Empathy Without Suffering

In the past few days, I talked to two friends who both said they’re suffering because they’re “too empathetic.” I think that’s a pretty misleading and harmful way to understand empathy.

When people say they’re “too empathetic” and that’s why they’re in pain, it sounds like they’re treating it as some kind of virtue. But my current understanding is that the pain doesn’t come from empathy, it comes from losing the boundary between you and the other person. That’s not empathy. That’s over-identification, and there’s nothing virtuous about that.

Empathy is the ability to feel with someone, while still knowing where you end and they begin. Over-identification is when you merge with their emotional state taking it on as if it were your own. You’re not just witnessing their pain, you’re internalizing it.

To be extra clear here, I’m not saying “don’t feel.” I’m not saying “build walls.” You can feel someone’s pain deeply without fusing with it.

Imagine watching a powerful movie. It moves you and maybe you even cry. You feel it fully, in the moment. But when the credits roll, you don’t carry that grief into the rest of your week. The hero’s wife was killed, but you don’t live as if it was your wife who died. You felt it, but you didn’t become it.

And most importantly, you knew the whole time that those feelings weren’t yours. They were a response to what you were witnessing, not a reflection of your own life. You didn’t get lost in the emotion or mistake it for your own experience.

That’s empathy. That’s being open without drowning.

But if you spent a week afterward living as if your wife died, that wouldn’t be empathy — that would be over-identification. And that doesn’t help anyone.

This has been a theme throughout my life: picking up the vibe around me like a sponge, without even realizing it. But that’s not just some deep sensitivity, it’s bad boundaries.

It took me years to recognize that a lot of what I was feeling wasn’t even mine. I’d absorb it from people and the environment around me. Some days I’d feel low or off with no clear reason. I’m only now starting to tell the difference between my own emotions and the stuff I’ve picked up from others.

If you think your empathy is what’s making you suffer, maybe sit with the idea that it’s not actually empathy. It’s probably over-identification. And that’s not compassion, it’s just getting lost in someone else’s storm. Not only you’re not helping them, but you’re also harming yourself.

It’s easy to mistake emotional absorption for empathy, especially if you’ve spent a lifetime tuning into others. But real empathy doesn’t require you to carry their pain, only to recognize it with openness and care.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but what helps me immensely is practicing mindfulness. It’s the only thing that consistently lets me notice when I’ve slipped out of myself and into someone else’s emotional world. The more aware I become in real-time, the easier it is to catch that moment when empathy starts turning into identification, and gently come back.

I made a little questionnaire with my friend ChatGPT to help figure out if you’re prone to over-identification.