Beware of people who say they are "highly empathetic".

That sentence will offend some people, so let me be precise about what it means.

Many people who describe themselves as highly empathetic are not especially skilled at understanding other people. They are emotionally permeable. Other people’s emotions flood into them, overwhelm them, and destabilize them. They then interpret that overwhelm as empathy.

That experience has a name. It is emotional contagion.

Empathy and emotional contagion are different capacities.

Empathy is the ability to accurately perceive another person’s emotional state while remaining internally regulated. You can feel what is relevant, understand what is happening, and still think, choose, and act with clarity.

Emotional contagion is the loss of that boundary. Another person’s emotional state becomes your emotional state. Agency drops. Judgment narrows. The interaction becomes about managing your own discomfort rather than helping the other person.

This does not make someone bad or malicious. In most cases, it reflects a failure of training.

Very few people are taught emotional containment. Very few people are taught how to regulate their nervous system under emotional load. Popular culture praises emotional openness while ignoring emotional discipline. Sensitivity is encouraged. Containment is neglected.

Both are required.

You can train empathy. You can train emotional regulation. You must train both if you want to be useful to others in emotionally charged situations.

Unregulated sensitivity creates burnout, confusion, and manipulation risk. Regulated empathy creates clarity, proportion, and real help.

So do not reject empathy. Learn to discriminate.

Look for people whose presence stabilizes situations rather than amplifying them. Look for those who can understand emotion without being ruled by it. That is productive empathy.