I’d like to quote an excerpt from the Horev written by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. I like how he clearly explains what compassion is and isn’t, and how to sensitize ourselves to others in a healthy manner so that we can become truly compassionate without becoming helpless.

“Compassion is the feeling of sympathy which the pain of one being of itself awakens in another; and the higher and more human the beings are, the more keenly attuned are they to re-echo the note of suffering…which penetrates the heart…Do not suppress this compassion….especially with the sufferings of your fellow man. It is the warning voice of duty which points out to you your brother in every sufferer….and awakens the love which tells you that you belong to him…Do not suppress it! If you thrust it back too often, it will no more well up of itself and you will have cut yourself off from the company of your fellow creatures…. Your heart becomes a stone and there no longer sounds in it the voice of God reminding you of your mission. Yet be on your guard against letting sympathy degenerate into a hypersensitivity which identifies itself with the sufferer to such an extent that it retains no composure or power or strength to help.”

(Horev, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsh)