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Are you an empath?

I talk to nature every day

I also wave to stars that seem to swerve around in a pattern when I do..

And I pray to the south star near my apartment at night and conduct luciferian rituals in my kitchen.
 
Yes on my end. Made a post about this recently (surprised it hasn't been referenced since I seem to get called out for duplicate posts).

I've realized I've been journaling about the nature of empathy since I was a kid. Still working on a poem about it. But I would also add a few more to this list. Like how things make you physically ill from the emotional overload. And another which I never find, how you make decisions based on your feelings. I don't just feel things and just go on with my own life. I take everything and everyone into account and try to live by it. I make decisions based on how it can affect others.
 
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Yes, and very intensely. Too intensely. I have a hard time dealing with it. Cant turn the bloody thing off.

The worst is something like a funeral. To this day I just refuse to go to them. Cant handle it. You may as well be telling me to walk into a wall of chainsaws.

What baffles me is how it works. Feeling the emotions of others? And what the heck is "energies"? Every site talking about the concept uses that word but they never say what the heck it means.

KOZMOZIS @realchrisharold said:
And I pray to the south star near my apartment at night and conduct luciferian rituals in my kitchen.
Click to expand...

Eh?
 
Misery said:
Yes, and very intensely. Too intensely. I have a hard time dealing with it. Cant turn the bloody thing off.

The worst is something like a funeral. To this day I just refuse to go to them. Cant handle it. You may as well be telling me to walk into a wall of chainsaws.

What baffles me is how it works. Feeling the emotions of others? And what the heck is "energies"? Every site talking about the concept uses that word but they never say what the heck it means.



Eh?
Click to expand...

Yeah: I have a scry mirror, and I practice binding the spirits into the scry mirror to communicate with the dead. My step grand father being one of them.
 
Having empathy and being an empath, I didn't think of as being practically the same.

Picking up on how someone else is feeling or thinking doesn't mean you let it in to affect your
energy.
It's more like mental empathy. Intellectually you know, but, remain detached.
I can feel the energies of a person or situation, but, I don't let it be a part of my feelings
unless I want it to be.

A lot of the traits it lists I relate to. Not sure they are related to being an empath.
Like being in nature and communicating with it. Yeah, I talk with the animals in words and in
an energy connection. I feel I don't fit in. Tend to isolate to recharge. Avoid conflict when
possible, but don't get in my face with a conflict. I don't back down if someone starts a conflict
with me.

@Misery Everything is energy. But, what is being spoken about in being an empath is being
able to "pick up" on those energies that surround and come from the situation or entity. You FEEL them. Gut feelings. Intuition.
These are ways I describe being an empath.
 
SusanLR said:
I can feel the energies of a person or situation, but, I don't let it be a part of my feelings
unless I want it to be.
Click to expand...

This gave me the image of a sea wall. How it braces against a wave. With charged situations and emotions I encounter - it can literally feel like a tidal wave has just crashed against me.

tumblr_3a8704113b3bae33639eda764824d78a_efa5578f_540.jpg


Ed
 
Raggamuffin said:
This gave me the image of a sea wall. How it braces against a wave. With charged situations and emotions I encounter - it can literally feel like a tidal wave has just crashed against me.

View attachment 70961

Ed
Click to expand...
I'd love to be standing on the end of that breakwater. Right next to the little building so I could duck inside quickly if the wave looked too dangerous.
 
I just know the word 'Empath' recently, and that's definitely me.
I literally feel the physical pain of my partner, on myself. I felt headache, without a cause. Then I asked my partner if she had a headache in specific area of her head. She's surprise that I know the exact area that she felt.
Sometimes I feel numb or sore on specific parts of body. And that's what my partner feels. Even we're like 50 miles apart.

