I Am An Empath

“It is common to express surprise at the unprovoked viciousness of Mortal Man, let us sometimes wonder at their unencouraged Virtue.” ~ Hester Thrale

Sometimes, I feel like I am eating the world’s pain.  There is so much pain, hardship, disaster…  I can’t listen to the news, it makes me sick to my stomach.   I support a lot of people through their sickness and pain.  I know how to put protection around myself.  I am familiar with healthy detachment.  The sheer volume of people’s pain in my circle of loved ones to the global scale sometimes is more than I can carry.  Yes, I believe I am an empath.  Merriam-Webster dictionary says:  “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner…”

It’s hard not to gain weight when you eat the world’s pain!  For that few minutes, the only thing I am thinking of is the chocolate deliciousness     going down my throat and all is well…

Some of us feel so strongly, we have a clear “knowing” around the anguish of whomever we are relating to.  We can physically feel their emotional pain.

I was listening to an interview of Karla McLaren, called The Art of Empathy”, last night.  She was mentioning that boys are raised to keep their emotions in check.  They are not allowed to share or feel a lot of their emotions and then when they get married and their wives want to be able to relate deeply with them, they don’t know how to do it.  “When did the rules change?”, they might ask themselves.   They have been trained to ignore their feelings.

I always feel so exhilarated when I spend a few hours with one of my friends.  We have deep conversations and talk about what’s real.  I feel closer to my friends when we are a safe container for each other to show our real feelings and emotions and we know we will still be loved unconditionally.  Maybe even more so.  I know I feel closer when we can share the harder emotions of anger, fear and sadness without the other person trying to take away true feelings.  How can we get to the bottom of why we are feeling a certain way if we don’t explore the root of the problem?  Every feeling holds meaning.  When we just want to spend all our time with happy thoughts – or pretending happy thoughts, we don’t pick up the hidden messages that our emotions are trying to tell us.  Maybe they are trying to tell us that we need to have healthy boundaries or we are doing more than we can handle.  Maybe underneath, we are afraid of letting people down and loosing their love or respect.

This is not to be confused with finding our happiness and joy.  When we dwell on the drama and the slights that have happened to us, we relive those moments over and over in our brains and our bodies think the event is happening over and over.  Our bodies go into fight or flight over and over.  That’s when we need to breathe and not “sweat the small stuff”.

I am talking about when an emotion keeps coming up and something needs to be unveiled to find the teaching, learn it and move forward.  Then when we find our happiness, it really is true JOY.

“People who know the truth have no business to allow the powers of darkness to silence them on any point that matters.” ~  Marie Stopes