not going to sit here and tell you i do, cause it would be wrong, so really i cant comment on this.

The client didnt say anything back to me nor did the careers advisor, but i feel if i had said anything it wouldnt have been real or genuine answers as i dont know enough about her illness or the depression stage which she was clearly going through at this point. I didnt want to come across as fake and molly cuddling the situation.

Once outside the house the careers advisor told me i had said the right thing in that situation. I didnt know the client that well, i had however read her notes before hand....but didnt want to mention this to her due to the confidentiality part.

Not sure if i really did do the right thing here, but we all learn from these encounteres in life and hopefully take on board and do differently next time.

I did however feel a great deal of sympathy for her and the family and i did want to empathise with her too but really the conditions of her illness were too great and i would only be
Patronising her and probably making the situation worse than better.