Empathy, feeling what other people feel, putting oneself in other people's shoes,  is not the same as kindness or compassion.

Sympathy is the feeling of compassion, pity, sorrow for the difficulties and hardships of others.

I was trained to be sympathetic and not empathetic...imagine an psychiatrist who sees the depressed, the raped, the betrayed, the bankrupt, the abused each day, day after day....if he or she put on their patient's emotional shoes each day they would not last long.

Physicians and psychiatrists  have a higher  suicide rate than average the average population, one per day in the USA, the equivalent of a graduating class of MDs  each year...the Canadian rate for male MDs x2 that of Canadian males, the female MD suicide rate x3 that of Canadian females.

The moment I feel empathy, feel myself slipping into the other person's shoes I catch myself and withdraw.

Fritz Perl's Gestalt prayer includes the words " I am I and you are you"(I'm not a primal therapist).

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