Are you a hyper-empath?

[Full Steam]

I think I know what you mean. I used to not really know how I felt, other than a very binary happy/not happy. Because unconsciously I was too busy pretending to Feel Feelings As One Should. And I was mostly pretending to be happy because that was how people are supposed to feel, right?

But as I've started "becoming" myself instead of being who I think people want me to be, I've started actually feeling. It's pretty overwhelming sometimes, how I can be walking down the street listening to music and suddenly hit by a wave of feelings because the lyrics resonate with me, so I get teary-eyed. I cry at movies and books and music now. It's overwhelming, but I wouldn't want to go back. Besides, I'm more "normal" now than when I tried to fit in.

Exactly!

I also think the very fact of being extra empathic makes it more likely that we'll construct fake persona's as it enables a certain social chameleonic effect.

" I know this person will be more comfortable is I act like XX so that's what I'll do"

 

[Anonymous]

I definitely feel hyper empathetic, I can run out of movies and tv shows because a certain scene was awkward or confrontational. To the point where I only truely enjoy science documentaries.

I also seem to science people emotions and escalate on them if their negative. I seem to escalate on their intentions too.

If I feel that a person thinks I’m stupid, ignorant, and is of the midframe that where autism doesn’t exist, I will shut down and have a very hard time getting any progress done with them, even if my future depends on it.

But I also sometimes feel like I have no empathy. I have been to funerals and had close family die without shedding a tear. Although when my gerbil died I escalated completely.

 

[Midnight Mushroom]

I only recently learned about hyperempathy, and man does it explain so much about me. When others feel, I feel just as strong or stronger. It becomes problematic when I really want to help but my social skills are pretty bad and I have no idea what to do so I just sort of shut down. It's like my brain's screaming "help" but my body won't move and it's super uncomfortable.
It can make me seem cold on the outside. I worry that because I can't really express it the people around me will think I don't care.
I also can't watch or read super emotional things without my mood tanking for several hours or even a couple days. Anything that has crying or despair is really difficult for me to watch / read.
On funerals; my grandma and aunt passed not to long ago and I didn't really feel anything. My grandma I was close to as a kid but she moved to another state about 10 years ago and I never talked to her. I wasn't really close to my aunt either, and I was really detached about their deaths. I mostly spent my time avoiding actual grievers because of my discomfort.

 

[onlything]

I don't think that I am one, at least not now. I could never reach balance in what I was feeling, at times too much, at times too little. I was considered cold and very sensitive at the same time by different people and believe me when I say that it was as confusing to me as to others. Still, I do feel a lot of what others do. Not always but I just know, yet seemingly can't care enough to do anything with my knowledge. Advice and truth are despised, so I don't offer them, but NT platitudes are useless, so empty and shallow. So I stay silent and lick my own wounds for a time.
It's the easiest for me to feel the music and words. Lyrics, books, notes - these are things that make me laugh, cry, soothe myself.

 

[wadorama]

Hard to see from in here, but reading this thread I'm thinking hell yeah. If my self-diag is on then I present like an emo female. Maybe self-defense that evolved from how I grew up.

 

[Streetwise]

I only recently learned about hyperempathy, and man does it explain so much about me. When others feel, I feel just as strong or stronger. It becomes problematic when I really want to help but my social skills are pretty bad and I have no idea what to do so I just sort of shut down. It's like my brain's screaming "help" but my body won't move and it's super uncomfortable.
It can make me seem cold on the outside. I worry that because I can't really express it the people around me will think I don't care.
I also can't watch or read super emotional things without my mood tanking for several hours or even a couple days. Anything that has crying or despair is really difficult for me to watch / read.
On funerals; my grandma and aunt passed not to long ago and I didn't really feel anything. My grandma I was close to as a kid but she moved to another state about 10 years ago and I never talked to her. I wasn't really close to my aunt either, and I was really detached about their deaths. I mostly spent my time avoiding actual grievers because of my discomfort.

