Is empathy always good?

We always hear that being empathetic is a great quality. 

We should be empathetic. 

Showing empathy means we should consider ourself to be in other persons situation, feel their feelings and try to understand.

Humans have this quality by grace of god, some have it more some have it less. It can be developed or acquired from experience as well. Once we grow in relationships we try to empathise more with others, to adjust with them and understand them more. Be it a relation of parent and kid, husband and wife, teacher and student, friends, lovers, siblings, colleagues, in laws, or any other relation in this world.

Be empathetic, is what we always try to do...

But something made me rethink all this reality.... 

Every morning I open newspaper taking sip of my tea, sitting in my balcony, enjoying the nature, with a light music in the background, thinking to get refreshed and charged up for the day.

When I start having glance on each page of newspaper, one by one, I generally end up being tensed, over the news of crimes, accidents, rapes, kidnapping, murders and so on. 

I feel like ruining my time over newspaper, I feel guilty of reading those news which contribute fully in disturbing my thoughts, feeling that I should not have read those news. 

Today morning after going through all this torture, I was in deep thinking as to, why do we feel bad when we read such news or when we see sad movies or hear sad songs. Why do we start crying with them, as if all that is happening with us.

Then I realised, its all the magic of empathy, we start visualising ourself in those situations, as if all that is happening with us and we start crying. When someone is in a bad situation, we start visualizing their feelings and then, after overthinking we start relating the incidents to ourself. We start relating their experiences to our own life. We start putting ourself in their shoes.

What if this would have happened with me or with my closed one? How would I have been feeling? We experience all that, without really going through that situation.

And in the end we feel so stressed out, that we start living in that trauma. Sometimes finding very difficult to come out of the stress.

Empathy is good, to understand the mental or emotional status of the other person as far as we are concerned directly for that person. But when we start relating their situations to our life, it becomes a burden.

Put yourself in other persons shoes to experience their emotional status but don’t start visualizing yourself in their situation. Don’t relate their life experiences to your own life. Don’t suffer from the trauma which other person may be suffering from.

Empathise but don't OVER Empathise....

Have a stress free life!!!!