Human beings are social beings by nature.  Our lives depend on establishing relations with others of our species since childhood.  This ability to understand others is called empathy, it’s que quality of being able to ‘walk in another’s shoes’ and know, from our own feelings what the other is feeling.  However, empathy can be exagerated, and in this case the person can feel the feelings of the other person to the extent to making them her own.  When there is a chronic illness, especially lupus which affects the emotions and can be triggered by them, we have to be very cereful to distinguish clearly our own emotions and those belonging to someone else.  Our system is already overloaded with the hypersensitivity associated with lupus, it can’t carry someone else’s problems as well as our own and remain healthy.