Your Most Important Skill: Empathy
I'm sure this will get buried at this point, but I have experienced very negative side effects from my ability to empathize with people. Theres a term (which I find silly) that categorizes people as 'empaths' which I gathered means one can almost "link" emotionally with people. While I fid the term silly, i have experienced almost crippling emotional pain when someone close to me is hurting. I hate it, I wish it would go away.<p>My one friend, brilliant engineer. Has brain cancer. I sit a desk away from him. When he is upset, I can hardly function. My ex-SO, when upset, I can feel the anger and sadness. It destroys me to feel that someone feels that way toward me. Its truly awful and I wish this didn't happen to me. My siblings growing up, I was able to (and I'm not proud of this at all) basically manipulate them into doing whatever I wanted, because I was able to understand how they felt.<p>People tell me all the time "you're such  likeable person, everyone likes you. That'll take you far." My boss said it not a month ago, which took me by surprise, as I don't care for my boss at all.<p>I wish there was a spectrum opposite the autism spectrum. I don't think I am at all unique in this, and I wish I could talk to others experiencing the same kinds of things.