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I think was overly empathetic for a while in my life.

Personally, I think humility is a prerequisite to being a truly empathic person.

I cry a lot when I feel empathy. I can feel heartbroken by life, and I cry quite easily, sometimes for no reason. It's healthy, I think.

Neuroscience has proven that similar areas of the brain are activated both in the person who suffers and in the one who feels empathy. Thus, empathic suffering is a true experience of suffering.

Although I'm not particularly troubled myself, I do have a lot of empathy for troubled characters.

I don't have sociopathic tendencies!

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

My own life was filled with so much love and joy that when depression struck, it was like a prison door slamming shut and I was being placed in an isolation cell. No one else could possibly be feeling what I was. I hated my depression and all of its symptoms.

I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.