Empathy,
Most of us know what that is.
We’re taught as kids what having empathy for someone means, and what sympathy is too.
To feel empathy for someone means to understand and share the feelings of others. To feel sympathy for someone is to have pity or sorrow for someone’s misfortune.
Most people can feel either or both, and I’ve met people who can’t feel either.
This subject is close to me because I am an empath.
My understanding and acceptance of what it means to be an empath hasn’t been an easy one either.
I’m from a big family. I’m the eldest of six kids, and when you have six kids, you have six very different personalities.
With me, they got a sensitive little soul, who didn’t understand why they felt their emotions so intensely. It wasn’t just my emotions I felt, but those of others around me too, only I/we didn’t understand that at the time.
When I was growing up, mental health and the like were not talked about. It wasn’t understood back then. I learned what an empath was when I was in my twenties, possibly even much later.
All I knew was that I was a sensitive person. I was often labelled the cry-baby because emotions would overwhelm me and my body’s response to that was to cry.
This label stayed with me well into my late twenties and early thirties.
I remember admitting to a friend once that I hated who I was. I hated being sensitive, I hated feeling everyone’s emotions around me. I hated how it affected my relationships with people around me, and I badly wanted to change it.
For a long time, I battled with these feelings towards myself. I remember I met a neighbor who, when I admitted to her how sensitive I was and that I wasn’t fond of it, she flat-out told me how strong that made me. I was so confused. I said to her that feeling all those emotions didn’t feel like strength to me.
My memory of why she thought it was a strength is a little foggy, but I think its foggy because I was in total shock that she thought that of me. People around me treated me like I was weak, so I believed I was weak. But from that moment on, I tried changing my view of myself. If you have to live with it, why not learn to love it.
A lot of my issues, came from the opinions of people in my life.
From then on, I tried to remind myself, regularly, that who I was didn’t make me a weak person. I told myself I didn’t need the opinions of others, that they didn’t matter.
Changing that narrative wasn’t and isn’t easy.
My childhood had its difficulties. I was bullied at school. An easy target when the sensitive little girl reacts to nasty words.
When you are picked on, for everything, it molds a person. Not only was I sensitive, but I became a people pleaser and someone who cared far too much about what people thought of her. I was afraid to voice my opinion, because the fear of a confrontation was overwhelming, and my reaction to those emotions wasn’t something I was equipped to handle.
None of these make a good mix.
I had to retrain my brain to think differently about myself. I had to learn to love myself. Something I hadn’t done a lot of.
At the time of this revelation, I was a mother of two small kids and a wife.
I had two little people I had to guide into their personalities and teach them how to live in this world. How do you do that when you feel so confused about who you are as a person?
I once thought I’d just try to change my personality. I thought that would be easier. Isn’t there a saying ‘Fake it till you make it’? Unfortunately, that wasn’t the path for me. I didn’t know who to change into. But more importantly, I knew I would be lying to myself. That wasn’t a choice I wanted to make.
There was a lot of hard work that went into changing a negative belief system. You have to forget years of taunts and name-calling.
I learned what it meant to be an empath. Just because I felt my own emotions so strongly and the emotions of those around me, it didn’t mean I had to let them control my reactions in confronting situations.
Managing that took time. I didn’t set out to trigger those emotions. No one chooses to get into situations to trigger a reaction within one’s self. But knowledge and understanding of what you’re experiencing holds a certain amount of power.
I’ve never been comfortable in any type of confrontation or conflict. Whether it be with someone I knew or in a work-type situation.
I learned to recognize my feelings in that moment, and then I learned to put my reaction to those feelings/emotions aside until later.
When in a confrontation, when I felt too much, the old me would just cry. Then I would get frustrated and angry because I wouldn’t be able to say what I wanted to say. I would feel choked up with all the feelings in the room, and it put a stop to my ability to voice what I wanted to voice. I had to retrain myself to not let that emotion control my reaction in that moment.
Later, I would let myself feel all the emotions of the situation, in private.
Sometimes, it would take time. Depending on what had transpired. I’d let myself think about it for a certain period, then help myself move on from it.
I had to stop myself from continually reliving the situation repeatedly, because I would then start to play the should’ve, could’ve, would’ve game. I had to be careful not to fall into my overthinking patterns.
When you learn something new, with personal growth, and feel strength within yourself, you often get tested. There will be ones you pass, and some you fail. This only builds strength, as you learn something new from your failures. Don’t be afraid to fail, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. It only teaches you how to be better.
One of the biggest tests of my life came when my marriage broke down.
A new world was thrust upon me. One I had no skills to navigate. I wasn’t prepared for what followed.
Any growth I’d made, was quickly buried. I became a shell of the person I once was. I was in survival mode, and I barely survived.
I’ve touched on this period a little in my overthinking blog.
A lot of things happened, in one period of time, that sent me spiraling.
Pulling myself out wasn’t easy. Learning to love all of me again was, at times, traumatic.
We all have that voice that tells us something is wrong, there are a lot of different beliefs about what that is.
That voice can be helpful, and sometimes it can do more damage. Learning when to trust it can be challenging.
When you’re in a heightened sense of fight or flight mode, being an empath becomes incredibly hard.
You can walk into a room, and feel everyone’s emotions. You become more aware of body language, and tones of voice. Everything.
And sometimes, that can make you feel things or interpret things a lot differently. Sometimes, it’s on point. Other times, it’s not. But when your own emotions and feelings are in turmoil, judging a room can take its toll. Often, I found the emotions of others would trigger mine.
I remember feeling like no one would understand how I felt, but I know that’s not true now. I remember feeling so completely alone, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.
I stand with you. And I support you in finding peace and strength within yourself. Being an Empath isn’t easy. But things aren’t the same now as they once were.
I’m often reminded of how far we have come with technology. How easy it is now to access tools that help us in different ways.
Life is full of lessons. We all seem to have a love/hate relationship with them.
But not all lessons need to be learned alone nor do you have to learn them without access to tools so easily available to us.
If you need to reach out, feel free to contact me, I’m always here to help out where I can.
Until next time, remember…
Be kind to yourself x
