You ask everyone how they’re doing, and they hand you the weight of their day, their grief and stress alongside their problems and disappointments.
You listen, absorb it and your body carries it without you even realizing it.
Because where are you supposed to put all of that when the conversation is over?
That’s the part people don’t talk about enough. Toxic empathy can look like constantly making room for everyone else’s emotional world while barely checking what all that weight is doing to your own.