Dear S:

You are welcome. Thank you for your appreciation, and I join you in praying or wishing that things get better soon.

I agree that you are a “feeler, kind, empathetic and compassionate”- exceptionally so, having just read your perfectly kind, empathetic, compassionate, intelligent, insightful and well written reply to another member.

“Over time people have taken advantage of my kindness and empathy. Although I genuinely believe in.. practicing non judgement and compassion when I meet someone and talk  to someone, after a while I feel emotionally exhausted- when all my energy and love is being consumed without being reciprocated”-

– “judgment”, or “being judgmental” has a negative connotation, and it is indeed a negative practice in the world, the reason for a lot of human suffering/violence in the world where prejudice is so common place. But we have to evaluate people before we invest too much in them so to not get exhausted. A person has a limited amount of emotional resources, so we can’t give it all away, exhaust ourselves and become useless to ourselves and to others.

We have to evaluate people, in a sense, judge them in some way, so to figure out whether to spend time with them or not, whether to invest more or to withdraw. If you withdraw from investing in a person who will not be helped as a result of your investment, you will be available to help someone who  will benefit from your investment.

“I feel emotionally exhausted- when all my energy and love is  being consumed without being reciprocated”- if all your energy and love toward a particular person truly helped that person, he or she would have reciprocated. If a person does not reciprocate your energy and love, it means that you didn’t help that person. I will elaborate a bit: many people want someone to listen to them, but they don’t want any input more than: I-hear-you, and you-are-right. They don’t want to look inward and correct what is wrong. So all you can provide for these people is a listening ear and telling them you hear them and that they are right and doing things well, a listening cheer leader of sorts.

– These people will feel better because you are there to be their excellent listener and cheer leader, but they will not be helped to improve their lives. What happens then, is that they feel better as a result of your investment and then proceed to make bad choices for themselves, build tension as a result, needing yet more help from you, so to release the built-up tension.

Basically, you provide a tension-release service to them.

If you were a therapist, paid by the hour, there will be a benefit to you in providing this tension release service, but without being compensated, what is in it for you, and what’s the point of exhausting yourself for the temporary, short-lived feel-better that you provide?

There is more to your original post. I only responded to the first paragraph that follows your introduction. But what I wrote here is enough for one post. We can communicate  further, if you’d like.

anita