Empathy is when you have no sense of other people’s boundaries and you blame your emotions on other people. Just kidding. An empath is someone who feels other people’s feelings. Well kinda “just kidding”. Okay, you might read this article and say “f******ck what happened to you?” To be completely honest I am a little fed up with the empath community and frankly, it pulls to it a lot of broken people and send them out with an empath badge and they can act in all sorts of toxic ways. This is NOT limited to empaths, but it is one of many communities that do this. So, a huge part of this is about how to use the ability properly. This ability is called empathy and a person who has the ability is called an empath. I call it an “ability“, but some people experience it as a vulnerability rather than an ability. It’s all to do with how you handle it. This article is more about managing empathy rather than doing it.
Empathy normally occurs because the empath has a high exchange of energy with other people. Other people’s energy, which is drenched with their own emotions, gets sucked into the empath’s system and then they feel the emotion as if it were their own. It is frequently hard to tell where a feeling comes from, but normally it is either you or the person you are interacting with. Also when in a room with a lot of people for the empath it can feel overwhelming.
Some people do this very naturally. Others develop it as they develop psychic abilities and work with energy a lot. Frequently, a person who has empathy might not know. They will often experience being overly emotional for seemingly no reason. The hard part is distinguishing between being empathic and simply being extra-emotional. Now extra-emotional is far more common than empathy, but a lot more people prefer to label themselves as an empath because it feeds their ego better than being “overly emotional”. Frequently, people are both so don’t worry about labels. Everyone has some level of energy exchange going on and I have never met a human being who would not benefit from some form of therapy to understand why some of their emotions affect them so deeply.
Learning to be Empathic?
So empathy often develops very naturally. Those of us who are empathic spend a lot of time managing it. It can be really helpful when we are spending time checking people’s wellness, but most of the time we are feeling people’s emotions when we don’t want to, when we need to concentrate on the latest spreadsheet, when we just want to dance in the club and when someone has unjustly got angry at us. Also, many people do not temper their own emotions with rationalism, so it can be quite frustrating feeling their unregulated emotions. I spend most of my time with a heavy shield up and take it down at times when it feels like someone has something emotional to tell me.
If a person wants to try to develop this ability. Then I recommend finding a time when they are calm and mostly unemotional and when they can spend some time with someone else who is happy to help in a room where they won’t be disturbed. Begin exchanging energy with the other person you can do this by holding hands and allowing energy in through one limb and out through the other. This person you’re sharing with can focus on an emotive memory. Then as the exchange happens just see how you feel inside. If an emotion comes then it might be yours, but it could also be someone else’s emotion. Make notes. Ask them to move on to another emotion. Perhaps get them to do 5 emotive memories without telling you about the memories. When you’re finished take some time to ground yourself and maybe re-shield. Then go through your notes with the other person and ask them not to say anything about any of the 5 memories until you have said all your notes, so they don’t feed into a false positive. When you’re finished explaining each impression you got, let them tell you about the memory (as much as they are willing) and tell you about how it makes them feel. Look out for matches. If this is working well then you might want to put a little distance between you and your target. Maybe exchange energy by a constructed tendril going from your heart to the surface of your target’s energy body near their heart centre.
Another way to develop empathy, especially if you do not want to discuss these things with other people, is to go alone to a quiet café or library with 5-10 people in it. Especially spread out. Allow yourself to absorb the atmospheric energy from the place. Create a flow of atmosphere to you from around some of the people around. Don’t invade their energy body, they might perceive this as a threat or just feel very uncomfortable and frankly, that’s essentially unethical vampirism, but general atmospheric energy is fine. See what emotions you pick up. Even if you don’t get the full emotion and you can’t confirm it with them you can still note down how it made you feel. This is a bit like a newly-born child. They need to look at a lot of blurred images before they learn how to focus. I used to do this a lot when I was younger and I would go to Reading Library. This was perfect because most people sat on their own and some genres of books had a certain feel to the emotions they generated in their readers. Family Sagas were often sad and longing, children’s books seemed to make adults happy when they read them (so did Terry Pratchett), and there was a sense of comfort that Mills and Boon readers seem to get from them (I didn’t get the horny impressions I would have expected). I often did not get much of a reading from Sci-fi readers or readers of war stories though I hoped to get thrilling feelings. I hoped to pick up on someone feeling love and reading a romance novel or feeling intrigued and reading crime, but it seemed to me that readers of crime fiction and romance rarely read them in the library.
By practising this over and over you begin to naturally have the increased energy share in conversations and you can pick up on the energy of rooms the result being, you can become quite empathic. Before doing this A LOT I recommend reading through the next section of this article.
