Empathy is the ability to see the world as another person, to share and understand another person’s feelings, needs, concerns and/or emotional state… understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another… not trying to solve the problems of another, the goal being to share the experiences of feelings; to let them know you’re there and that how they feel matters to you.
Being an empath is much more than being highly sensitive and it’s not just limited to emotions. Sometimes life is unconsciously influenced by others’ desires, wishes, thoughts, and moods.
If sensitivity is a deficiency and a burden, we become weary, needy and very vulnerable… retracting joy into fears and upsets… and self-destructive harm. At this layer of development, the adolescent or adult empath will model co-dependent behaviors… children that are not growing up in an openly accepting loving home may begin modeling co-dependent behaviors before even two years old.
All of us need strong, healthy community supports, shared language at these, and empaths may need to have opportunities to unload the burden of fatigue and emotional upset. With belonging, progress to cultivate personal preferences and learned practices that increase healthy social interaction within the support community. This will strengthen mind, body, extend calm and help remaining grounded.
Empaths need not resign themselves to belief founded on anxiety or past emotional upsets that they must suffer the consequences of a tel-empathic interaction. With guidance from adepts, you may even begin to alter the mood and emotion of others… adjusting them into your calm. Insecurity and immaturity, lack of awareness, inappropriate co-dependent behaviors, use of manipulation, psychosocial drams, etc. can be addressed.
A happy empath extends joy. The ability to perform so, to extend joy always reduces any vulnerabilities.
<Empath support (The Empath Haven) on Facebook>
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Eric
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Related:
- morning Meditation
- Happiness: Self-acceptance
- Looking at yourself honestly – Respect
- Looking at yourself honestly – Gratitude
- Spiritual Laws of Success
- Mindfulness – it is improving us
- we exchange energy – always
- listen with compassion
- your eMotion matters
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Wonderful post, Eric! I think that I have finally become a happy and peaceful empath. That was not always the case for me.
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Teal Swan asks, “Have you ever felt like you were in a situation where no matter what you try to do to heal, trying to heal yourself just makes matters worse and self help or any other steps you may take towards healing just makes you feel worse and worse and worse?”
Egoistic contradictory nature is rooted in conditioning that begins in our earliest years. I’ve been exploring this in my courses, in mentoring, and with small groups; see: Mirror work
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In her The Healing Trap ‘Ask Teal’ video, Teal Swan diagrams the egoistic contradictory nature here: video
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"When you are caught in the healing trap, we need to create alignment between the two warring aspects of ourselves by doing the following… 1) Showing the aspect of you that needs a solution that the conditional approval that is inherent in our quest for healing is the actual problem and thus unconditional approval as the actual solution. 2) Showing the aspect of you that needs unconditional approval that the other aspect of itself is trying to find solutions, not because it needs it to change to be loved, but because it loves it already and thus obviously wants it to feel good instead of bad. In other words, healing can be loving instead of a commentary on wrongness. 3) Allow yourself to mentally leave one aspect of yourself out of the picture and where it wants to be while meeting the other aspect’s needs. "
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"We need to accept that as people, we are not a unified self even though we call ourselves by one name. We are a conglomeration of many selves, many aspects of selves and many of them, contradictory in nature. Unless we recognize this in ourselves, we will be forever trying to suppress aspects of ourselves in favor of others and thus will stay in a state of fracture and disunity instead of wholeness."
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The video diagram and explanation demonstrates why you need a mentor. Someone other than you may be able, with you, to restore the solution and the unconditional approval to neutrality.
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I am a mentor and instructor, editor, researcher.
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Wonderful Article. Giving much need guidance to both Empaths and those who know an Empath.
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge.
The Empath Haven
Reblogged this on Emerging From The Dark Night and commented:
I found this full of insught. Many of us can struggle as empaths.