Am I an Empathy Monster?

What is empathy, how is it practiced, and who is this empathy monster?

Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes and felt shame on their behalf, sorrow on their behalf, or anger on their behalf? Worse still, do these feelings keep you awake at night and cause you to put your own life on hold? If your answer is “yes,” welcome: You may just be an empathy monster.

At its simplest, empathy is the ability to understand and feel another person’s emotions. To see the world through their eyes, to feel their pain within yourself. But here is a crucial distinction: Empathy is not about adopting someone else’s emotion—it is about understanding it.

Building empathy consists of three essential steps:

1. Listen: Listen without judgment, without trying to fix or correct.

2. Understand: Set aside your own perspective and strive to comprehend the emotion the other person is experiencing.

3. Reflect: Make them feel “I understand you,” without thinking for them or forcing solutions.

But it is precisely here that things go awry. Some of us internalize empathy so deeply that we take on the other person’s burden as our own.

I could say it came from within me. The creature we call a monster does not always arrive from outside to harm us or others; sometimes, the innocent emotions we nurture inside ourselves transform into monsters that harm us.

I coined this term because I could find no other way to describe myself. I understand everyone. I place myself in everyone’s shoes. But after a while, I feel as though I have no place of my own. My needs come last. While grieving for others, I realized I had forgotten how to laugh for myself—and one day, I found the courage to stop doing this. It was then that I recognized how much damage it had caused me. I could find no better analogy for this condition—where I had neglected myself in the name of empathy—than a monster. And so the empathy monster was born.

• Emotional Exhaustion: Constantly carrying the emotions of others drains a person’s energy. (As in my case, where one’s own feelings are essentially suppressed.)
• Loss of Boundaries: It becomes unclear where “you” end and “I” begin.
• Inability to Decide: Seeing every perspective can sometimes paralyze you.
• Vulnerability to Manipulation: Empathy can be exploited by others. The more understanding you are, the more they push your limits.

Yes. Empathy is understanding another person without losing yourself. It is not about erasing yourself, but about seeing the other person alongside yourself. True empathy is not taking on another’s pain—it is being able to stand with them in it.

Empathy is a human virtue. But too much of it—especially when you forget to extend empathy to yourself—will consume you. Being an empathy monster may seem noble; but remember: Even monsters get tired, especially if they are empathy monsters...