Can sympathy lead to anger ?

Sympathy = Anger?

Sympathy can lead to anger. In hindsight, this doesn’t make sense. How is this possible? Shouldn’t sympathy only lead to love? Actually, no not really. Sympathy has many levels, and each level can release a different emotion. Before we get into this phenomenon, let’s first understand what the term “sympathy” actually means. 

In layman's terms, sympathy means to have a sincere feeling of sorrow for someone going through a painful or tough time. It is often seen as a feeling one may have for others, usually pity, sadness, sorrow, etc. Sympathy is derived from empathy (the ability to understand and share feelings). Only someone who can feel empathetic will be able to sympathize, there is no sympathy without empathy. Let's say a friend of yours lost their dog and you on the other hand have never had a dog but still you feel sad for your friend and have the need to comfort them even though you yourself can’t relate to their feeling, that sad feeling that you have for your friend is what we call sympathy. Now that you’ve understood the meaning of sympathy, you must be wondering if there is a way sympathy can lead to anger. Well, there are actually several ways sympathy can lead to anger, let’s dig a bit deeper.

Often a deeply sympathetic person tends to become overly sensitive about everything, While this may be a big stereotype about sympathetic people and it may not apply to you, it can still apply to a lot of people. Just go on any social media platform and notice how people’s sympathy spikes anger in their blood. Let me explain. Many times on Instagram you may see a Karen (an American term for a rude person) yelling racist slurs at a black person, even though you have personally never been treated like this, you will feel sympathy for the black person and that sympathy will make you feel anger towards the Karen. After this trigger by the Karen, you will end up commenting on her behavior this may even ruin your mood  or even cause you to start a Reddit post about the anger you felt after seeing this. All this anger that came into you suddenly was triggered by sympathy. In some cases, this may be a good thing because when we  feel sympathetic we can use the rage caused by that sympathy to speak up and fight for the repressed voices but sometimes it can be even more harmful than what you may originally perceive. 

You see sympathy follows a vicious cycle that can end up fueling the wrong kind of emotion and can cause you more harm than good. It starts with a person being overly sympathetic which gives them high expectation that everyone around them will also be sympathetic, when their high expectation is not met they’ll feel like people around them are neglecting their emotions, which leads to anger because they start feeling neglected, soon this person will start suppressing their anger which will end exploding at the wrong time causing harm only to them. Trust me I speak from experience.

I’m not saying sympathy is a bad thing and that one should not be sympathetic, I definitely feel sympathy is a good thing and it’s the one thing that keeps us human but too much sympathy can make us blind to all wrongdoings happening because through sympathy one starts thinking more emotionally than logically. 

Here is another example to help you understand this better, let’s say you help out a homeless person because you feel sympathetic towards their tough situation, you start helping them by giving them  an accommodation, giving them good clothes, getting them a job, setting up a steady fund for them and doing everything in your power to support them. You start learning about their life which makes you even more sympathetic towards them and in return you feel they are sympathetic towards you. A few years pass away and the person you helped has started dwelling on drugs, they are fully addicted and are now asking you for money practically every day, at this point, you are too invested and feel even more sympathetic than before, your friends start waning you about this person but this makes you angry towards your friends because your sympathy for the homeless person has started to override any logical thinking. Soon you stop talking with your friends because you are angry at them for giving you advice, on the other hand, the person you’ve helped has blown off all your money and run away from their responsibilities, on their behalf they don’t feel any sympathy for you or your money. This makes you feel even more angry and neglected and suddenly you feel lonely. 

Now this may seem like an extreme example but it has happened way too often to people who let sympathy override their logic. Again initially sympathy is not a bad thing when paired with logical thinking, it can be very beneficial but when sympathy overrides logic it can lead to anger, anger deadly enough to destroy your life. I’m not telling you to be completely unsympathetic but to always remember too much of anything can be bad, when we start getting too close to any emotion you must take a step back and think from your head instead of your heart. Get the balance.

We are sympathetic beings, it's in our nature but one must always be aware when it becomes too much and cloud us from judgment and turns into anger.