I sat staring at the computer screen. It was an empty page to begin typing todays\nblog onscreen and I sat watching the curser blinking at me. I thought to myself \u201cWhat can I write about\ntoday?\u201d\u2026several more minutes went by as I just staring at the screen\u2026.that\u2019s\nwhen I realized \u201cI got nothin\u2019\u201d\u2026My mind was blank\u2026I was emotionally and physically\nexhausted…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not that I\u2019ve pushed myself any harder than usual \u2013\nheck all I\u2019ve ever done is push myself –\nso I should be used to that life by now! I think the exhaustion stems from having\nseveral of my friends going through really hard things all at the same time\nright now. These last few weeks I\u2019ve had\nseveral friends dealing with not just small heartaches, but major ones, the\nkind of heartaches that break my heart to hear about. And when my friends or family hurt, I hurt. But I wasn\u2019t the one going through the hard\nthing so why was it impacting me to the point of feeling emotionally exhausted? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an article written by Jordan Rosenfeld it explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are real consequences to caring deeply for the\nstruggles of others. After all, when you empathize, you do more than just feel\nconcern; it\u2019s not uncommon for an empathizing person to \u201ctake on the sensory,\nmotor, visceral, and affective states\u201d of another, known as experience sharing<\/a>, according to Jamil Zaki, a social scientist at Stanford. In\na study about empathy, Zaki uses the example of a crowd watching a tightrope\nwalker becoming physically tense, anxious, even sweaty, as they watch the\nperson teeter high above them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I suppose I never thought about it that way before but it\nmakes sense. And it highlights something\nI am going to start calling \u201cThe Put Your Oxygen Mask On First Before Helping Others\nPrinciple\u201d. If we aren\u2019t careful to take\ntime to allow ourselves to decompress we just won\u2019t be able to be of much help\nto anyone else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So let me suggest something \u2013 pretend we are on a plane and the stewardess is telling us to go ahead and put our oxygen masks on\u2026maybe take the weekend to do that and take a deep breathe in\u2026so next week we can feel strong enough to help others\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n