[pyrogen]

Maybe you were at one extreme, burned out, and went to the other.

I experience this. I work as a caregiver and when I first started, I gave, gave, gave to my work and to people around me. After a year, now I'm totally into myself and hate the human race.

The flip side of overgiving and not being assertive, is complete selfishness; you're probably going to bounce back/forth between them until you find a balance. The flip side of being an empath is being callous.

I don't think that being an empath is necessarily a positive thing. You can go your whole life, have satisfying relationships, and even be a good person without actually feeling other people's feelings. The trick is just to acknowledge/validate them. You can let THEM feel their feelings, understand where they are coming from, but not experience their feelings as your own.

Unless your name is Counselor Deanna Troi and you work on the Starship Enterprise there is no job for you as an empath. Even a good psychotherapist isn't an empath. GOOD therapists don't always take the patient's side and don't feel the person's feelings.