Lex,

I think that the illnesses make us more sensitive to the pains of the world. This can be a good and a bad thing IMHO.

Most healthy people have a kind of mental shield around them. Unless something shocking happens to them personally or to a loved one they go through life with the blinkers on. This is not a criticism, just an observation. I think it's a normal mechanism.

When we have depressive illnesses of whatever kind, we feel the world as if we had no skin. Everything seems to get through to us. This can be good, in that we can become more empathetic to others, and it can be bad, as we are losing something of the survival mechanism.

I've been like this for many years now, and to be honest I would like to have the blinkers back again.

At the beginning of my illness a friend said to me, "You are too sensitive to other people's pain." My God, was he right about that!

Good thoughts, M