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When.my wife hears of other peoples problems or tragedies, she often becomes emotionaly overwhelmed and has trouble separating herself from the situation.  For example, an acquaintances son died. and my wife couldn't stop crying.  If his mother posts pics of him on instagram, weeks later, she starts crying again.  She says she feels the grief as if it was her own and wishes she could distance herself from it like other people.  It happens a lot, even with random strangers she reads about online.  I told her I'd try to research it.

Is this a BPD thing?  If so, how does it fit in?

It's a very common BPD thing because borderlines run on emotions instead of logic.  If someone died, that's sad, so your wife gets sad and that emotion takes over.  BPD's want to save the world because they care so deeply, but their perceptions often get hindered because of self esteem and abandonment issues.  That's where all the other stuff comes into play at.

Could it also be an ADHD thing?
I ask because I have undiagnosed ADHD and really do feel other people’s problems internally- not like I caused it but definitely like I want to do everything I can to take their pain away.
I may not respond to a total stranger in same way as I respond to family and friends but the feeling of empathy and sorrow is there. I don’t cry though. In the past I use to dive into people’s problems to rescue them but I have realised this quality is pathological and a fertile ground for attracting the disordered. I’m getting healed from my pathological empathy.

My ex husband with ubpd use to cry when something bad happened to people he knew, but not like he made effort to reach out to help same person if they needed help. His family use to cry like someone died whenever they were going away eg after a 10 day visit to our home. It was like a ritual and deeply unsettling too.

I wonder if persons with bpd cry to shift the attention to them- it’s like yes something bad has happened to that person but look at me I am suffering, I am the biggest victim.in my experience , Pwbpd do not really solve problems but are good at creating one, they create problems for every solution usually and are fuelled by exaggerated emotions.

So some googling reveals that it is an ADHD thing.  It seems to either be called "hyper empathy" or "toxic empathy", the latter because it's unhealthy and can make it hard to set boundaries with people that hurt you (because you empathize with them). I read one decription that mentioned in passing that it can be a sign of bpd, but it seems like most search results were about ADHD.

My wife doesn't seem to want this ability but maybe it started out with her wanting attention, until it became a habit not under her control?  Also the empathy definitely doesn't stretch towards people she has hurt - I guess the empathy misfires and she reads her own emotions from them.

Thank you for this.
Setting boundaries has been a challenge for me, and I didn’t realise it until it almost destroyed my life.
I also read an article a while ago that stated adhd as a risk factor for developing bpd.
It makes a lot of sense that children who have untreated ADHD may experience negative social interactions and more trauma. My s9 has uadhd and I am applying my knowledge of all this in raising him. He is getting better not being around his dad that’s for sure.
I also read that a high percentage of pw bpd  do have adhd. Some members in this community have mentioned pwbpd receiving adhd treatment, this may help with functioning but the bpd does not really go away.

I dont think it is empathy in the normal way you know it, it is not feeling it from that parents perspective it is almost a kind of involuntary hijacking someone else's emotions and making it hers. Doing this with people who are effectively 3rd party means it more objective and black and white and easy to do, as there are no direct consequences. Much the same as people can more readily be the expert gossip about someone who is more remote, it's easy to be simplistic.

My wife blatantly does this when I have an issue, even something as simple as being sick or physically hurt in some way. She will take it over and feel it/play it out to a level that is far in extreme as to the way I am feeling as thought it is her emotion and drama. She is not seeing it "through my eyes" at all . It is a magnified version and feeding her own sense of drama. Which can suddenly be turned off when some other source of drama comes along.

Its more a case of being obsessively drawn to drama and extreme emotion, rather than having any real clue about how it is affecting anyone else. Ultimately it feeds it and makes it worse for others involved.

If a pwBPD feels true empathy, then they would be able to see their actions through the eyes of those on the receiving end of it. Yet they dont change their actions so this would make them deliberately evil. So i like to be more charitable and believe they dont truly see things this way, and so they are ignorantly toxic

pwBPD think and process things completely differently so we have to be careful applying "normal" interpretations to the way they behave

This is a really good point.  I was thinking she didn't have empathy for me because I'm too close to her - the best analogy I could think of is when I'm working on something for so long I can't tell whether I'm actually doing a good job or not.  Similarly since I'm always around she absorbs me into her fantasy reality so I'm invisible.  But a stranger married to another stranger with bpd would have her empathy without any awareness that it was the same situation.