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| Artemis - Goddess of the Hunt/Moon Copyright Lila Telrunya http://lilatelrunya.deviantart.com/ |
I was different.
I am different.
I am an Empath.
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position. ~Wikipedia
Empath : Being an empath is when you are affected by other people's energies, and have an innate ability to intuitively feel and perceive others. Your life is unconsciously influenced by others' desires, wishes, thoughts, and moods. ~The Mind UnleashedI am sometimes highly sensitive or hypersensitive regarding feelings and emotions of others. I've learned to suppress it some over the years. Sometimes when I feel it, it's an overwhelming sense of confusion and not what that person is feeling ... Or even what I'm feeling.
(Side note : I've discussed with a couple of doctors over the years that I may have ADHD or have a type of Autism. They call me depressed and try to medicate me. I know what depression is and it's not when you are completely happy with your life and your mind is a fog. You know things, and you can see a thought in your mind, a memory or something you learned that you want to focus on but you can't. It truly is like I'm standing outside in the fog and I know I'm close to something but I don't know what. I can't reach it, I can't grab it, I just know it's there.) The worst feeling of all is when I'm very close to someone who I should know what they are feeling and yet I don't. I misjudge and am confused, only making matters worse.
I wasn't sure how to begin the blog so I typed "being an empath" into Google. I already know, and have known, that I'm an empath. It fits and I've never had any doubt. Their search showed an Empath Test so I clicked it.
My results :
Your Super Serious Title is: The Moon Goddess Empath :
You scored extremely high on the overall results. You are definitely an empath.
You are highly intuitive and can almost always tell when people are lying. You like water but don't absolutely need to be near it. Your second chakra does okay. You love nature and unconsciously understand its healing effects -- which is a general, but strong indicator that you are an empath. You have a deep love and appreciation for nature. You recognize the sacred expression of all beings. You are truly wise. But you seem fairly normal -- able to influence people at times.
You need to learn how to recognize and differentiate other people's energy from yours. Learning psychic/empathic meditation tools will help. You scored extremely poorly on the "Mirroring Others Unconsciously" portion of the quiz. It looks like you have a tendency to mirror other people and their energy. Your score indicates that you would benefit from learning to recognize your own energy vs other people's and cord removal most likely.
You scored extremely low on the "Has Protection Tools" section of the quiz. This means that your ability to protect yourself energetically is really bad. Your empathic abilities are causing you grief. You are no doubt an out of control healer and would benefit from energy healing, cord-removal, and visualization tools for releasing responsibility. You are so caring and loving that you put others before yourself -- to your detriment. You are most likely an out of control healer. You would benefit from energy work and empath tools for releasing guilt and responsibility.
I'm truly not surprised by the results. I like being around water but I'm drawn to it in a way I don't like so in a way, I fear it and stay away. I love nature and plants. I love healing with organic medicines, vitamins, plants and herbs. I do tend to mirror when I'm around someone particularly angry, and I absolutely have a terrible time protecting myself. I feel responsible, when I am around those in a sad mood, to lift them up. Everyone has a bit of empath in them but very few break down into tears when you pass a person in a store for apparently no reason, feel a pain in your face when you pass a car with a young woman in the passenger seat looking at the sky or feel a sickening tingle in your stomach when you see a photograph you've seen many times before.
That happened to me today.
I am on Facebook at least once a day. Generally, I'll scroll through in the mornings and pay little attention unless there's something about crochet. (Not enough coffee in me to focus on much else.) This morning I felt a burning feeling when I scrolled past one post so I kept going and didn't read it. When I left the page and came back, it was there waiting for me. A friend had been shoved into a wall by her husband...on Mother's Day...because he was drunk...and because their toddler had come to them again to be put back to bed. (Some how she was a bad person and he had to hit her. At that point I was in a rage.) After I messaged her I went on, still saddened by what I had read but trying not to take it emotionally on as mine.
