Ok, sorry but I have to just go ahead and say it: what's with all of this "empath" stuff?

Healthy human beings experience what some seem to think is an extraordinary marked phenomenon called "empathy". In fact, having empathy is SO typical that if you do NOT show the capacity for empathy towards others that is a diagnostic symptom of several cluster B personality disorders such as BPD, NPD, and sociopathy.

So please explain to me why there are people who walk around thinking that their capacity to have empathy for others, to feel by proxy emotions when intense things are shared with them, to be impacted by it, to "sense" the emotional weight that others carry (this "sense" is called perception and... EMPATHY)... is an extraordinary superpower that makes them unique and fairy-like and requiring a lot of extra-special woo-woo things like "extra self-care" and "spiritual protection"? Is your capacity to feel empathy somehow more glorious than the next person's? Every one of us has these feelings!

Literally, anyone who isn't a sociopath or who does not suffer from severe psychological disorder is an "empath" then - so please... let's reel it in. There ARE a lot of things about you that probably make you unique and special, but the capacity to feel empathy is part of being a typically abled human.

So when and where did this "I am an empath, I have extraordinary feelings and needs" thing come from? What am I missing? It seems silly to me.