Poetic Focus™ — Entry 16: I Still Want to Take Everybody Home 🛒

Empathy can be an extraordinary asset.

Unstructured empathy can eat you alive.

This reflection shows you nine practices that aren’t defensive rules for a fragile person. They’re the operating structure that allows a powerful trait to become an asset rather than a liability.

I am so happy and grateful that I’m realizing that the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is be authentically me.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have to please no one?

I have.

Because I’m a recovering people pleaser.

I lived most of my life trying to please other people before myself.

And even now, inward self-fulfillment can somehow feel sinful.

I wonder sometimes if that’s where the paradigm began for me—in those early Sunday school lessons of sin.

I don’t know.

But somewhere along the way it became ingrained in me to do nothing out of selfish ambition.

That selfish motives hinder a person’s connection with God.

That we are supposed to serve.

Think of ourselves less.

Treat other people’s needs as important as our own.

Love.

Be patient.

Be kind.

Build up our neighbors rather than demanding our own way.

Those aren’t necessarily bad teachings.

But I have had to look again at what happens when those teachings land on a person who is already predisposed to disappear into everybody else.

Because I think by nature I am an empath—a person who effortlessly and almost instantly, without much defense against it, absorbs the emotions, energy, and sometimes even the physical sensations of other people as if they were my own.

Really take that in.

Imagine walking into a dinner party where there are six guests.

And without defense—without a shield of armor, so to speak—the feelings of five other people come smashing into your body.

Mind.

Body.

Spirit.

You feel them.

You don’t necessarily know the story.

But you can tell Jenny over here is worried about something despite her smile.

Raul over here is wound up about something, about ready to burst with anger but suppressing it for the sake of the party.

Cathy is elated.

Just bubbling with joy.

And Bob is happy he has an audience.

He’s been anticipating the event.

Maybe he has a few new jokes to tell and can’t wait.

🤣

Imagine all of that emotional energy in its various forms colliding inside you like waves hitting a fault line.

And then imagine that, on top of that, you’re a people pleaser.

Someone who has also been taught that goodness means serving others, thinking of yourself less, being loving, patient, kind, and not demanding your own way.

For someone already wired to absorb everyone else, those teachings can make putting yourself first feel not just uncomfortable—

but wrong.

For a long time, that’s how it felt to me.

I walked around assessing what everybody else needed.

And I had been doing it for a very long time.

My mother tells this story about when I was little.

I was small enough to still sit in the front of the grocery cart.

A baby started crying on the aisle over.

Mom says I was crushed.

My heart sank.

And I said:

“Mom, we have to go get her and take her home.”

That little girl is still in me.

Somebody hurts?

Go get them.

Somebody is afraid?

Help them.

Somebody is uncomfortable?

Fix it.

Somebody is disappointed?

Make it better.

Somebody needs something?

Figure out what it is before they even have to ask.

And for a long time, I thought the answer was to become even better at doing that.

More loving.

More giving.

More available.

More selfless.

But I’ve had to look again.

Maybe the little girl in the grocery cart did not need another lesson in selflessness.

Maybe she needed someone to teach her how to defend herself.

How to remain inside herself while somebody else was hurting.

How to feel another person’s pain without automatically making it her responsibility.

How to let someone be disappointed.

How to know where somebody else ended and she began.

How to hear the baby crying—

and remain in the cart.

And let me be very clear about something.

I do not wish that little girl away.

Empathy is a gift.

It has helped me build an extraordinary life.

It has helped me build wealth.

I became a phenomenal realtor for people in duress because of it.

People facing foreclosure.

Short sales.

Death.

Divorce.

Financial problems.

Major life changes.

Situations where the real estate transaction sitting on the table was often the LEAST emotional thing happening in the room.

I could feel what people were carrying.

I could hear what they weren’t saying.

I could recognize fear underneath anger.

Shame underneath avoidance.

Panic underneath indecision.

And I could help people move through something that felt impossible to them.

That is a gift.

I don’t want to lose it.

The little girl who wanted to take the crying baby home grew up and learned how to sit beside people when their lives were falling apart.

That has served me.

It has served them.

