There is a Q&A on Zhihu, asking "Why is it said that empathy is too strong a kind of internal friction?" I replied in it that because when you empathize with others too much, you ignore your own feelings. In fact, "empathy" is a very common phenomenon in life. When we see others complaining about life and encountering setbacks, our kind-hearted selves will inevitably follow each other and empathize with each other's sadness at that moment. If you have the ability to jump out of emo quickly, you won't let yourself continue to fall into anxiety and sadness because of your strong empathy ability. But if your empathy ability is too strong, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the other party's menacing emotions, lose your own thinking and judgment, regard the other person's life as your own life, and always want to solve problems for other people's lives. Although in interpersonal relationships, it is good to have the ability to empathize. But if you can't always grasp the "degree" of this, it is easy to live your life anxiously because of excessive empathy. 
Left bracket Empathy is a human innate abilityLeft bracket What is empathy? Empathy in social interaction is empathy and a manifestation of a person's high emotional intelligence. Being able to communicate with others in an empathetic way can quickly perceive what the other person is thinking, touch the weakness of the other party, and give the other party positive feelings such as being cared for and taken care of. And this ability to empathize with the other person is innate, and there is an essential class of neurons in our brain, called mirror neurons. When mirror neurons are activated, a person's ability to empathize can be enhanced. Take a simple chestnut: when you see someone accidentally being cut by a knife and bleeding, you will feel as if you are bleeding too, and there will be a mental pain resonance, which is the role of mirror neurons. For example, when watching a movie, some people who are particularly sensitive to other people's emotions will cry together when they see the actors in it crying. And when brushing some short **, a lot of canned sound effects will be added to it, which is a computer-synthesized laughter, and I don't think it's so funny in the process of watching, but because of the addition of laughter sound effects, it drives emotions, and it will also laugh. In fact, these are all related to empathy, and for some highly sensitive people, the neurons will be abnormally active, which will lead to more empathy and empathy with others when communicating with them. 
2 Left middle bracket Moderate empathy, is the softener of relationshipsLeft middle bracket In the book "Human Relationships", author Dale Carnegie shares a small accident of his. Once, he had a dinner with a celebrity who was only a listener the whole time, but afterwards, the celebrity praised Carnegie to the host of the dinner party for being a very good chatter, when in fact, Carnegie was just listening attentively. Why does this celebrity feel this way? Although Carnegie did not speak the whole time, he had been patiently listening to the other party's speech, making the other party feel that he was valued and respected. And when a person can listen carefully to what the other person is saying, the other person will feel empathized. In fact, many times, when a person feels emotionally understood, comforted, it can even be more useful than any words. At the same time, we will also find a phenomenon, that is, when empathizing with others, we need to suppress our own feelings. In other words, your own will and thoughts are in a state of disappearance, and you will not feel your own existence. Therefore, although empathy can help us socialize amicably, it can also ignore our own feelings because of excessive empathy. 
3. Excessive empathy in the left bracket is a kind of internal frictionWhy is excessive empathy a kind of internal friction? Because the ability to empathize is too strong, you will absorb a lot of negative emotions that do not belong to you, and when the negative emotions accumulate little by little in your heart, they will eventually turn into anxiety. Each of us has our own life issues, others have them, and we have them. But if you say that when other people's lives are painful, you go to over-empathy, and after the other party, you don't distinguish each other's life issues, and mistakenly absorb each other's pain into your own life, and in the long run, this will become a kind of inertia in thinking. As a result, you will habitually experience the lives of others, experience the bad things that others experience every day, and your own life will always be in the midst of various problems and troubles. But in fact, what I don't know is that most of these anxieties are not my own, but absorb others after excessive empathy. For example, after listening to the tragic experiences of others, many people will always think in their hearts, why they are so miserable, what can they do, and how can I save them? It may be that the confidant has released the emotional garbage after confiding, but because of excessive empathy, he did not distinguish whose life problem it was, who took it, ate the other party's emotional garbage, and tried to resolve it. Then this is a kind of internal friction against yourself. We need to understand that everything is too much, and not to have a "savior complex", but to know how to respect each other's boundaries and not to get too involved in other people's lives.
Left bracket writes to the end Left bracket psychologist Charles F. Figley says: "Because of long-term exposure to empathetic stress, physical and emotional exhaustion and dysfunction lead to a decline in the ability to empathize with others. In other words, when you empathize with others excessively, you will have "empathy fatigue" because you use it beyond your own limit. And when there is "empathy fatigue", and then you face some people and things that need your empathy, numbness will appear. And then those necessary empathy relationships will also become alienated because of your indifference. So, learn to use proper empathy so that you don't overdo it and numb your empathy function. Therefore, it is better to be moderately indifferent, because the ability to empathize is limited, pay more attention to yourself, and don't let yourself always be immersed in too much anxiety. Only in this way can we maintain our own integrity and independence, avoid depleting ourselves due to unclear boundaries, and making relationships a slurry logic. Remember to like it, only just the right empathy can help us build a good interpersonal relationship, not only not to consume ourselves, but also to benefit others.