No, I'd say the hyper part of it is not normal, at least from my perspective and AFAIK I'm "normal". I suspect it would be somewhat like seeing the world in black and white and then suddenly being able to see colors. At first it would be overwhelming but eventually it would just be normal and drown out into the background. White noise.

He talks about customers coming into his shop and then him worrying about their problems. "Normal" to me is to be able to empathize with them, much like the skinned knee example in the article, but then being able to quickly move on. I mean I see someone get a skinned knee, I think to myself "ow! I bet that hurt!", but I don't think about it for the next hour. It's just a quick thought. The same would go for empathetic emotions, and like the knee, they're at a muted level compared to the original person's feeling of it.

Hope that helps. It's hard to put into words.