The desire for empathy is the desire for having the universe see you with your own eyes. It is the impossible, the desperate grasping for the universe to be knowable, predictable, understandable. And for that we need to know ourselves. When another gives us empathy, we see ourselves and know ourselves because the other is looking at us with our own eyes. It pities us (As we should be pitied) for our perceived hardships and it applauds us (as we should be applauded) for our perceived accomplishments. Therapists are paid to be good at this job. We seek the world to mirror our knowledge and give us reassurance and we want that so much that we actually have a psychology that pays others to understand itself. What we do not want to see is sympathy, literally having one who has transcended our "eyes" and no longer echos an expectation converse with us. For that would be truly terrifying, to not be able to measure and know the person we are conversing with while they see us in all of our predictable shortcomings.
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