In an earlier post, I created an hypothesis: That some people can almost literally feel what you feel; that the ability to empathize exists in a wide range, and people at the top are bombarded with emotions sucked off other people. (See Could biology impact political views?)

I think I’m one of these emotional vampires. While all three of my kids empathize greatly, I believe one daughter has also tipped over into my emotion-sucking world. I have a few friends in the same mold.

The following is an instruction manual. It’s for the CEOs and lower empathizers who just don’t understand how we feel because, well, they don’t empathize well.

Oddly, I know how low-empathizers feel for the opposite reason – plus as a business writer, I’ve rubbed elbows with a lot of non-empathizers. (During the last economic downturn, one CEO organizing massive layoffs said, “No use wasting a good recession.” He then fired 20 percent of the workforce.)

So you low-empathizers, here’s how we think:

1. We tend to be introverts, which is not the same as shy. In a room of 30 people, at least one person went through a recent trauma, whether it’s illness, a family death or something else. We can’t talk to them without emotionally sharing that loss.

2. People who just went through a trauma find us. They always find us. They tell us their tragic story; we immediately understand what they’re feeling. They sense a comrade in arms; we make them feel better because they’ve shared their load. We even like feeling that we’ve helped. And then we go home and spend two days shaking it off.

3. We value life. Empathize often enough and you get it: Everyone’s going through terrible things and everyone wants to be happy. Many people have long-standing struggles thanks to bizarre parents or mental glitches or bad luck. We don’t judge people, but it’s not because we’re wonderful human beings. We’ve just felt so many troubles that categorizing is too much work.

4. We tend to think everyone can be saved if they had the right kind of help. And even if they can’t get the right kind of help, we hold out hope for change in some distant, undefined future. James Holmes killed 12 people in Aurora, Colorado, and we imagine the awful pain felt by the victims’ families. But we also imagine the struggle Holmes is going through, and we wonder if he could be saved – if his mental illness could be improved through therapy and drugs. We want him off the streets ­­– empathy for one person doesn’t lessen empathy for others – but we feel for everyone.

4. We can’t make up our minds. If an argument is based on logic, we’re good. There’s no intelligence difference in the over-empathizer ranks. We’ve got our stupid people and our smart people. But if an issue involves emotions, we waffle. Outside a religious opinion, we feel for women considering an abortion; we feel for fathers who must accept a superfluous role in the decision; we feel for the pre-baby that becomes a human life sometime before the ninth month; we feel for the true anti-abortion believers.

5. We love to visit happy places. It embarrasses me to say that I love to go to Disney World, and my kids are too old to use an excuse. But I sponge off the happy people. I also love going to the airport, providing it’s the “welcome home” gate rather than the “My God, I’m going to miss you” gate.

6. We tend to fight for human rights but hate doing it. You can’t see inside everyone without valuing everyone. And while some over-empathizers may focus on a single issue, such as racism or gay rights, over-empathizers are generally “We are the world” people who want to see hate banished from society. But actually standing up and fighting hateful people to do that? Not so easy.

7. We need to be alone. Or, alternately, we need another person to leave us alone when we’re in the same room. We need to shake off the world’s feelings sometimes – many times.

8. On occasion, we appear callous and uncaring. It sounds contradictory, but imagine a runner sprains his ankle and the doctor says he must wait three weeks to run again. Three weeks later he could participate in a planned weekend marathon, but he chooses not to “just in case.” He stays on the safe side. Same with drained over-empathizers. On occasion, we don’t help because our battery hasn’t recharged, and we don’t have the energy to share your emotions.

9. More than anything, we don’t understand hate. We get frustration, anger and depression. But actual hate? It doesn’t come from us, and we believe, perhaps naively, that we’re all in this together.

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