I seem to be the kind of person who can't stand to see anyone in pain or suffer in anyway, especially with my family so I would do anything to prevent it. For some odd reason whenever my family members argue over anything with anyone. I always try to get them to unload it all onto me so they don't have to bear it. Once when my sisters were arguing I actually told them, "Stop all this. Yell at me if you have to. Take out everything on me. I can take it so don't hold back." They stopped fighting and looked at me like I was crazy. When one of my friend's dogs died and he was angry I told him he could let it all out on me and if he wanted to damage something to let it out he could hit me all he wanted. Why do I do this? I can't understand why I would want to have every negative emotion people are feeling heaped on me, yet for some reason I can't think of any other way to help others than to let them vent everything onto me and I'm fine with it. The only reason I brought this up is cause I've just started to wonder why I am this way(even though I've always been this way for as long as I could remember.)
Wow im a lot like that to i put everyone before me and i do anything for my family and sometimes its not the best for me but it gives me joy to see them happy. I dont have great advice but i dont think that you should tell them to hit you because it makes it seem like you dont care at all about yourself and thats not good. If you need somone to talk to im a great listener.
Two possibilities I can think of offhand (there are surely more than this, these are just what comes to mind first.) 1. You're simply a truly wonderful and kind person who feels strong enough to take on other people's anger or negative emotions. If you believe in reincarnation, you could be a very old soul who has done this sort of thing in other lifetimes and so it comes naturally to you. 2. You've developed the personality type of "conciliator" within your family dynamic. For whatever reason, you are the person who has learned to always jump in and diffuse and defuse conflict. This usually happens when there is some sort of dysfunction in the family unit (alcohol or drug abuse by a parent, or other addictive/dysfunctional behavior) I think it's great to help people in resolving conflict, but it's also important to set boundaries for yourself. It generally isn't healthy to let people dump on you all the time, because you can end up sort of psychically drained. If you don't feel like it's having a negative effect on you, then it's probably fine, but I would encourage you to constantly check yourself and make sure you're not giving too much "psychic energy" away, or you won't have enough to take care of your own mental health needs.
Well, I believe that the technical term for it is Subjective Happiness according to Objectivism. It's the deriving of pleasure through the happiness of others. While it sounds nice in theory, it can often be a somewhat-dangerous pattern to fall into because you begin to put your self-worth below that of others. Over time, you convince yourself that you can only be happy if everyone close to you is, and you begin to rely on them for your emotional stability. Not only is this not fair to yourself (you have a right to be happy too), but it's not fair to them (they end up carrying the burden of keeping you happy). It appears that it's manifesting for you as a need to take mental and physical pain in order to see others happy, which then makes you happy. But is this the best way to go about doing it? Probably not. Offering to mediate is fine, but asking to be a punching bag is giving people the impression that you feel that your only worth to them is as a thing to abuse until they feel better. Not exactly the best approach to take in my opinion. Next time something like this comes up, you can offer to talk to people. That's fine. But sometimes it's just best to let them be. Let them solve their own problems, otherwise there's really no resolution to the problem that started it, and it will probably just flare up again later. And plus, you are worth more than just a thing to beat whenever someone is angry.
