Basically don’t be a schmuck. Common sense should dictate one’s practice well.

I don't understand your response. It's very common for empathetic people to feel great suffering. It's not "common sense" knowledge to learn how to maintain deep compassion while preventing the pain from affecting your own being. In fact, most highly empathetic people, like OP, feel burdened by this emotional state because the untrained person experiences compassion as double suffering (the suffering of the object of compassion and the suffering to oneself that comes from untrained empathy). The result is that highly empathetic people try to numb out or attempt to restrict their capacity for empathy.

The early Buddhist texts (the canonical suttas) describe meditations and trainings to develop this skill. The reason the suttas devote so much time to explaining these techniques is because they are NOT common knowledge.

The etymology of compassion means "suffering with". It's baked into the word (in English) the assumption that compassion involves suffering for both parties.

In Buddhism, we learn that compassion doesn't have to create suffering for the holder of compassion. We learn that it's possible to dwell in the state of compassion as a way of moving out of suffering, rather than moving into it.

The understanding I've gained as an Orthodox Christian is that God works in us, using the suffering to help us repent. He prepares us for resurrection unto life. This justifies the suffering, gives it enough meaning to keep going. When we have this conviction of compassion and do not run away from it, but shoulder it as a responsibility and work through it to find the truth and serve within it to the best of our ability we are living out what it is to be the long-suffering servant.

I am grateful to you for pointing out this etymology. I find it to be beautiful because in compassion I can be suffering with Christ. So, thank you.

Thank you for sharing your perspective! I'm not Christian, but I'm a person of faith. It's interesting to see how the different faiths approach suffering.

People made a religion out of turning others into schmucks with the dual whammy of sorrow and shame. The only correct use of sorrow is to attain stillness when someone uses humor to deflect emotions, but that doesn't keep a priest gainfully employed.

Dostoyevsky's The Idiot comes to mind.