Dear Monica:

When you experience pain, it is always, no exceptions, your pain that you experience. It is impossible for you to experience another person’s pain because it is your brain making the experience possible. When you think about Gyunnie being in pain, like I wrote, he may be enjoying pizza at that exact moment that you are experiencing.. “his” pain. If you were experiencing his pain, how is it that at that exact moment, he is not experiencing pain?

Whenever you experience pain, it is you who is experiencing it.

Is it “BECAUSE of him” that you experience pain? Let’s think about it. As you go through life, someone around you will be in pain, someone you care about will be less than content. Does this mean that your fate is to always be in pain because someone else is in pain?

Empathy for loved ones is natural, we feel pain when we observe those we care about being in pain. The purpose of empathy is to motivate us to help others. But when there is nothing you can do to help another, empathy is no longer useful. When it becomes your occupation, thinking and thinking and hurting for another person (who is not even present in your life, who may not be in pain when you are in pain), then you have taken empathy from a natural, motivating factor to a… disease, self torture.

anita