I passed a picture of a couple of my friends from high school (20 years ago) and their little brother. Everyone was happy and smiling. I'd seen it a few times but this time I felt something in my stomach, a knot and a feeling telling me to stop. I looked at it, no comments. I started to scroll on. I noticed at the top her mood was heartbroken and immediately I knew it was their brother. I found their brother's wife, who I grew up with, and she had also recently posted "heartbroken" and a picture of her husband. Already tearing up, I messaged her asking if they were okay. They were not. He had gone to a friend's house last night and he had ... departed. I bawled. All I could do is offer condolences to her and his sisters in private messages (it's obvious they are not ready to announce it) and tell them I know I can't do anything now but I'm here when they need me.
I reached out to my sister who was good friends with the sisters in high school and we both still talk to the wife on occasion. She was upset with me for taking it to heart. "Why does it bother you? We didn't know him, not really. We haven't talked to them in years." etc etc and then my favorite ... "You really need to not take these things personally."
Thanks for that.
Certainly I do this to myself on purpose. :\
I would like to publicly say something about Empaths. If you know one or ever meet one...
1) We do not do this to ourselves.
2) We can not help that we take things personally.
3) If we could shut it off and not feel an enormous amount of knee dropping pain every time someone close to us loses someone, we would.
4) We do not "get off" on going to funerals or funeral homes but we will be there when we know survivors could use a hug or a shoulder.
5) It doesn't matter if we hardly knew the person, or not at all. When those emotions hit, it hits like a tsunami. You can not always see it coming but it hits hard, rolls out and back in again whenever it wants and at whatever velocity it sees fit...not what we see fit.
6) Sometimes, and certainly in my case, when it's a particularly emotional thing, when it's someone we know or when it's around an emotional time of the year from another loss ... Sometimes we are overwhelmed with the pain we felt from another occasion and not from today.
7) Don't be a jerk. This is a pretty basic rule that just applies to everything.
It hurts both physically and emotionally. To then be insulted afterwards does not help. If you know an empath and they need you for five minutes, let them cry, tell them the same thing you would tell anyoneI know that doesn't help t (I would hope) that has experienced a similar loss. "He was a troubled soul who is at peace. hose that remain but be strong for their family."
Suck it up, buttercup, does not work.
It took a lot of meditation and talking to my husband, who reminded me that I needed to focus my emotions on helping the family to help me and make my emotions roll out with the tide. As any empath will tell you, we know it's not about us. It's not about me. However, if I'm overwhelmed in an ocean of waves, I can't always see anyone else or know where to go. Once I see a sign or hear a voice that reminds me what this is, I can focus.
Today, I needed someone to help me focus. I know this is not about me, it never was. Empathy is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong. I love walking past people and feeling giggly, feeling enormous love or kindness.
Today, for me, hurt most because Mother's Day was hard. My sister and I are now mothers to two boys (each) who never met our mother. She's been gone nearly 18 years. This Mother's Day was particularly hard for some reason. When I felt the pit about my friend, I already knew what was coming. I was already shaking my head and saying "no, no, no" as I typed to his wife. All the emotions of loss I'd been trying to suppress yesterday began bubbling over into this. It wasn't all about him. He was just the kid brother from 20 years ago that use to hang out with us when I'd drive folks somewhere. He was still important to me because he was a good guy, loved his wife and kids (even though they were separated and figuring out life), he was still someone very much in weekly conversations with people we care about and it still hurts to know it happened. My heart aches for his kids, for the wife who had to identify her husband, for the two sisters who lost their mom only a couple of years ago and now have lost their only brother. It is a shock to all that know him and a moment of weakness I'm certain, even from the other side, he wishes he'd never had.
If you are an empath, you are not alone. You are never alone. There are more of us than you think.
If you know an empath, don't be a jerk. Sometimes feelings and energies lurch them forward to feel things that you may not understand but they don't always understand it either. Try to be understanding, try to help them focus on putting up the energy wall.
If you don't know and are not an empath ... just don't be a jerk. As I said, it's always just a good rule to live by.
