Do NOT feel embarrassed. You are obviously a very empathetic person, and that is a good trait. This person was playing on that in all of us here. I was buying it too, and wondering how we handle people that come over from the dark side of the SJ cult, as we can see many of them are hurting and do have physical ailments, and are very lonely. But in the end this particular person WAS abusing any empathy that could be found in the room here. They eventually showed their whole hand, and if you ignored the signs at that point it would be a different story. It's a tricky situation, because we do want to stay aware, but we also don't want to be paranoid and jump at the tiniest thing. Being empathetic is a GOOD thing, and we need to default to that first, but with our eyes open and aware.