Have you ever felt sympathy for another person who was suffering, and then started to suffer yourself? Perhaps the individual was depressed, and you started to feel depressed, or this person was ill, and you started to feel ill? If so, it’s a symptom of what I call sympathetic suffering, which is any type of suffering taken on from seeing it in others and thinking of it as a reality. It’s not something to fear, but something that can be prevented through an understanding of God’s omnipresent love and care, which does not actually allow for suffering at all, let alone the transfer of suffering from one person to another.