This is a copy of the newsletter that was sent out on December 12th, 2025.
Do you remember the character John Coffey in the movie The Green Mile?
He was the giant inmate who could miraculously heal people by sucking the disease and pain right out of their bodies. He took their suffering into himself. He physically absorbed it to save them. It was a miracle, but it came at a terrible price. It drained him. It agonized him.
I suspect you are doing the exact same thing. Only you are doing it without the movie magic, and worse—you are doing it without even knowing it.
Therapists and coaches. Trainers. We tend to view ourselves as highly empathetic people.
Like me since high school, you are likely the friend everyone calls when they need to talk deeply. They call you when they need to be vulnerable without risk. They call when they need to pull themselves out of an emotional storm. They call to vent. They come to you for crucial personal advice.
It is not just friends. Even strangers you just met on a train or during a long flight open up to you immediately. There is something about you that invites safety. It invites absolute trust.
You call this a “gift.”
You pride yourself on your ability to hold “safe space” for others.
You likely consider yourself an “empath” or a highly sensitive person.
You have high morals and solid ethics. You would never abuse a friend’s trust. You would never mock their weaknesses.
You consider this magnetic empathy a virtue.
I want to challenge that definition.
Do people trust you blindly? Do they unconsciously gravitate toward you because they sense you are hurting more than they are? Does that damage make you feel “safe” to them?
Do they actually follow your advice? Have you simply become a dumping ground for the emotional content they need to purge?
The distinction is critical. The answer usually depends on one piece of data. Were you traumatized in your past?
Forget the Hollywood definition of trauma. We aren’t talking about horror stories or dramatic abuse.
Trauma can be subtle. It is often avoidance. It is being ignored by the people who mattered most to you as a child. When someone you blindly trusted hurt you, even if that hurt seems small to your older, wiser self, it created a dent in your psyche.
Think about hurtful words. Think about ridicule. Remember the dismissive attitudes. For a premature developing psyche, those “minor” incidents are traumatic experiences.
Remember the times you were laughed at by the very people supposed to protect you. Maybe you shared a fear and were met with cold sarcasm. Maybe you were told you were “too sensitive” or “too dramatic” so often that you started apologizing for existing. These moments install a program that runs in the background for decades. It hides in the deep structures of your psyche. It dictates a rule that your feelings are a burden to everyone around you. You become hyper-aware of other people’s pain while remaining completely blind to your own.
For many of us, this outbound hyper-awareness functions as a survival mechanism that never turned off.
The primary function of this skill was self-protection. The “better person” narrative was just the cover story. It was the excuse you had for procrastinating dealing with your own emotional storms.
Your nervous system drives this reaction. Your amygdala learned a long time ago that if you can regulate their emotions, you will be safe. You try to regulate other people’s emotions so your own internal alarm will stop ringing.
You learned to be for others the person you desperately needed for yourself. You became the listener. You became the designated “shock absorber” for any kind of emotional outbursts.
Decades later, you are no longer that helpless child. Your nervous system continues to run the same “surveillance software”. You automatically scan every person you meet for potential threats. When that stranger on the train starts dumping their anxiety onto you, your body registers a potential threat. Your cortisol spikes and your muscles tense. You feel a compulsion to “fix” them immediately.
Just like John Coffey, you absorb their stress physically. But unlike him, you are not doing it on purpose. You are running an unconscious program.
You cannot stop yourself from performing the empathetic role you perfected years ago. This persona has become your entire identity. It is the primary value you offer to others. Do you still see this as a “gift”?
This magnetism protects you. It also damages you. The empathy you unconsciously offer gets used. You feel proud of being a “good friend” yet you are often left depleted.
Take another look at the people who are “magnetized” by your empathy.
If you weren’t willing to spend two hours listening to venting, or if you stopped investing massive energy into offering reassurance that is never acted upon, would they still be your friends? Would they still want you around? Would they still pay attention to you? Would they still give you a sense of belonging, of being “safe” from potential ridicule or abuse?
Pay attention to how you feel after these intense interactions. You might leave a conversation feeling you’ve exhausted them. You might have the eerie feeling that you spoke too much. That is a clue. That is you being a puppet of your past. You merge with their pain because the boundary between where you end and they begin feels nonexistent. That is your survival mechanism controlling you.
There is nothing wrong with listening to a friend in trouble. It is a virtue. You are a good person.
But consider the biological and psychological costs. This cycle mimics a sugar addiction.
When you absorb their emotions (which happens unconsciously), you get a quick spike of validation. You feel useful. You feel needed. You feel a “high” because you saved the moment.
Then comes the inevitable crash, and since it happens later in your day or week, you do not make the connection to the real source.
The cortisol you surged to handle their crisis lingers in your bloodstream. It creates systemic inflammation. It depletes your adrenals. You physically metabolized their stress to stabilize them. Now that toxicity circulates in your own system. This is a tangible biochemical event. It is cumulative biological damage you inflict on yourself. And you have repeated this cycle thousands of times since you accepted the role of “the advisor”.
John Coffey suffered because he chose to heal people. You are suffering because your nervous system runs as if it has no other choice.
True empathy, the kind that actually heals and builds strong rapport, requires emotional separation. This separation is the consequence of disintegrating your trauma. That is how you truly help people.
You remain on solid ground and throw them a rope. You don’t jump into the hole to give them a boost!
If you are ready to retrain your nervous system to observe without absorbing, we should talk.
I hope that’s helpful.
Have a wonderful weekend
Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht