The trick is to never have any empathy.

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Only care about something if it's in your way.

Disagree with the above extreme comments about having no empathy or only having it when it suits you.

This post is about moderation. Be balanced when empathize with people around you. Empathy is feeling what they feel and doing something about it.

It is the doing something about it that you need to control.

True. People who are born being naturally empathetic have to learn later in life to turn it off without feeling guilty.

It's hard.

I use a little cognitive therapy. I have to keep reminding myself, “Just because you are aware of other people’s suffering and you choose not to help, doesn’t mean you are a bad person. The feeling of guilt is just a natural consequence of having that awareness, nothing more”. Take practice but it starts to help a little.

Thanks!!!

Yeah good luck. I take it you’re a empath too? Fucked me up as a kid, cause I could tell when adults were not ok but I had no idea what to do or how to turn it off. I can offer more advice if you’re interested.

Yeah, quite bad too. It's why I always try and help people, because I always know when something is wrong.

Me too. My career is in the helping professions, so I made that work for me, but even so, you need tools to turn it on and off, and you need to practice them to make them sharp.

I'm also an introvert... so it's extra draining.

Being an introvert sort of honed my senses as I spent a lot, or rather still spend a lot of time observing.

I know that feeling. Being a youngest sibling taught me to wait and watch, so I learned patience but not how to initiate socialization. I’ve learned some social skills so it’s not debilitating but I’ll never be the most outgoing person. It’s just not my personality.

Lol with ya there!

By contrast, many who claim to be empathic are, in reality, anything but. I know one person who says she’s an empath, says she takes on the pain of everyone around her… yet she can never read the room to decipher the moods of the folks in it, and therefore often comes across as a clod. In reality she’s an emotional vampire, feeding off the pain of others.

So be sure that being too empathic is the actual issue before charging down this path.

Similar anecdotal experience, everyone I've met who's claimed to be an empath has been a manipulator

The most authentic empathetic people I've met you'd think the sun shined out their arse they're that nice.

Too little too late but thanks I suppose haha.

Be careful who you try to save, they might be a narcissist.

Yep. One thing that helped open my eyes was reading : givers need to learn limits, because takers have none