And it has helped me build a great life.

The problem was never empathy.

The problem was having no structure around it.

Because a gift without boundaries can consume the person carrying it.

I do not need to learn how to stop feeling.

I need to know where I end.

I need to know when empathy is information—and when I have turned that information into an obligation.

I need to know when something belongs to me and when it doesn’t.

I need to know how to use the gift without giving myself away.

And that has required me to look differently at some of the religious dogma I absorbed too.

Because what happens when teachings about selflessness and sacrifice land on a little girl who already wants to rescue a stranger’s crying baby from the grocery store?

She doesn’t need much encouragement.

🤣

I have had to read the text for myself.

Think for myself.

Question for myself.

I have had to separate my relationship with God from my instinct to please human beings.

Church and sermons are designed to move people emotionally.

And for someone like me, that matters.

Emotion gets in.

So I have had to learn to ask:

What do I believe?

What do I think this means?

What belongs to God?

What belongs to somebody else’s interpretation?

And what belongs to me?

Because deciding and determining what I need for myself is 100% my responsibility.

And guess what?

Everybody will give me that responsibility.

No one is concerning themselves with whether or not I am standing on the fault line and the wave is coming.

Jenny is living Jenny’s life.

Raul is living Raul’s.

Cathy is inside Cathy’s joy.

Bob is waiting to tell his joke.

🤣

They are experiencing their own worlds from their own perspectives.

Meanwhile, I can be carrying the emotional weather report for the entire room.

That is a lot of work.

And then I have to ask:

What are mine?

Which feelings actually belong to me?

What is authentically me?

How do I feel about being here?

Do I reassure Jenny?

Console Raul?

Engage with Cathy?

Laugh at Bob’s jokes?

Do I actually want to do those things?

Or am I doing them because I can feel what everybody needs and I have spent a lifetime believing it is my responsibility to give it to them?

Because as a people pleaser, that’s what you do.

And it never turns off.

So selfishness, my friends, is survival for some of us.

Yes.

I said selfishness.

Call it something different if selfishness is a sin for you.

But I have had to learn how to FIRST care about my own needs, wishes, and well-being before automatically responding to everybody else.

And after a lifetime of trial and error—

mostly error—

I have built structures around the gift.

These are nine of them.

One. I do not watch the news.

Because I want to take everybody home.

The burdens of the world fall on my heart like the ache of the loss of a child.

War.

Children suffering.

Animals suffering.

Families grieving.

Catastrophe after catastrophe.

I cannot carry all of that every day and function well.

My knowing about every terrible thing happening in every corner of the world does not automatically make me more useful.

Sometimes it simply makes me unable to function.

So I protect the door.

Two. Groups steal my energy. Solitude energizes me.

That’s okay.

I love people.

I’m good in public.

I communicate well.

I can stand on a stage.

I can walk into a room full of strangers and participate fully.

And still walk out feeling like somebody unplugged me from the wall.

The concert may not be my thing.

The football stadium may not be my thing.

The giant gathering may not be my thing.

It is okay to decide not to participate.

I don’t have to prove I love people by exhausting myself around them.

Three. Anticipate the pain of disappointing other people.

When you say you’re not going, there may be pushback.

“Oh, come on.”

“We really want you there.”

“You never come anymore.”

“We missed you.”

If you are wired like me, every one of those sentences can hurt.

Anticipate it.

They will have a good time without you.

They will be okay.

And when they tell you later that they missed you, that may hurt too.

You do not have to fix that feeling.

You can simply say:

“I know.”

Four. Create an emotional environment on purpose.

I have playlists filled with music that speaks to my ideal mood.

Not hate.

Not broken hearts.

Not calamity.

Not drunkenness.

Not despair piped directly into my brain over and over again.

I know that what I consume affects me.

So I choose it intentionally.

Five. Defend your spiritual life.

Read the text for yourself.

Think.

Question.

Decide what you believe.

I have had to look again at teachings I absorbed as a child and ask what they created inside someone who was already predisposed to put everybody else first.

My spiritual relationship is between me and God.

It cannot depend entirely on pleasing or conforming to the desires, interpretations, or emotional needs of another human being.

