Is there a word or phrase that means thinking or claiming you're in the same situation as someone when you're actually not? For example, if two people seem to be suffering in the same way, but then it turns out one of them has a means of getting out of the situation that isn't available to the other and they simply choose not to use it. The person without the option might turn around and say they're not really in the same situation, contrary to the other's belief/claim.
The more fortunate person isn't necessarily pretending they understand or trying to trick the less fortunate one, they're just seemingly-ignorant of how they're actually better off. Insensitive, perhaps.
Answer
You might be looking for the term pseudo-empathy that is usually seen in narcissistic people :
The narcissist (especially high-level narcissists who are very successful in the world) is very adept at fake empathy or what can be called pseudo empathy. The socially gifted narcissist is an expert at convincing others that he/she cares deeply about them. "Pseudo empathy is exquisitely designed by the narcissist to manipulate others so they will fulfill his narcissistic needs."
Another perspective from the book "Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives" edited by Amy Coplan, Peter Goldie:
Rationally and theoretically, most of us understand that most people are very different from us, and yet we make these mistakes a lot. We don't just fail to understand others' subjective experiences; we often assume that we do understand them; which leads to a new set of problems. I contend that self-oriented perspective-taking leads to a type of pseudo-empathy since people often mistakenly believe that it provides them with access to the other's point of view when it does not.
Most of us have had the experience of disclosing something to a friend, having her respond, 'I know just how you're feeling,' and then realizing within moments that she does not. It's not that she hasn't been perspective-taking; she has. But the perspective has been her own; only the circumstances are ours. Thus our friend's perspective-taking has focused on her, not on us. While this can be useful for many reasons, it does not yield empathy.
According to the same book, your example goes a bit more deeper than empathy and is associated with assumption of similarity and false consensus effect:
It is also mentioned that empathy and connivance is related to each other regarding to a psychoanalytic technique:
From the book "Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners" By Bruce Fink:
Connivance is the act of conniving or conspiring, especially with the knowledge of and active or passive consent to wrongdoing or a twist in truth, to make something appear as something that it is not.
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