My 1st gift a Blessing and a curse

My First GIFT I can remember having an ability at is something called "Empathy"
Now what that is, is when I am around other people I can sense or pick up on their emotions almost as if they were my own.
Now some of you are probably asking, how could THAT be a curse? Well when you act like an antenna for everybody's emotions, and you don't have anyone with experience to teach you how to shield or block out the undesired emotions, it can be quite complicated.
        I could be in a great and happy mood and then I come across someone who's having a bad day or is deeply sad about something, and my emotions just plummet. Not being able to close myself off from it, I had to develop some techniques to deal with it. 1.) At times I became reserved and didn't hang out with alot of people. If I'm not around them I can't have "Emotional overlap" 2.) I became a nurturer. I was the ear that EVERYONE could tell their troubles to. As people talk about their problems, they'd feel better and thus have less of an impact on my emotions. 3.) I tended to affiliate more with female friends for a long while.... because at first, their emotions were very different from mine. The line was more defined and easier for me to tell the difference between mine and my companions emotions. But as I hung out more with females.... my emotions defined more like theirs as time went on. I became more of an emotional chameleon, identifying with whatever group I was with. Which culminated in the fact that in High school I didn't have a small group of close knit friends, I had a large group of casual friends, that I couldn't get too close to because I would "Read" them too much. 4.)Another method I had tried was to shut down most of my emotional responses. to become in a sense Unemotional and that had me even more reserved and "Loner" like. not clinging to ANY close relationships so as to not leave myself OPEN to be hurt 5.) And after years of searching and experimenting and struggles I found that there are ways of Psychic shielding. There are techniques of blocking out unwanted stressers, and If I'd had a psychic mentor I could have developed this technique at a much earlier age. But then I wouldn't be the person I am today.

Last year I discovered my eldest son shares this ability. We had gone out to see a movie, and on the way home we passed a woman who was being verbally abusive and smacking her child. My son began reacting emotionally as if he were the one being assaulted. It was then that I had to start teaching him the same techniques I had developed for shielding and hope that by the benefit of my experience that he can use this as a true gift.