“You are energetically volunteering to take on anothers emotions and feel them as your own. Who truly want’s that everyday?”
Everyone has the capability to possess empathy. Empathy is seeing a little child scrape their knee and see them cry and recognize what that feeling is like, or seeing a natural disaster occur and seeing people in despair and confusion. Empathy even exists in other situations less extreme like seeing a homeless individual begging for money for food or a place to stay, or a friend that had a family member pass away and you remember what that felt like also. Many of us may have been there and we know what that’s like. The dictionary definition of empathy is “the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.”
Having empathy and being an empath are two separate scenarios.
Let me continue to explain why, because I am an empath. Although I don’t necessarily like that term, because people have begun to use that as an elite term of special sensory gifts as if their better than some, that is the most recognizable and popular term to use. HSP or highly sensitive person comes second to that, and that I can also identify with as well but I don’t necessarily care for either.
Two years ago in the early summer of 2014, I was going through so much, nearing eviction from my apartment, money was low and I was in the midst of a huge gray area with many things in my life. People that I felt would be there for me or stick around, did not. I even tried to commit suicide, luckily for me my higher self did not allow that at all. I understand why now. At the time I had roommates which one in particular I was really close to. That whole debacle was a part of my spiritual development.
They were going through some extreme hardships that I probably couldn’t even relate to, because they kept most, if not all of it..to themselves, but a part of me felt EVERYTHING. My issues were financial, and yet my emotions fluctuated like the needle of a lying persons lie detector test. I could not for the life of me understand why I was experiencing this, because it hurt, it hurt SO bad, it challenged everything in me. To where that period in my life became very dark, yet no one knew any of this.
I wasn’t working, barely eating, and barely “living” but again felt EVERYTHING so I was alive. By alive I mean I experienced everything in a very connective manner. So during my free time my higher self led me on to Youtube where I stumbled on some videos explaining characteristics about what being an Empath was. At that point the topic seemed fairly new and only spiritual people seemed to be knowledgable about it. From there I was led to articles and even articles with some scientific backing. Something about being an Empath or HSP truly resonated within.
A characteristic of it is, you as the individual feel everything around you, and when I say everything as I’ve said multiple times so far…you feel it. You may feel your friend, or feel the world, and guess what, I didn’t even know it. Imagine the struggles that came with that. As and empath your always described as being the overly sensitive one, whereas people tell you “it’s not that serious” or “why can’t you just be normal”. They may even tell you that your emotions are too much, or that you are too much! As I’ve learned on my journey, sometimes it is in fact too much, for them.. I may get more into that later on why I feel that way, but the surface explanation is that not everyone is equipped with the type of responsibility that comes with being an empath.
You are a healer.
I’m not here to tell you that you are better than another person or even persuade you to believe that I am, but I am a highly intuitive individual and an empath. As much as people have wanted me to be so desperately wrong about certain things, I’ve been spot on almost every time. These are the gifts that have been given to me, and I have a gift to know exactly where a person is coming from, even if they doubt me. I can feel that doubt, the doubt towards me and God, and the fear of change and the sadness from their circumstances. I can sense the truth and sense the lies. That’s not necessarily a responsibility everyone can handle. You are energetically volunteering to take on anothers emotions and feel them as your own. Who truly want’s that everyday?
Then what exactly do you even do with them!?
Let’s be honest, you might be classified as bi-polar or border line crazy by that point. But moving on, everything made sense, why people ridiculed me for being so sensitive yet, my ability to be that sensitive was the reason they kept me around and they were still around. When you are a healer you have a responsibility to others but also to yourself more importantly. Being an empath is not so easy, especially if you are not grounded, especially if you are not aware and aren’t even prepared. Me, I was not prepared.
There are more defined ways to identify with whether you possess empathic nature, this is something that you must investigate for you, no one person can tell you for yourself. As I learned on my journey I saw that I also possessed other spiritual gifts as well, so you have to really go within and determine if any of this resonates with you. To reference the story I shared above, it is so so so very important to know that you must protect yourself energetically if you do find you are an empath. The things that I experienced were due to me coming into this gift and not necessarily knowing what was going on. One as an empath or healer (preferably) you will energetically attract emotionally wounded individuals into your life. Not only that, you may attract energy vampires as well. Those who just feed off of your healing energy.
I experienced several years of that prior to my awakening so at that point it all really began to make sense. Even now I look back, I was always accused of being this terrible person after I cut energetic ties with energetically needy people. As long as I allowed them to benefit from my healing energy things were okay. Which brings me to another point which is you must protect your energy, and stay grounded. If you are in your early stages of recognizing that you are an empath understand that your self-healing is detrimental to you being able to heal others. It is also detrimental to your sanity. My other blog post details how I handle my emotions in a productive manner while being an empath here. Since you are so receptive and connected to the energies around you, you must stay grounded and aware. You can easily take on anothers emotions just by being around, and can easily be drained from them. You may not recognize it at first but the more you pay attention you will see.
Energy exchanges and energy changes happen all the time, and in any location, so if you are on the go and ever tune in sharp enough to recognize how different people make you feel and different locations make you feel, this can be an easy tool to determine whether you should be somewhere with someone.
There’s so much more I could go into detail about, that can’t even fit into one post, however you learn that being an empath can be rewarding but also a burden. Most empaths describe their power as a gift and a curse and I would totally agree. But with any power you have the ability to shape it to your liking, and that’s what you learn the more you exercise it.
Just know that you aren’t alone with it and that it can be very influential if recognized and tapped into and fostered the correct way.
And if you ever have any questions ask away! I may write a more detailed post about recognizing whether you are an empath from my own personal experiences. So stay tuned!
-Key @keyperspective
urban goddess 