I asked my friend about this, I thought it might be some kind of hypersensitivity, but she told me that I might be an empath. The physical oneness at that.
 
watersprite said:
According to that list the answer to your question is yes. I checked all of the descriptions but 1.
Click to expand...
I was thinking about this thread last night. The quiz showed I am an empath, but then I have to wonder why I don’t or can’t relate to people at funerals who are upset. The only people who seem to have a direct line to my emotions are my kids and the person with whom I used to be in a relatiinship. Maybe being around too many people at once kind of turns it off.
 
This subject is weirdly triggering for me. I relate 100% to each point in the article except for two things

"But as an empath, you take things a step further. You actually sense and feel emotions as if they’re part of your own experience. In other words, someone else’s pain and happiness become your pain and happiness."

And people do not tell me their problems.

As to the first point; I often don't even know how I feel. If I feel others pain and happiness as my own, how would I know?

And people don't tell me their problems because, well, I *am* autistic, thus weird to most people.

Also, I had a friend in high school who loved to tell me all about her super empath powers but I never saw it at all. She was simply manipulative so I am very wary of people making claims of being an empath. I often wonder if it really exists.
 
I think the article focuses on simply being an empath. There are social barriers with autism which some people can find offputting. As such some people might be very unwilling to share their problems, especially if we have a tendency to respond in a way that is vague (lack of interest) or offputting, and seen as rude. I find that with receptive people, when I open up and (over)share, others may respond in kind. Seeing that someone is willing to discuss their emotions and hardships seems to give others a greenlight to participate too. I noticed this particularly when I discuss my journey with anxiety or depression.

Personally I find that I'm doing some form of shielding for a prolonged period this year. What with the breakup, house sale, work stress etc. I feel like I'm really burnt out. As such, I'm trying to shield myself from other people's struggles through some sort of forced apathy or dismissiveness.

That's not to say when certain situations arise they don't utterly overwhelm me as I can't help but absorb whatever energy people are giving off. Usually it's at moments of confrontation where someone's charged energy is like a battering ram against my body. Yet the person involved wasn't even angry at me - all it takes is for me to witness the confrontation and I will be compromised too.

I think co-morbidities make life infinitely more complex, as one condition plays off another and it can be hard to pinpoint where the symptoms and struggles of one ends, and the other begins. It all feels interwoven, and it's quite a feat to navigate on a day to day basis.

Ed
 
@Suzette Could - are you thinking - a narcissist be mistaken for an empath? I mean by someone naive, which I tend to be, as ai always think the best of people, at first.
 
watersprite said:
@Suzette Could a narcissist be mistaken for an empath? I mean by someone naive, which I tend to be - always thinking the best of people at first.
Click to expand...
I think so. Be wary of statements like "I only want the best for you", "I know you better than you know yourself", "You know you like..." or "You know you always..". These are gaslighting phrases. That's not to say that anyone who has ever used these phrases are narcississtic. But repeated variations can signal they are trying to manipulate you.

Narcississim is another triggering subject. I think you just proved your worth as intuitive / psychic. : )
 
Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to trigger anything.
This thread has made a few perceptions drop into place about someone I I thought I was a partner.
 
The topic of empaths is quite interesting to me (cause I guess it's part of psychology). There definitely seems to be a correlation between autism and empaths.
Often family trees that have autists also have empaths, which originally led me to think maybe they were opposite sides of a coin.
But, I've since met a number of autists that are also empaths, so they can't be opposites as they coexist in individuals.
I'm alexithymic, so I am very often disconnected from my feelings (this may apply to you as well @Suzette). My next thought was perhaps empath is the opposite end of alexithymia (hyper-connected to emotion instead of hypo). But, I know at least one person that is all 3 (AS, Alexithymic and Empath).

So, my current conclusion is that they must all be somehow genetically similar traits, such that all 3 often show up together in families (I have at least a couple Empath relatives that are not AS). But they seem not to be mutually exclusive of each other in any way.

As for manipulative people and being Empath.. Those are separate things too. There are articles out there on "dark empaths". Empaths that use abilities to manipulate others. But, I guess I see that as no different than any other person being manipulative. Being manipulative or even narcissistic can also happen in parallel with any/none of these other traits.
 
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