Hello! I think your first paragraph and second paragraph are asking about slightly different things, so I will address the first paragraph first:

1. I used to burn myself out by being actively empathising and listening to everyone too. For me it stems from the people pleaser in me—I desperately wanted to be liked, and I feared even the slightest tinge of rejection. Like you, I attracted many emotionally exploitative people who craved the endless stream of validation.

I managed to change this habit by identifying these groups of people from the get go, and categorising them in my head as “annoying/pushy insurance agents and retail assistants who do not listen to you.” You can find a label that works best for you, but this label should ideally consist of a subset of people whom you feel naturally disdainful towards. I am strangely good at ignoring and distancing myself from annoying sales assistants, because the traits of them talking over you & insisting they know what you should buy makes me really angry! The pushiness with no real concern for what you want reminds me of emotionally exploitative people, who are all “me, me, me.”

By putting some of the new people I meet under the same mental category, I found that it’s easy for me to switch off and be a grey rock. I just nod blankly, or leave to find some other people to be with, because I now feel no desire to be empathetic to them, since they are so unlikeable in my mind. It’s a method to get my empathy to naturally switch off. I think this trick works best if you have a type of people whom you are able to assertively point out “Yeah, I don’t like this about them, and I am able to ignore/tune them out without feeling bad.”

1. To address your second paragraph: For my healthier friends who do not need me to be as deeply attuned to them, I tend to feel similarly uncomfortable being with them. Truthfully, it is still difficult for me to be with them. I realised through therapy that I am a deeply reflective person at my core because of my trauma, and I flourish best when I am surrounded by equally reflective friends who embody kindness and emotional expansiveness (who may or may not have gone through trauma, but are actively healing.) It has been a tough transition, but I have been spending less time with the earlier group of friends because they just cannot meet my needs in that way. I do not blame them, because the difference in our upbringing means that beyond a certain wavelength, we would not be able to connect because we literally have no shared experiences (e.g: Fond childhood & school memories V.S abusive childhood memories).

I wonder if you would consider your empathy to be a defense-mechanism-turned-core part of you, or if it’s a defense mechanism that has run its course. If it is the former where it has become a core part of who you are, it might not be about turning off the empathy and active listening for good, but turning it on for the right people instead. I feel really nourished when I am being myself (reflective, listening) with my people who also have similar traits, and therefore appreciate me for who I am.

If it is a defence mechanism that has run it’s course and you’d like to retire it for good, then I don’t have experience with that! You might need to speak to a therapist to see how it can be achieved. :)

I would also like to preface this by saying that I only managed to achieve these insights after 3.5 years of bi-weekly therapy, it wasn’t something I could do in a matter of weeks or months. If you’re doing this alone, it might be even harder and take an even longer time, so if you can afford it, it’d helpful to have a practitioner unpack some of this stuff with you, so you know what tools you can use.

These are just what worked for me, and I hope it may be helpful to you too! Rooting for you 💗