Empathy vs. Projection?

[Billy Cox]

How do we tell the difference between empathy and projection?

Here are a couple of working definitions:

Empathy - one's ability to recognize and understand the emotion of another.

Projection - preoccupation with one's own feelings to the extent of assuming that someone else feels the same way.

[Mark Metcalfe]

How do we tell the difference between empathy and projection?

Answer: perspicacity.

[Gina Stevenson]

How do we tell the difference between empathy and projection?

Here are a couple of working definitions:

Empathy - one's ability to recognize and understand the emotion of another.

Projection - preoccupation with one's own feelings to the extent of assuming that someone else feels the same way.
Does not empathy usually include somewhere a having BTDT, rather than just suggesting to someone that they "know" how they feel, without having BTDT? That's how I tho't of the difference, even, between "empathy" and "sympathy," empathy being one's having known the same experience firsthand, while sympathy can "imagine" how one feels in such a situation.

As for projection, "hot button" ... irked me sometimes when people I knew had no similar experience would say, "I know how you feel!" You sometimes would want to scream, "You do not know how I feel!" So, I'm careful, usually, in trying to not "project" anything on anyone.

[Peter Teolis]

Miriam Webster 2002
Empathy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

But I can't find a definition for Projection the same as you describe or paraphrase.

Non the less, if your paraphrase is as it states, one is compasion based, Empathy, and the other is more selfish, Projection.

Empathy is an emotional understanding of another. Projection sounds more harsh and forcefull. It should be easy to differentiate between the two. Projection could get you in trouble!

[Billy Cox]

Miriam Webster 2002
Empathy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

But I can't find a definition for Projection the same as you describe or paraphrase.

Non the less, if your paraphrase is as it states, one is compasion based, Empathy, and the other is more selfish, Projection.

Empathy is an emotional understanding of another. Projection sounds more harsh and forcefull. It should be easy to differentiate between the two. Projection could get you in trouble!

'Projection' is a term from psychology describing how one person unconsciously assigns a negative feeling to someone else as a method of not dealing with that feeling.

I have heard the term 'projection' used more loosely to describe the practice of assuming that how 'I' imagine I would feel in another's circumstance IS the way that the person must feel.

The question is, how does one know whether one's feelings/beliefs are based on empathy or whether they are merely projecting their own feelings on another person?

[Barb Bouldrey]

I guess a person cannot know that unless a pyschologists tells them...or maybe the Holy Spirit can reveal it to that person.

A lot of times we think, "If that was me, I would...."

Over the years I have heard people say, "I know how you feel," only to have the other person say, "No, you don't." I have always been bothered by the "no, you don't." But I understand what they are saying.

No one can know exactly how I feel unless they are me. They may have been in an identical situation, but they are not me, with my exact emotions. People react and feel differently.

When that response came to me long ago, I changed the way I offered sympathy and empathy. I now will say something like, "I know it must hurts deeply to lose a spouse." or "I remember how it hurt my heart when I ......"

Even though I believe that I really can understand what another person is experiencing because I have experienced it, too, I have learned to NOT say, "I understand how you feel." The suffering human mind does not want to hear those words, believing that no one really understands how they feel.

Barb

[Mark Metcalfe]

'Projection' is a term from psychology describing how one person unconsciously assigns a negative feeling to someone else as a method of not dealing with that feeling.

I have heard the term 'projection' used more loosely to describe the practice of assuming that how 'I' imagine I would feel in another's circumstance IS the way that the person must feel.

The question is, how does one know whether one's feelings/beliefs are based on empathy or whether they are merely projecting their own feelings on another person?

Sounds like the difference between inference and implication.
I imply; you infer. So Empathy and Projection may be dependent
on the subjects.

MM

[Marsha Lynn]

Both answer the same question: How does this person feel about this situation?

In both, Person A must use some sort of criteria to decide how Person B feels. Listening helps Person A to better understand Person B. Knowing Person B and how they tend to react also helps. If Person A can grasp the nature of Person B's emotions, s/he can 'try on' those emotions. That's empathy. If Person A makes an incorrect guess as to the nature of Person B's emotions, it may be because Person A figures that Person B is feeling what he or she would feel in the same situation. That's projection. (It's not always negative emotion that is projected, is it? Can't I, for example, mistakenly project joy over a pregnancy onto someone who is overwhelmed with despair at the thought of giving birth?)

I suppose we all sometimes do some projecting and miss the mark on another person's emotions. Is it because we're all wrapped up in ourselves and don't care about the other person or because it's sometimes difficult to follow another person's emotional reaction if it is very different than what our own would be in the same situation?

An example: Person A told me that Person B reported that she was overwhelmed by the math she was encountering in college. However, Person B told me that her college math class was repeating material she'd already learned in high school and she was thinking about skipping to the next class. There was an obvious disconnect. I think it took two factors to cause this: 1) Person A expected Person B to be intimidated by college math because SHE would certainly be overwhelmed if she were in that situation. 2) Person A did not listen well to Person B when they discussed the math class. She heard what she expected to hear, that the math was overwhelming.

Person B did indeed drop her math class and move to the next level. Person A was guilty of projection.

I think.

Marsha

How do we tell the difference between empathy and projection?

Here are a couple of working definitions:

Empathy - one's ability to recognize and understand the emotion of another.

Projection - preoccupation with one's own feelings to the extent of assuming that someone else feels the same way.