Confessions of an Empath

I love traveling but unlike most people, I have to go through a series of preparations before I can think about leaving my house (and I don't mean packing the night before or being OCD with my schedule , although I do that anyway). I am talking about the mental, meditative and sometimes physical preparation as I have recently discovered something about myself.

My confession: I'm an empath.

I feel other peoples’ emotions as if they’re my own.

Often, their pain mostly physically.  On an unusually strong level.

Whether I know them or not.

I shake when I see other people experience awe. I cry during sappy commercials and Lifetime movies.  Nearly every episode of Scandal leave me a blathering mess. Stuff just seems to get to me more easily than others. I'm embracing this side of myself instead of resisting. I’ve known this since I was a kid, and a Reiki healer once warned me of this as well as other spiritual healers I have spoken to recently. I guess I just didn't accept it until recently.

There’s good and bad thing about it..........

It’s been hugely beneficial in allowing me to connect with people where I felt my way through the conversations on a more intuitive level, processing beyond words. And, as a human being on a quest to be more human and better understand what this lap on the planet is all about, it lets me know, on a visceral level, what people are experiencing. It allows me to see people more easily from a place of grace and forgiveness.  To drop the judgment. Not always. And not everyone. I’m still very much a work in progress (VERY MUCH). But more often than not.

But it also comes with a dark side…

When you're around energy vampires, I get easily hijacked, powerless against a negative spiral.  hen someone else is in pain, physically, it can be hard to dissociate from it. I was reminded of this, on a personal level, a week ago when I saw a woman passing me by in a wheel chair with her leg propped up in a cask. It looked as though she just left the hospital and she'd broken her leg and was in pain.  My partner mentioned how it must suck to be in that position on a beautiful summer day, and we began to acknowledge and talk about this lady and broken legs. Feeling empathetic, I felt bad for her but wished her well silently. Not before long and I mean within seconds I twisted my ankle.  Not a coincidence.

A few days later, a friend mentioned she had to go to funeral, I was fine until she began to tell the story about how her aunt had heart failure,  and as she struggled to choke back her tears, I could barely breath and my chest began to ache.  I've always been accident prone as a kid but this new realization or acceptance has made it all crystal clear. Sure sometimes its because I am a total cluts but in most instances its not.  This dark side reveals itself in the lure of the emotional rabbit hole. I need to be able to tap into others’ emotions to understand how best to serve them. But I also need to be able to convert emotions into positive experiences that matter. To engage with enough dispassion to allow insight and action.

So, what TO do?

Completely disconnect with people? Walk around with your shields on high all day? Divert with humor and sarcasm (all part of my arsenal, btw, with varying levels of efficacy). Some say I belong in a bubble and am not so sure I don't disagree with them but I have found s practical and super sexy looking one yet. Let me know if you do :-) .

It’s hard enough to process your own emotion, let alone manage the vein that channels others’ emotions into you. That said, I wouldn’t change it for the world. Because…To feel is to be live.

It’s the raw fuel that births moments, interactions, experiences and the creation of art and meaning.

The challenge, always is to understand when to let it in, when to raise the shields entirely. And when to let in just enough to fuel connection, wisdom, compassionate action…and extraordinary art.

I am starting to accept and dance with this process. I know that it has fueled intense painting, blogging, jags over the past year amongst getting this itch to be inked, converting my own and others’ raw transferred emotion into creative output.

I’m convinced that many of the world’s greatest artists, writers, composers were empaths. Bundling sensed extrinsic emotion with their own and channeling it onto the page, canvas, medium or instrument. Partly, in the quest to create art, but also in the name of survival. A way to open a conduit that allows all that channeled emotion to pour through, rather than consume them. In the next few weeks and months to come I hope it will fuel something  entirely different where i can find something to help me process life as an empath.

It doesn’t make everything better. What i hope is that it will allow me to understand when I’m being drawn in. And then make a more deliberate decision about whether I’m going to be open to empathy or compassion. And how much. The latter, allowing me to understand, to see and feel, but with enough detachment to still be able to act but not be physically impacted. Until then, here is to practicing mindfulness & compassion.......