I can feel your pain

Do you feel a touch on your own skin when you watch someone else being touched. This is a conditon called Mirror touch synaesthesia. Synaesthesia refers to the merging of senses that are normally experienced separately: 'seeing' music, for example, or experiencing different colours as tastes. It is known that when we observe others moving, or hear them speak, the same neural circuits are activated in our brains as would be activated if we were moving or speaking ourselves. Scientists suspect that this mirror system may be important in empathy — understanding why others behave as they do. Perhaps as a consequence, they also show more emotional empathy than normal people.

There may be a lot of such people around, since they are unaware that that they have the condition. They think it is normal. There is a nice correlation between emotional empathy and this interesting condition of synaesthesia.

Though It does not sound to be a problem but whether or not hyperactivity of the mirror system directly causes the heightened empathy, needs to be understood.