I still don’t want to take up much space, but I am also not allowing others to take up so much of mine.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean this in a bad way. But at the ripe age of 43, I feel, for the first time, that literally — your problems are not my problems.
I was raised well — to be a decent and empathetic person who feels for others and cares about them. But it is only now that I am allowing myself not to be sucked into other people’s lives. And I actually had to look up whether empathetic was the word that best described my current situation:
empathetic
/ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/
Being empathetic means you have the ability to understand, share, and vicariously experience the feelings and emotions of others. It goes beyond sympathy by allowing you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and genuinely feel what they are experiencing from their perspective.
And yeah — that’s exactly it.
Not all of it is 100% me. I don’t always understand other people’s feelings all too well, but that’s another topic entirely — probably with my social anxiety playing a role there. I’m often just too nervous to see others’ feelings clearly. But give me a one-on-one conversation with my friends and I go all in.
So the last part of the definition is painfully familiar to me — I genuinely feel that I have an obligation to sympathize with whomever I am speaking to, and somehow I make their problem mine.
Here, I will give you some real-life examples.
A friend is thinking of having another baby and is already worrying about how hard things might become — how to manage work, an older child and a baby, feeling afraid of the sleepless nights and all of that.
My sister is having trouble with the contractors they hired to work on their house and might actually end up in a very expensive legal battle.
A friend of mine had a rough year returning to work after staying home with kids for seven years, dealing with problems she had not anticipated, losing her grandmother just a month ago, and preparing for her older child to start school in a few months.
Another friend’s dad is battling cancer.
Not unique problems, I imagine — something similar has probably happened to many of you reading this. And yet, so very difficult when these things happen to you. Living is not for the faint-hearted, right?
For years, these kinds of conversations stayed with me long after they ended and became like a background noise in my own head.
The Hidden Weight of Expectations
I see many people going through life with a sense of entitlement. You know the confident type who seems to say, I belong here and I take up as much space as I need to? How does one become like this? Is it parenting? I mean, I read a lot about parenting and yes, I suppose if that is what you want your child to be like, you could consciously encourage it. But has it really been such a deliberate choice by parents? I doubt it. So is it innate? Are people just born with it?
Well, I certainly wasn’t.
I am oddly conscious of small things, and I genuinely feel that my emotions, feelings and problems shouldn’t take up much space. I guess that is something to discuss with my therapist, but that’s how it is. So the fact that now, in my 40s, I can actually feel myself distancing from other people’s dramas and problems is huge for me.
I still don’t want to take up much space, but I am also not allowing others to take up so much of mine.
And the miraculous thing is that it sort of just happened. Well, not just like this, and certainly not easily. I guess it is really a result of years of thought processes, paying attention to patterns and becoming more aware of what is happening in other people’s lives — and in mine.
Maybe that is what growing older is doing for me. Not making me colder. Not less caring. Not suddenly indifferent. Just more aware of where I end and where somebody else begins.
Finding Balance and Letting Go
I still care deeply. I still listen, worry and feel. But I am slowly learning that caring for someone does not require carrying their life on my shoulders. That sympathy does not have to become ownership.
And perhaps this is what healthy empathy looks like — caring deeply without carrying everything. Your pain can be real. Your struggle can matter enormously. I can sit beside you in it, even ache for you. But I no longer feel responsible for holding it all together or taking it into myself.
And that realization feels incredibly freeing.
For so long, I was barely hanging on, carrying emotions that were never fully mine and mistaking that weight for compassion. Now, something feels different. Lighter. I feel more grounded, more mature, and honestly, more human.
There is relief in knowing I can care without losing myself. That I can stay connected without becoming overwhelmed.