Experience: I feel other people's pain (2011)
A woman describes her ability to physically feel other people's pain and emotions, a condition known as mirror-touch synesthesia. She explains how this has affected her life, from avoiding crowded places to working as a doctor to help others, while also detailing her constant emotional absorption of others' feelings.
Background
The Guardian's "Experience" column features first-person accounts of unusual lives. This 2011 piece profiles a woman with **mirror-touch synesthesia** — a neurological condition where witnessing someone else being touched (e.g., stroked, poked) produces a genuine, physical sensation on the corresponding part of her own body. Unlike ordinary empathy (emotional understanding of others' pain), this is a somatic, involuntary experience: she literally feels a broken bone when she sees the injury, to the point that she avoids medical dramas and action films. The condition was first scientifically described around 2005 by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, and research suggests it involves overactivity in the brain's mirror-neuron system, which normally helps us simulate and understand others' actions without fully experiencing them.