Six. Be selfish.

Yes.

Be selfish.

If you are wired anything like me, you may not be in enormous danger of suddenly becoming incapable of caring about other people.

🤣

You are going to absorb.

You are going to empathize.

You are going to notice.

You are going to care.

The baby is going to cry on aisle seven and some part of you is ALWAYS going to want to take her home.

That part does not need more training.

But if you add a people-pleasing mentality on top of that without FIRST caring about your own needs, wishes, and advantages—

you are doomed.

Everybody else will get considered automatically.

The person who disappears is you.

Seven. Take time alone to figure out what is really yours and what has been absorbed from outside yourself.

I do it now with meditation.

Journaling.

Long walks on wooded trails.

I ask:

What am I actually feeling?

What did I bring into this room?

What changed after I walked into it?

What belongs to Jenny?

What belongs to Raul?

What belongs to Cathy?

What belongs to Bob?

And underneath all of that—

what belongs to me?

Sometimes I have to get far enough away from everybody else before I can hear the answer.

Eight. Schedule alone time.

Block the calendar.

Know that the pleaser in you will still feel the pull of the group.

You will think:

They need me.

They want me there.

I should go.

They’ll be disappointed.

But they do not need you nearly as much as you think they do.

They may want you.

They may love you.

They may genuinely miss you.

But they will be okay without you.

And you have to learn to be okay with that too.

Nine. Listen—but do not automatically act.

This may be the hardest one you’re going to have to learn.

People often need to be heard more than they need to be rescued.

If you are empathetic, listening can feel like a call to action.

Someone tells you they’re hurting and immediately your mind starts asking:

What can I do?

Who do I call?

How do I fix this?

How do I make this better?

Stop.

Listen.

Empathize.

Let them finish.

And then remember that hearing someone’s pain does not make it your assignment.

Sometimes the gift you have already given is enough.

You listened.

You understood.

You made another human being feel seen.

That is not doing nothing.

That is doing something enormously valuable.

Learn that the gift of listening and empathizing can be enough.

And unless someone is actually asking for your help—or the situation genuinely requires your action—you do not have to turn every emotion you encounter into a problem you are responsible for solving.

Hear the baby crying and remain in the cart.

These nine practices are not about making me less empathetic.

They are what allow me to KEEP the empathy.

To use it.

To build with it.

To make money with it.

To help people with it.

To sit across from somebody whose life is falling apart and say, in one form or another:

I can see what is happening here.

Let’s figure out what to do next.

That is powerful.

But I cannot do that work well if I am carrying everybody home with me.

I am so happy and grateful that I am learning to be authentically me.

And discovering that it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Because it is so much easier for me to become consumed with everyone else.

To read the room.

Absorb the emotions.

Anticipate the need.

Prevent disappointment.

Fix the problem.

Take the crying baby home.

That is the easy part for me.

The harder lesson has been learning to ask:

What do I need?

I have literally had to train myself to ask the question.

And then—

this is the important part—

answer it.

Before Jenny.

Before Raul.

Before Cathy.

Before Bob.

Before the crying baby.

Before the person who might be disappointed.

Before the person who wants more of me.

Before the teachings I absorbed as a child tell me that putting myself first is selfish.

What do I need?

And then answer it.

Because I am going to consider the feelings and well-being of other people by default.

That part of me does not need cultivating.

The harder lesson is to train myself to be selfish enough to remain in my own life.

And if you recognize yourself in that little girl in the grocery cart, I am talking to you.

I’m not telling you to become less loving.

Less sensitive.

Less compassionate.

I am telling you that what you may have spent your life believing was a weakness could be one of your greatest assets.

You can use it to help people.

You can use it to build relationships.

You can use it to build a business.

You can use it to build wealth.

You can use it to build an extraordinary life.

But you have to build structure around it.

You have to know yourself well enough to know what belongs to you.

You have to defend the gift so the gift does not consume you.

You have to learn how to care without disappearing.

I still want to take everybody home.

I probably always will.

I just finally understand that I have to take care of the little girl in the cart too.

Wake up.

Build anyway.