"These People Wont Come To Your Funeral"

I have the habit of taking on board my patients' pain. I know that sounds silly, but because I am quite a sensitive person and i so desperately want to help a person when they are on pain, i can end up making THEIR pain MY problem.
One particular occasion this happened to me on my last placement is when I had a patient come to me with shoulder pain. I was seeing this pt in an outpatients setting and previously had been seeing her for her (R) shoulder post sh acromioplasty. When she came for her appointment I expected her to be travelling along nicely, but instead she came in hardly able to move her other shoulder due to pain which was radiating down her arm and into her wrist.
I was thrown by her presentation and could not understand why she was getting the pain she was getting. I had screened her Cx and that was ok, but was hardly able to get any sh ROM. After checking numerous things I FINALLY ended up checking her Tx. I now know that the Tx and the sh are closely related in terms of ROM and pain, but it took me so long to establish the source of her pain that she was getting visibly upset.
I ended up treating her for hypomobility in her upper Tx, but by the time the session had ended I was exhausted, upset because I didnt think i had done as well with the pt as I could have and upset because she had got so upset. My supervisor sat me down and told me something I will never forget. She told me that as physios we feel like we can fix everything that comes in our door, but really we can only do our best. She said that I needed to not take on the responsibility of people's pain, but rather make the pain THEIRS and try and help them to resolve THEIR pain. She said that if you take on too much of your patients' feelings and you run yourself down you are only hurting yourself, because those people dont really care about you and "those people wont go to your funeral". This statement really hit home. I learnt that although you need to care for your patients, you need to make sure that they always take responsibility for their pain and you do not take too much on personally.