self harm

It's no secret that I'm weird.
It's a shame (I guess) that we're never able to truly understand how different or similar we are from other people, since we can never experience the inner workings of another person. We only know how we feel.
From an early age I've had a problem. A problem that I used to loathe and railed against with all my might in my teenage years. I fought to deaden myself, to feel nothing, to shut it all off... because the truth was, and is, I feel a lot. I mean, A LOT. Probably too much. And almost definitely an unnatural amount.
I know I've written of it before, but I'll always remember the first moment I realized that I my feelings were not only my own.
I feel other people's anger, and (especially) anxiety. Sometimes headaches. Other body aches.
In talking with a friend this evening and my therapist Monday night, I explained that I have a problem with emotional individuation. Perhaps it's because of these things mentioned above. I have difficulty seeing the difference between my own feelings, as far as worth/relevance/intensity, and the feelings (or circumstances) of others. My therapist pointed out that it's part of the reason, actually a large part, of why I donated a kidney. I didn't see the difference between the suffering of a stranger and my own. "No, it wasn't happening to you," she said, "But it could. And that effects you just as much."
There are things that I have never experienced myself, but I have an extraordinarily strong, negative, emotional response to them. The two biggest things are rape/sexual abuse and infidelity. Two things I have thankfully never experienced first hand. But seeing these experiences through those around me effects me more intensely than I think a first-hand experience actually would.
Sometimes the experiences of others, particularly of people I love, affect me far more than my own. It's likely because I've spent most of my life having a far easier time having compassion for others than for myself.
Most of us are better at giving advice to others than following the same good advice ourselves. I have spent many years feeling love for others that I did not have for myself. Today this is no longer the case, but there are still some Swiss-cheese holes in my emotional landscape. Poverty of things I just cannot experience for myself.
My over-identification with the problems/feelings/hurts/bad decisions/risks of others is a problem. It is one of the worst (and best) things about me. I find it difficult to explain in a way that is easily understandable to everyone, because it's not at all like what I think is "normal." Feelings sometimes rip through me. Feelings that are not even my own, situations that are not even my own, harm me. Hold me hostage. And because there appears to be little chance of my turning this off (though it has lessened, and drastically in the past three months- save for those two areas), my only means of protection is distance.
I cannot stop energies and emotions and fears and loves and angers and devastations from moving through as they please. From coming into me, wrapping fiery hands around my entrails, grinding my teeth and slamming me against walls. It sounds, I know, like something I could control, right? With education or self-care or awareness or perspective or perhaps maturity? Some of it is I'm sure. But some of it is, sadly, me. It's hardwired in the truest sense. It has likely been a defense mechanism, it has been my saving grace, it is the pool inside me from which any goodness springs.
But it is painful. And it is volatile. That warm spring might be dried, turned icy or boiling, or spew volcanic ash at a feather's touch. I have done much study about the parts of me that are learned, changeable, and the parts of me that just "are." The things I must accept and work with instead of against.
I can only control what I expose myself to.