Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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There are distinctions between empathy and sympathy.

You feel empathy directly. It is your own natural—and usually not premeditated— response to a situation or a person.

Sympathy involves your feeling badly for another person or group based upon your understanding and caring about what happened to them. It is often a response conditioned by culture or other social cues.

One common framing is to say that empathy is “I feel with you,” while sympathy is “I feel for you.”

Empathy may provoke unexpected emotional responses since empathy is based upon us having the feelings ourselves. Empathy sticks with you longer—you may lose sleep over it, while sympathy passes more quickly.