Your most important skill: Empathy
This sentence stood out for me:<p>> The reason crowds of people exhaust me is that I am constantly trying to read and understand the feelings and motivations of those around me.<p>To me, this is a symptom of a poor Theory of Mind, or a conflict between the consciously held theory of mind and the internalized one. For the author, it looks like that latter -- he's exhausted because he has to consciously re-process his perceptions of others, perceptions which his internal ToM has already processed but has output conclusions that he might not consider acceptable (which implies a mismatch between the two ToMs).<p>What he's suggesting as a solution, in my opinion, is an attempt to suppress the symptoms, when the problem is the ToM. The correct way -- or at least the way that worked for me -- is to learn to see other human beings as different versions of myself, with different experiences and neurological makeup. In order to understand a person's behavior, especially negative behavior, I try to first imagine a situation where <i>I</i> would behave in a similar manner (e.g. the boss just yelled at me; I could conclude he is an asshole, or I could try to imagine a situation where I have yelled at someone in my team). Then I try to remember my state of mind from a similar past situation. Then I imagine the other person being under the influence of those same emotions. Suddenly it is easier to understand the person's behavior (but not <i>justify</i> it). Sometimes I ask myself "Had I been born with the same type of central nervous system, had I gone through the same experiences as this person and if I were in this person's situation right now, would I not be behaving in an <i>identical</i> manner?"<p>To oversimplify: empathy starts with a habit of stepping into other people's shoes. The other habits will follow.<p>I have a favorite saying:<p><i>Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner</i><p>(French, meaning "To understand all, is to forgive all")