I agree suicidal empathy is an invalid concept. It's a package deal: it lumps a cognitive faculty, understanding how others think and feel, with a moral code of self-sacrifice, then blames the faculty for what the code produces. Understanding is valuable. She is also right that you can understand behavior without excusing it and care about suffering without owing its repair. There are no unchosen obligations. But the problem isn't excess compassion or empathy. It's altruism, the code that holds self-sacrifice as virtue and need as a claim on the able. Boundaries don't fix it. A boundary is a compromise with a premise you've already accepted. Compassion is proper toward innocent victims, not those who choose harm. Empathy that refuses to judge becomes a sanction of evil, paid for by the people who produced the values being sacrificed. The issue isn't how much a person feels. It's what he believes he owes.