Yet another rabbit hole
Empathy is, amidst other things, the ability to understand and experience the feelings of others.
But get this; some especially empathetic people can also feel their own future emotions.
My guess is that the mirage of future pain prevents them from being properly happy today.
It’s a self protection racket that sends them down a rabbit hole.

But it’s the vivid imagination of future joy that gets us through the dreary present!
For many, sadly not. They over-attribute the future negative scenarios