Here’s an interesting study which looks at the influence of meditation on patient care. It wasn’t the patients who did the meditating however. It was the therapists. The researchers took a group of trainee psychotherapists and split them into two groups. One group practiced mindfulness meditation and the other didn’t. The patients they were treating showed improvements as follows –
the [patients treated by the meditation] group showed greater symptom reduction than the [no meditation] group on the Global Severity Index and 8 SCL-90-R scales, including Somatization, Insecurity in Social Contact, Obsessiveness, Anxiety, Anger/Hostility, Phobic Anxiety, Paranoid Thinking and Psychoticism.
So, who therapist is, and how they learn to focus their attention seems to matter. I’ve never learned meditation but I do think that care is a human activity and the current drive to homogenise medicine as if human individuality is not important is misguided. It is important who your therapist is and it is important that the therapist learns and practices focussed attention and active listening whatever the actual therapy being used.
Heroes Not Zombies 
Well, it stands to reason that people more in touch with themselves, more “centered” would better be able to percieve the need of others, doesn’t it? You ought to learn meditation, and bio-feedback. I think you’d find it very helpful, it would add to your ability to relish life. I find it also helps you to notice “non-people” things also.
My therapist as a teenager taught me a bio-feedback (Deep relaxation? I was able to relax to the point that my heart rate slowed, and I got to be able to “un-think” it slower. Er, that does make sense, if you think about slowing your heart rate too hard, the opposite will happen. But, you can consciously allow yourself to relax and let your heart rate slow.) method to help me deal not only with the anxiety of being a bi-polar teen, but my arthritis flareups. It helps me to this day to be able to ground myself, find some peace, and let go of my worries for a few minutes so I can face the day. It’s how I “gird my loins” before facing days I know will be stressful/difficult.
Being centered allows you to better your information input and realization skills. (If that makes sense?) You do have to let yourself notice things and “practice” at taking in things around you that you hadn’t really noticed before, or seen in that way before. Being able to Center/Ground yourself lets you notice things more, is what I am saying. I am using the terms Center and Ground as Pagans and Meditators use them. Focusing your energy, finding your inner balance. That is what I mean.