I watched a little cartoon a while back about Sympathy vs Empathy and what those two words mean. The speaker, Dr. Brene Brown, went on to discuss on how empathy is a choice. We can choose to be empathetic towards others. And while I agree that people can try to understand another person’s point of view and be sympathetic towards them – for a true empath – the notion of choice is kind of funny.

It took me a while to realize that I, myself, am an empath. If you don’t really know what it means to be an empathic person – let me try to explain… When I was reading the Harry Potter book series, which yes – was years ago. When I was reading the fifth book – the one where Cedric Diggory had recently died, Voldemort is back, and Harry was very confused about things that were going on. Harry was very angry throughout a lot of that book. He was bitter and down-right furious all the time. So for me, as an empath reading that book, even though he was not a real person, I so much connected with him and what he was going through that I myself became angry and bitter and was sometimes downright unkind to those around me because I truly felt what he was feeling. And that’s a fictional character! He’s not even real and I know that! So just imagine how strongly this effects me with real, living people I care about.

So for a true empath, it has nothing to do with learning the right things to say to someone or trying to understand what someone is going through. (Though these are very good things!) An empath is a person who truly FEELS what the other person is feeling. You’re not just going through motions or saying what you’ve been taught is the proper thing to say to someone in a particular situation. An empathic person is someone who really feels that other person’s joy or pain.

So say I have a friend who is angry at her husband. I also begin to feel angry. Though the feeling is not my own and it’s not directed at my husband or evenly necessarily at hers, the anger is still very clearly there. If you are upset and hurt because someone was unkind to you, I also feel that pain and hurt. This is something I cannot shut off. It’s just the way I am. And it can be really wonderful for relating to people and helping them through a difficult time, but it can also be really tiring and frustrating because sometimes I will feel something and not have the slightest idea why I feel that way. It may be a lingering feeling from a conversation I had a day or two ago or I may have simply absorbed the feeling from someone I briefly interacted with at the store that day.

For me, being an empath also means that I’m fairly intuitive. As one of my friends put it, I “have a really strong instinct about people and things.” If my gut tells me that someone is mad at me – I’m probably right. Or sometimes I’ll get a weird vibe from my hubby and after talking to him realize he was feeling frustrated about something at work. I can know something is wrong without being told, but I most often don’t know the specifics. And I can sometimes be annoying about it – just ask Ryan. Because I’ll feel some weird vibe but not know for sure why I feel it. So I’ll end up asking a million times if something’s bothering him because I can’t shake the feeling and I don’t know why it’s there.

So as someone who is constantly absorbing emotions – there are certain things I have to do to balance myself to make sure I stay happy and healthy. For one thing, I’m a scheduling freak! I may not schedule downtime per say, but I do make sure that I have gaps in my schedule between social interactions so I can breathe and realign myself. Even spending large amounts of time with happy people can be exhausting because my energy feeds off theirs. So my joy is exponentially increased by the joy of those around me. So even after having a lot of fun with friends – I have to take time to find my own feelings again. Honestly, sometimes I don’t give myself enough alone time, but just making sure I have opportunities to re-center myself is important to me staying happy and also healthy.

Sometimes it this empathic quality means walking away from certain situations or people. For instance, if I spend a lot of time with someone who is constantly finding things to complain about, I absorb that and I, myself, become constantly negative. And as someone predisposed towards depression – that’s not a good thing for me. So that ends up being  a situation where I slowly spend less time with that person for the sake of maintaining my own well being. It also means that after something like a funeral, I will need at least 24 hours to try and balance back out again. Because I’m not only feeling my own grief but that of everyone around me. So you can imagine that heightened sense of sorrow that takes hold.

I know this is probably a weird and difficult thing to understand because I didn’t even understand this until recently myself and I have a hard time trying to explain it. Sometimes I think it’s impossible to understand this empathic absorption trait unless you are an empath. But I personally find it really interesting (being the weird, introspective person that I am). I do agree with Dr. Brene Brown that you can choose to be a more empathetic person, and I think the world would be a better place if we all tried to understand where other people are coming from. So those were my random little thoughts for today.

Have a great weekend everybody and I will be out of the office for the next two weeks but you can still stop by the journal and see my ramblings. 🙂