Do something simple like get them something one thing I know about when people are distressed it's better to do something unintrusive

 

[OlLiE]

i don't think so,
i've been spending a lot of time alone lately, i usually feel very 'neutral' when i am
if some calls me i immediately feel very tired, especially if they want to talk about emotional things
i've been told that as i child i learned to dissociate myself from my emotions, and then just continued building up those walls
so while i understand which situations should cause which emotions, i don't really experience them, even if they do wear me out in the background

however, sometimes they just break through,
rarely as empathy but very so often when i see a 'touching moment of kindness' on tv my eyes will start welling up, but i don't understand why

so no, don't guess i'm a hyper empath

 

[Chance]

I read all the posts... and in some I see parts of how I feel, and in others not so much.
I think I might be the odd guy out on this... I'm mostly an emotional train wreck at the most inopportune times. If I see someone hurting... deeply hurting, I get lost in this sea of emotions. Its not that I just want to cry, its that I want to fix what is making them hurt so deeply. I cant, so I don't know what to do, and I just feel sick. So honestly I try very hard to avoid it - and that probably looks and sounds selfish?

I can walk in a room (especially ER or Hospital) and literally feel like my life is being torn out of me.
I can walk in a house or some place and just know (or feel) if there is anger there.
I can often sense an answer long before a person states anything... Is that empath?
I don't even know what it is?

I know its not my great ability to read body language for one: I don't like looking at people, and two: thats just a whole different level of disconnect from what I am fumbling over right here.

I feel stuff that I know that isn't mine, but yet expressing it is a crap shoot... I think this is where people "think" we don't have emotions, yet inside we (or some of us) are drowning in it, and just trying to navigate and keep our bodies functioning. So outside we may look blank for all the stuff we are battling inside.

Its like I don't have near full control over my emotions/empathy??? Its not that I am a boo hooing drama king, not at all. I just cant hold stuff back, and used too I could pull off this little stone faced guy who was not going to let you know you hurt me (to a point).

Worst of all is I feel something no person can hide... Some feel love and all these fuzzy feelings. I feel it when someone has hate in them... It gives me the most uncomfortable feeling I know of. Its like I see and feel a dead rotting corpse who is still living, breathing, and spewing out this icky mist of something I cant describe. Is that empathy? Or is it intuition? I truly don't know.

I have worried over this enough that I took narcissist test, bi-polar test, schizophrenia tests, all sorts of tests... and they say that I am "normal" which makes me laugh deep inside...

I don't think I can honestly answer Full Steams question. I don't think I truly know if I know where my empath crosses over into emotions and my emotions cross over into intuition. I just try and be me, and hope that is acceptable, and its usually not, but such is LIFE. : )

 

[WereBear]

The thing is, the folks who came up with that list of "symptoms" only want empathy given in a certain way.

What I'm seeing is, they are not always genuine about their feelings. They just respond in a way that they believe they're expected to

Sadly so.

There’s also what I think of as the Old Yeller vs Steel Magnolias situation.

In Old Yeller a dog saves a child’s life and dies from it. I was so upset I still cannot watch that movie, and it has been decades since.

In Steel Magnolias someone dies but I don't care because they did really stupid things to get there. So the women around me are crying and looking at me like I’m cold because I’m not snuffling into a tissue.

To some people that would make me messed up because I care far more about the fictional dog than I do about the fictional person. But the dog died sacrificing himself for someone he loved. The person was foolish and selfish and caused a lot of pain because of it.

I just can’t feel the same about nobility that I can about stupidity.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Imagine a toddler who drops a toy.

They scream as if it is the end of the world.

My idea is that one part of the brain can be overdeveloped ie intellect etc
One part - under.
The part ofnsocial learning that makes dropping a toy insignificant is perhaps missing..
Perhaps we don't develop those boundaries in a normal way.
We shut down instead. Our way of getting round the feeling too much problem.
So this continues over many years and our methods become complex and hard to understand even to ourselves.

That was my idea. Not being able to balance that pain from those early toddler days.

 

[Streetwise]

@Midnight Mushroom just thought if they are distressed try to discern if the area you are in is safe for them to be there if not ask in a calm quiet voice if you could both go and sit somewhere that is safer ( this is just FirstAid training for panic attacks )
Another one is if it's a small child !ask the parent or guardian if the child is unwell (if for instance the child seems unnaturally quiet)and can you help !doing these things will become natural .

 

[Utini]

I also feel what other people feel in real time. I cried when gay marriage was voted for this week, and I feel what people in films feel quite strongly.

Anyone else like this?

No.