One of the harder things I have been learning is that my compassion for other people has often come at the cost of compassion for myself.
I can understand why someone withdraws. I can trace their avoidance back to childhood, fear, shame, emotional neglect, or a nervous system that perceives vulnerability like a crime scene to tiptoe around. I have learned about myself and I can recognize that someone was never taught how to communicate, repair, apologize, or remain present when a relationship asks something difficult of them. Sometimes I can see it so clearly that I start explaining their behavior to myself before I have even admitted how much it hurt me.
This is one of the strange liabilities of being highly empathetic. A blessing and a curse is what I always say. You can become so fluent in everyone else’s emotional language that you stop speaking your own. You notice the wound underneath their defensiveness. Or the fear underneath their silence. Maybe you understand that the person w…