Blood Sucking Silkworms

I was born with a lot of empathy but also a well-developed self-centred streak.

Plenty of opportunity for dissonance there.

Reconciling the two has often meant just avoiding issues rather than dealing with them.

Avoiding them upfront, or after the fact. One or the other, and sometimes both.

I still sometimes practice avoidance, but at least now I make sure I am the primary beneficiary of any such tactics.

Now I am also well-practised in the art of doing nothing, waiting.

This is different from avoidance. It’s a tactic to make the other party act first.

I use it when I am not sure of my assumptions, usually due to a lack of data, not a lack of insight.

I learned this approach first in business, but it turns out that it’s a corker much of the time.

The implied issues herein only exist because of those people that are looking for high-functioning empaths to exploit; they have vampire-like noses for the blood of us faeries.

One has to spot them and avoid them.

And if one is unlucky enough to be entangled with one then one has to be practised in the art of doing nothing.

Zenning away one’s empathy is also key.

Look at that, I made a verb out of Zen!