Have you ever walked into a room full of people and felt sudden emotional pain? Do you find yourself laughing with joy while children playing? Perhaps you are an empath.
Science defines these experiences in two ways: an emotional contagion or being empathic.
Emotional contagion “is the tendency for empathetic people to “catch” the feelings of others.” This occurs either by absorbing and unconsciously mimicking their (micro) facial expressions, or experiencing a reaction in your brain to the “group think,” going on around you.
An Empath is someone “who experiences the emotions of others,” according to Merriam-Webster. So what determines whether you are experiencing emotional contagion or you are an empath?
13 Signs of an Empath
Highly Sensitive Refuge offers these tips to help determine whether or not you are an empath.
- You take on other people’s emotions as your own
- Sometimes you experience overwhelming emotions in public
- You can feel the “vibe” in a room
- You understand where people are coming from
- People seek your advice
- You are incapacitated by violent events on TV (even if it is fiction)
- You can’t contain your love for pets, animals, or babies
- You may feel people’s physical illness (this is a big one!)
- You can be overwhelmed in an intimate relationship
- You are a walking lie detector
- You can’t understand why a manager won’t unite his team around shared goals
- You have a calming effect on people, and you have the power to heal
- You cannot see someone in pain without wanting to help
Experiencing the emotions of others is tough. It can sometimes make empaths feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. This is especially true if the empathic individual “feels” the impact of a catastrophe on human, plant, and animal life.
Empaths Can Feel Shifts in Energy
Empaths can feel emotions and shifts in energy. Whether it’s people, animals, plants and trees, or the weather, empaths are able to tune in and feel deeply. When you combine the gifts of intuition and being empathic, life becomes very interesting indeed!
For example, it’s natural for empaths to feel overwhelmed in rooms full of people. Whether its a crowd of people at a festival, a funeral, a church service, or a mall, the feelings are real. An empath may even have feelings that are not their own and wonder where the feelings came from because it’s “just not like you to think that way.”
Sometimes thoughts can be pretty heavy. This was the case with Dr. Judith Orloff, a professor of Psychiatry at UCLA. She knew she was an empath with the gift of intuition but chose to stick with her professional training and ignore her gifts. One day, she was meeting with a client who seemed to be in great spirits and doing well. That’s when Dr. Orloff had a flash of intuition that the client was contemplating suicide. Dr. Orloff ignored the message. After the session, the client did attempt suicide but lived. Following that close call, Dr. Orloff chose to embrace her intuition and include it as a tool in her practice.
Energy Vampires and Narcissists Love Empaths
Empaths are compassionate, emotionally deep, caring people that only want to help, making them a target for people who exhibit toxic behavior. Narcissists tend to gravitate towards empaths because empaths provide emotional healing, and narcissists don’t have to give anything in return (reciprocity).
While narcissists cannot be ignored, empaths can limit their engagement with them. The key for empaths to maintain a healthy mind-body-spirit is to practice self-care.
Self-Care is Important for Everyone
The best solution for the empath who experiences the emotional drain of a narcissist or energy vampire or even catastrophic events is to determine what drains you then allocate some quiet time to ground oneself.
You can ground yourself by putting your feet in the grass, doing some deep breathing, or meditating. Another option is to visualize the person and their words drifting away from you on a cloud while saying to yourself, “I give everything back to you.”
Establishing boundaries, eating well and limiting negative thoughts are three additional ways to handle the fallout from empathic events. For more coping skills for empaths visit: AConsciousRethink.com.
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