At his Mara-a-Largo press conference the other night, a disjointed and rambling Donald Trump shared a personal story of a helicopter incident with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Brown, he said, trashed Kamala Harris during the flight.

Brown’s absolute denial of all of it and the subsequent ridicule Trump faced, outraged him.

It turned out that Trump had been in a chopper with an emergency landing, but it was with someone else, nobody mentioned Kamala Harris.

Trump was visibly shaken that his account was being questioned. He even went as far as to threaten legal action, stating he would sue the New York Times for reporting the incident.

As we all know, Trump cannot take direction, correct, or remember all of his many statements and lies. That’s the problem with lying so much—there is so much to remember.

And strong women seem to unravel him completely.

Over the past few months, my feelings about Mr. Trump have taken a curious turn. I have disliked him for a long time, but I have recently begun to feel sorry for him.

I feel some empathy for him because I have suffered from some of the same problems he has, only to a different degree and on a different level. It was curious to realize there was a piece of him in me.

This shared experience is a powerful reminder of our shared humanity, a bond that transcends our political differences.

And what is empathy about, if not standing in the shoes of another?

Empathy is a crucial tool in understanding Trump’s behavior and character, and we could all use a little more of it in our political discourse. By practicing empathy, we can bridge the gaps and foster a more understanding, respectful, and functional political environment, one that values dialogue over discord.

Like Trump, I grew up learning that I needed to fight for myself since no one else was willing to fight for me.  And lots of people were attacking me, often for good reasons. This shared experience of adversity is something many of us can relate to.

I learned never to admit mistakes and to strike back quickly,  angrily – even cruelly – at people I thought were challenging, criticizing, or insulting me. Anger became a reflex, not a considered response.

My open writing on social media brought this to the fore for me. There, hatred is a sport, a drug for the helpless and powerless.  I was accused of being a thief, a pervert, a liar, and a hypocrite.

Responding did nothing more than draw the other trolls, who also feed on the response. To my knowledge, I never changed anyone’s mind; they never changed mine.

I didn’t want to respond, even though I did for years.  I couldn’t help it. I would lash back, sometimes unfairly and sometimes inappropriately. I couldn’t let this assault on me grow. I had to respond and edit what I said, sometimes expanding on it and sometimes deleting it. I often woke up thinking about my responses.

Deep down, I knew this was wrong. This was not who I wanted to be.

Lashing back with hostile people on social media was never a good idea; it accomplished nothing other than upsetting me and releasing the anger buried deep in my spirit and keeping it alive.

The people who read my blog saw this happening repeatedly, and many of them, bless them, sent me private and honest messages urging me to stop fighting with people I thought were attacking me and stop denying or fighting when an error was minor, meaningless, or trivial. They knew I was better than that, even if I didn’t.

If you share your life online, you better be prepared to be a target, in the same way politicians are today’s targets. Hatred has become both a political response and an extensive and profitable business. There is a greedy corporation in America for almost anything. Hatred is so accepted that it no longer seems surprising.  In public life, there is no such thing as lying, just different ways of seeing the truth.

Trump cannot help himself.  Neither could I.

When he feels attacked, ridiculed, or corrected, he loses control of himself and forgets what he promised himself  (and others) that he would do; from the look on his face, he is hurt, angered, and frightened.

He has no control over himself. He’s a fight-back addict. I understand this. Fighting back is an addiction for the wounded. He is so tangled up in the truth he can’t even remember what he said or did.

Trump’s response to his bumbling recollections of a helicopter making an emergency landing reminded me of myself, but in a more minor and less significant way. It was not comfortable feeling a bit like Trump at times. But it helped to wake me up to who I was.

I decided to understand and correct this habit; I didn’t like what I was doing more than I believed.

I worked on this with meditation, reflection, and talking with Maria and my new friends,  as well as with an accomplished and strong therapist. We went back deep into my life to understand why this was happening. In many ways, I was a victim of a kind of abuse that is well-known and understood these days and doesn’t need to be rehashed by me.

I dissected myself and was dissected by others. Slowly and painfully, it worked. Hatred is never a valuable tool.

I set up my blog to block hostile messages easily and instantly. The senders would never know they were blocked, and I would never see their posts again.  It worked.

I stopped arguing with people—sometimes, I poke some fun at them if they seem able to take it. My anger went away quickly, and so did the people antagonizing me.

In the process, I learned a great deal about myself and my reasons for being unable to control so much anger.

I have no problem being corrected politely; it happens every day, and my new Dyslexia inspired software catches almost every one of my typos or mistakes. The Corrections Police on my blog were disappointed, although many other targets exist.

They are gone, also.

I struggled with this issue for years and could not entirely control myself when I felt I was being wronged, demeaned, or undertaken. It triggered something inside of me that I could not control. I resolved to figure it out, and it took five or six years, but I did figure it out, and it just doesn’t happen anymore.

The impact on me has been enormous. I am calmer, happier, and much healthier.  My blog is better, and my readers are happier. The blog is a respite. I am more creative and stop wasting time replaying old and irrelevant scenarios. I have sorted this out. Flattery and criticism go down the same drain, as Georgia O’Keefe has written. I am free to be me.

I respect myself too much these days to trade insults with broken strangers on a computer.

I thank my meditation and spiritual work for helping me get on the right path and face what I needed to face.

Watching Trump crumble, foam, and deny reality yet again—it looks like a lie but is even sadder than that—connects me to him; I can stand in his shoes a bit, although I know I am a micro-sufferer next to him. He lives in his own reality but can’t accept or admit it.

I can’t hate Donald Trump and don’t wish to. Once again, I am reminded that we are all human beings and deserve to see people that way, whether we like them, vote for them, or run from them. Everyone who does what he says has a sad story to tell. What is the point of hating someone for hating and hating them in return? Someone somewhere has to break the spell.

That doesn’t mean I need to vote for Donald Trump, like him, or forgive him. It means I have to remember that humanity’s core is recognizing that we are all alike and will share the same ultimate fate.