Real Kato Blog: I Feel Your Pain

It's not that I have any supernatural abilities, like that girl Gem in that episode of the original Star Trek series. (Boy, is THAT a geeky reference, or what?) What I mean is, I can usually tell what other people are feeling. What's more, I internalize their emotions, even when I don't mean to. If someone around me is unhappy or upset, it genuinely makes me unhappy or upset too.

I find that this effect occurs even if the person is only someone I know via the Internet, and that person lives in a far-away place like Houston, Nashville, or Royal Oak Michigan.

The strongest feeling I get is that I want to help people somehow. I want to do something. If I could just soak up all their pain and make it go away, I would. Sometimes I think I could be a good counselor, IF those people happened to decide to put their faith in someone they'd never met and have absolutely no reason to believe in.

And that's the rub, right? I have no credentials, nothing to make anyone believe that I would have anything useful to say. Because of that, there are many times I think about dropping this engineering career, so I can go back to school and earn degrees in psychiatry and social work. But then again, Dr. Phil doesn't have any real credentials either, and look how many people trust him? Maybe I just need to land an appearance on Oprah.

All I can offer people is this: I honestly do feel your pain, and because of that, I can see your perspective. I can understand. I can listen. And, I can give advice. I don't mean the stupid kind of advice where people tell you what do you with your life. I mean, I can provide strategies on how to understand why you feel the way you do, and on how to cope with those feelings. Sometimes there aren't any easy ways around the things that cause us trouble in our lives. But we can find ways to deal with them.

If not... there's always good old booze to wash away our troubles.

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