headcanon - hyper-empathy. 

at some point i’ll make a full post discussing my autistic headcanon for belle and the traits she displays, but i’m entirely too scatterbrained right now to do that. instead, this post is just gonna be about her hyper-empathy (note: this can be present on it’s own and as a symptom of certain disorders, but it’s considered an autistic trait as well, and that’s where hers stems from). 

in short, belle feels a lot. when she says she understands how someone feels, she isn’t just using a readily-available line for comfort. she means it. and that is a very overwhelming thing to deal with. feeling the vibe in a room change in an instant, feeling your mood drag down when someone else for is having a bad day (which results in an attempt to cheer them up that is as much for their sake as it is your own)- feeling such an acute form of joy, anger, sorrow, etc. that isn’t even from your own experiences can take a lot out of you. 

this isn’t restricted to only people- this also means animals and other creatures, as well as inanimate objects at times (primarily, her books). belle has been shown to have an intense amount of empathy for creatures (such as the ogres in ‘her handsome hero’ or the yaoguai in ‘the outsider’- after seeing it for herself, that is).  she is highly defensive of her books (please don’t insult them), and considers them to be more like friends than… well, books. 

a problem with this is that belle is far more susceptible to being taken advantage of. see, due to this, belle has also taken it upon herself to use it as a superpower of sorts (like emma’s knack for spotting lies, belle can make things better in theory through knowing what people are feeling). this brings a certain amount of pressure to always do what she thinks is best for others, while very rarely considering what is best for herself. she doesn’t want to suffer through whatever feelings will happen as a consequence, and after a while, one can generally tell this. some people abuse this knowledge, and… well, until it reaches a certain point, she will let them (this leads into another topic for another day: hyper-morality.)