How to not be a dick
1. Respect Boundaries
People’s emotions are theirs. Not yours to go prying on. If you receive an impression best to just ignore it unless someone is having difficulty knowing what they are feeling and they actually say “I don’t know what I am feeling”. Many people like to keep their emotions to themselves and only open them up with very few confidants. That might only include brothers and sisters or friends from school. Sometimes it might only include people they do not know and will likely never see again. Sometimes only the setting of a professional relationship where they can expect a certain distance and unconditional positive regard. So firstly just because you can feel something, does give you the right to instantly go snooping. On the rare occasion when I am alone with someone and I get an emotional impression, I might check for body language clues that might confirm that. If I feel I have a close enough relationship with someone I might say, “You look like you’re perplexed/sad/worried (or whatever). Is there something you want to talk about?” If they say no. I totally respect that and drop it like a bag of sand. Also, look at the language I used. “Do you WANT to talk about it?” I’m asking not only for their consent but also their enthusiasm. They might be willing to talk about something but don’t really want to. It’s their responsibility for them to get the help they need.
2. Don’t be a saviour
You might feel that some divine spirit gave you this gift for a reason. It also gave you a brain to use and try and be sensitive to when you are supposed to use it. Not every impression is a message from the divine telling you to intervene in someone else’s life. I have had people try and imagine there is something wrong with me that I would benefit from being fixed, while they have no income stability, no love relationships, no social support, no sleep pattern, poor health, poor mental health, no ability to communicate and no ability to take responsibility for things. They looked at me like I needed fixing and started to give me advice on how they do things to deal with the emotion that they assumed I must be feeling. An emotion they could not deal with in their life that I wasn’t even feeling. It might make you feel good to help other people, but if you feel you need to help other people in order to feel good, you’re actually just using them to make you feel better. There have literally been more times when I have pretended to be really helped by someone who just needed to feel like they were helping than there were times I was actually helped when I didn’t ask for it.
3. Don’t assume you know better
I have people who don’t understand me and assume I should be feeling what a neurotypical person feels. I have even said to people “no, I’m not feeling that right now” and been told I am in denial. That I don’t realise what I am feeling. Now no matter how empathic you are, you will not feel an emotion more than the person to whom it belongs. Read that previous sentence again. I am sorry if you think this to be the case, but in my experience, this does not happen. More often it is the empath who is in denial about the origin of their feeling. If someone is not feeling something, what you are feeling is probably not their emotion. Do NOT gaslight them. Don’t tell them that they are feeling something, but they have something wrong with them, which prevents them from experiencing their own emotion. For example “I think you’re repressing it”. “You seem to be avoiding this emotion.” It is far more likely it is your emotion, relating to something you have repressed than you picking up on someone else’s emotion that they are not currently feeling. Even if they are feeling it, they just might not want to talk to you about it and for whatever reason that might be, you need to respect that. See section 1, “Respect boundaries”.
4. Dump outwards
Have you ever heard the expression dump outwards? So if someone is going through an extremely emotional time, because of something that has happened in their life, for example, the death of a loved one. If you feel some of the emotion through empathy DO NOT dump your emotional baggage on the person who is closer to the trauma than you are. I have seen people who were short-term friends with the deceased dumping their emotional baggage on the bereaved spouse of the deceased. That’s not right. Now not only does Penny need to deal with her bereavement of Charles and the emotions associated, but now, she also has the added stress of listening to Kevin’s sadness that he can no longer go metal detecting with Charles. That’s not fair on her. Dump outward. Imagine concentric circles around the trauma. Some people are closer to it than others. If you need to trauma dump, seek support or cry to someone. Go for someone in a circle further outward.
This is doubly common with empaths. Empaths can feel your emotional baggage, so if you’re emotional they might need to dump. Who is best for them to speak to about your emotions? Well, the source of the emotion. Where do they end up dumping? They dump your emotions back on you when you were already trying to deal with them. Do NOT do this. If you need to dump turn to someone less involved with the circumstance. That person can probably talk about it in a calmer mindset than people closer to the cause of pain and help you resolve the situation without feeling involved.
