I Feel Your Pain....Empathy - a curse or a blessing

I think all of us have heard the phrase "I feel your pain", but do we really feel the pain of another person?  I think as humans, we all feel some sort of feelings for people who are suffering from grief or from hardships of any kind.  And I think that some of us feel it more than others, but I'm not sure why we're wired that way.  

There's sympathy and there's empathy and they are often confused by their similarity of meaning.  I think of sympathy as an emotional response to the feeling of others - as in feeling sorry for or pity for that person.  But to me, empathy means putting myself to some extent in that person's place and feeling the same emotions, although they may not be as great as the person who is experiencing the grief or hardships. Sympathy is feeling for another person.  Empathy is feeling with another person.

I think my "empathy button" is set on too high of a setting.  Sometimes my feelings of empathy seem so great that I'm almost disfunctional.   When a tragedy strikes someone I know, I find myself putting myself in their shoes.  Therein lies my problem and I'm sure the problem of others as well.

As I woke up on  the morning after our friend passed away in December, I imagined how his wife was feeling waking up to an empty bed with the stark realization that there would never be another night spent with the one she loved.  As I pick up my hubby's shoes from the living room floor, I think of her living room floor - bare - where she would long to find his shoes just shed.  I think of her going by his closet of clothes he will never wear, sorting through his papers and personal items - and I feel her pain.  I truly feel her pain and I sometimes cry with her even though she doesn't know.

And it's not just about people I know.  I read a news story about a child with cancer, or starving, undernourished babies and I put myself in the mother's place - and I feel their pain to the bottom of my bones.  I don't want to feel this intensity and I don't want to feel their pain.  It's overwhelming at times.  In reading recently about the subject of feeling other people's pain, I find that I am not alone.  I guess I am what one psychologist called a "natural empath" (see link).  He suggests that it is necessary to have boundaries in order to prevent the pain of others from crossing that unseen barrier and becoming our own - and it needs to be accomplished without becoming cold, callous, or withdrawn.  He also suggests that the pain of the other may have reactivated some unresolved pain or conflict in our own life.  It very well could be.

I've been told that it's good to be empathetic and a big comfort to the person who is suffering.  I know I've done my share of lending a sympathetic ear and an empathetic heart to my friends from time to time.   But sometimes I wonder - is it a blessing.... or is it a curse?

Before you start thinking I am totally morose, I must add - I can also feel the joy.  When someone laughs, I can laugh.  When there's good news, I rejoice.  I can share the good just as well as I can feel the bad.  Maybe that makes me a little more....normal.

Do you have an overly sensitive "empathy button"?  Does it consume you or become a problem in your day to day life?  I would love to hear from others like myself.