Thunder Bow, I understand that 18 hour car rides are terrible and I was bringing it up because it was recent and not because I didn't know why I was stressed. I did make it clear before the ride was over that the drive back would have to be across two days and not one, and my family agreed to that pretty quickly.

JJBX, I have a hard time dismissing stress because as an engineer I am a problem solver. All the time I look at things that are not working as well as they could be, and I think about what could be done to make them work better. When people that I know really well are stressed, I evaluate why they are stressed and what is different about their stress right now versus other times. The problem with feeling other peoples' stress as a problem solver is that I feel obligated to do whatever I can instead of being able to let go of my friends' stress. I really just need to learn a way to let go since I don't think I ever really have.

GenmaJay, I will definitely read the article. I have a strange combination of being empathetic and also being someone who does not express very many emotions. I find that this word describes me quite well - Alexithymia (search alexithymia on wikipedia, I can't put a link in right now). It basically means that I have emotions but I do not connect to either other people's or my own emotions very easily. I do have emotions that I show, but I feel that I do not connect to conversations based on emotions as much as people would expect me to show. As a result, I am always looking around at other people's emotional responses and always taking in the emotions they are not trying to share. I have no idea why this happens, but this is my best understanding of it.