5. Get Training
Train yourself to handle your ability energetically. Yes. But also if you imagine you might be ready to listen to people about their problems, then get training before you do it. Many local authorities pay to train people as Mental Health First Aiders (I am trained as one). Many online courses are available for cheap in counselling (I have completed many). Do not just rush in. I do not quite understand it, but whenever I go to events people come to me to trauma dump. I feel like I have a big sign that says counsellor when often I am there to dance, have sex and chat, but there’s something about my aura that says go talk to him. I feel like it is 100 times worse when I have a lanyard on. Oh, he works here maybe he won’t be rude if I ask too much of him. Do I decide to jump on people and try to fix them? No, I try not to act like I have a saviour complex. I just let them talk about what they’re willing to talk about. If it’s an emergency then I use MHFA’s AALGEE method and I might refer to them a group for their particular issues (this is partly so I don’t get overwhelmed). I typically apply Samaritan’s Active Listening techniques, Carl Roger’s unconditional positive regard, empathy and, when it is a regular issue with the same person, remarks about relevant congruence. If it is someone who wants to be coached, I use BOOST feedback, set SMART goals and coach them using the GROW model and CBT techniques. If you have never heard of any of these things then get some training in counselling or something. These are mostly typical basics. Without knowing any of this stuff you could really be doing more harm than good. I was concerned about just how many people came to me about their issues at a bear event when I had a lanyard on and decided to spend money on a Udemy course there and then to give me advice on how to do it professionally. When the weekend was over I got myself trained in Mental Health First Aid funded by the council.
Block it out
Sometimes being empathic is not helpful at all. There are times when it’s someone’s stag do so I can’t just go home, it would be rude, but whatever bar they have decided to go to, is not only screaming in my ears but also in my heart as well. Sometimes, in order to manage, you need to shut it all out.
The easiest way to do this is as follows:
- Step away from immediate sources of emotion or psychic noise putting physical distance between you.
- Focus on the core of your energy. Draw energy from above you and below you into your core to add to it. Do this a few times until your core begins to expand because you have put a lot of energy into it.
- Then focus on just the outer layer of your core and breathe in. During the out-breath I want you to imagine just that outer layer inflating like a balloon. Leaving the rest of your core intact. Keep going until the inflated balloon begins to be on the outside of you.
- Then just inflate it upwards and downwards until it makes an oval bubble that surrounds your entire body.
- When you’re entirely inside the bubble visualise all the walls of the bubble becoming like the walls of a car tire. Very sturdy and solid, but with a tiny bit of give to them. That give prevents them from shattering if pressed too hard and imagining it like rubber programs the shield to bounce things away.
- You can also imagine that the surface of the bubble is like a reverse magnet that repels things away from it before they touch it to reduce the chance of it being damaged.
- From time to time this bubble might need topping up with energy to keep it working.
This should completely seal you away so you can interact with other people with far less empathic noise.
Dampen it
Sometimes things are a bit much, but you do not want to cut yourself off completely. You would rather just dampen the noise a bit. You can do the same exercise as above but instead of turning it into a tyre you can make the walls of it a bit like organza mesh material with a layer of cotton wool in it. Maybe that doesn’t work and a cloud is a better visualization for you. Imagine a picture or material that tells you that you want a dampening shield and not a blocking shield.
I believe I was listening to Shadowdance a podcast by M. Belanger and she gave the example of a friend who liked to do knitting in some fluffy socks. It felt very comfortable and if that friend had a rough day, they came home, put on the fluffy socks and started knitting. A good shielding visualisation for her was to imagine putting on those socks and then pulling them all the way up their legs where they would sort of turn into a sleeping bag that she could pull all the way over her whole body. This was because her brain associated the socks with having that safety removed from people and relative comfort.
This needs a little bit more concentration and regular topping up of energy. Also, you might need to occasionally remind your shield what it is meant to look like because after a while it may begin to lose shape. You do that by reaching out feeling the energy of it, and visualizing it returning to the shape it is supposed to have.
Selective Empathy
There are two main ways to do this. You can visualise your shield, but this time imagine it like a plastic semi-transparent filter for colours of light. Plastic, coloured, see-through sheet that only lets one colour of light through. Now imagine it matches the colour of the energy of people you want to feel empathy for so their energy can come straight through, but other people’s cannot. Alternatively, if visualising it like a light colour filter, then simply do the previous exercise and command the mesh fabric to only let in the people you want and to act like a net which catches other people’s energy.
Another method is to set it up like the rubber wall, but open a hole directly aimed at the person you want to feel for and reach toward the atmosphere directly around them.
This sort of shield needs regular energy, even more so than the previous ones and also, you are going to need to keep reasserting how this shield works. It will forget its programming and you’re going to need to remind it or reshape it to explain its process.
Conclusion
Empathy is a power. But it often leads us to do things which are not helpful. Sometimes it seems like a vulnerability that you wouldn’t want to offer to anyone. Learning to take control of it, means it can become a powerful gift that can be used to help people. However, if you do this make sure you respect people’s boundaries, allow them the final say of their own emotions AT ALL TIMES and don’t assume you’re the appointed saviour at any time. Always be prepared to have a wrong impression, don’t assume you have perfect impressions. Even if it might not be wrong, a professional counsellor sometimes needs to entertain the narrative that the client is presenting no matter how little they believe in it. It is important for the empath to act similarly.