I’m a highly empathetic person. I’d go so far as to describe it as pathologically empathetic, some days, though for most of my life I’ve relied heavily on this ability. At it’s best, it lets me reach out, dip my fingers into another person’s emotions, taste them, feel them, take them into myself, and listen to people through their own perceptions. This way, I can perform the one function that makes me feel most human, most useful, and most connected to the people I care about. Contemplating the loss of that function is like contemplating life without one of my limbs, or without one of my other 5 senses.<\/p>\n
Several years ago, I realized this empathy thing could occasionally be more dangerous than useful. I’d sit near someone and, rather than settling comfortably into their emotions, I’d find myself drowning in wave after wave of pain and hurt and sadness. I’d stand next to someone in line and, before I knew it, be nearly in tears as that person spilled stories of abandonment or confusion or loss. Good friends going through difficult times exhausted me and left me unable to be there for them as I would have liked. In other words, the empathy was effectively making the one thing it was most useful for impossible. And so I started practicing not<\/em> feeling other people’s emotions quite as much, or at least keeping them at a distance, much like watching an eclipse through a pin-hole or feeling a surface through latex gloves.<\/p>\n Well, something somebody said to me on Friday made me realize that something’s gone a little haywire with this whole process lately. I don’t know quite how or why, but so it goes. I’d forgotten how to turn off the spiggot and gotten overwhelmed, which means I’d probably misinterpreted people and that I couldn’t trust anything I was feeling. Yet again, the mechanism is preventing it’s own usefulness. It kept me from asking one friend if he was ok early in the week, it made me misinterpret someone in the middle of the week and say things I hope didn’t sound too awful, and it exhausted me by the end of the week. I guess it’s time to work on my teflon coating (as my mom calls it) and see if I can return it to it’s former protective state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m a highly empathetic person. I’d go so far as to describe it as pathologically empathetic, some days, though for most of my life I’ve relied heavily on this ability. At it’s best, it lets me reach out, dip my fingers into another person’s emotions, taste them, feel them, take them into myself, and listen … Continue reading Empathy<\/span>