Poll Are you an empath? see definitions below.

[Deleted member 8714]

I feel very vulnerable sharing what I have shared.

. @Still Standing I have shared the Precognitive nightmares with my T and she didn't think I was crazy and she believed me. Though not every T's going to react this way. She asked me about the details of the Las Vegas mass murder in my nightmare. I had the guy's name correct, though a different spelling. I write down the details in my nightmares too.

The very first time I had one of those types of nightmares was about tornadoes sweeping through this one city in tornado alley. I was a kid at the time and I told my mother about it. She dissed me totally. My mother never was supportive of me. A week later the exact thing I told her about a family surviving the tornado by all of them hiding in the bathtub as the roof was ripped off their house was actually on the news on TV. We watched it together. She glanced over at me with this odd look on her face.

I wasn't certain how my T would react to hearing the rat speak to me. So I didn't share that. Though next time I see my T I'm going to tell her about all of my experiences with my empathic abilities. The reason is that she believes that they have a direct bearing on the many issues that I'm having in my recovery.

I do understand feeling vulnerable about sharing any of this. Before I read about it, I thought that I couldn't possibly hear the rat speaking to me as a nine year old. Yet after researching all of this, I now know it's possible. I spoke to that rat too. I didn't mention this until right now. Talking to animals and hearing them talk to me; it feels so unreal.

When my last dog, a Leonberger, was diagnosed with cancer I had already known he was dying. And then when he was ready to go, the day we euthanized him, I communicated with my eyes and heart to him. And I knew that he knew what I was saying. And I verbally said good-bye to him as well. I could tell by the look in his eyes he understood.

 

[littleoc]

All of them.

Incredibly inconvenient. Helpful at the same time

 

[Deleted member 8714]

I just used one of mine today and it saved me a whole lot of frustration.

 

[Deleted member 8714]

Two more types of empath I didn't mention were Medium Empath and Psychometric. Medium Empaths feels, sees, or hears spirits. The other one psychometric empath; receives energy, impressions, and information from inanimate objects.

As a Christian, I have the gift of discerning spirits. Years ago I took a seminar in this particular gift from an expert in it and spiritual warfare. I knew the moment that the man started speaking that I had all of gifts he was talking about.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am pretty much an out-of-control empath. Always have been. I don't know if I was born that way or it just developed. There is some overlap between being an empath and being a highly sensitive person (see work by Elaine Aron). There is a good book called The Art of Empathy by Karla McLaren. I started reading it, and quickly realized I needed to go back to her previous book, The Language of Emotions first. I'm glad I did, because that one was transformational for me.

@Congruency I found this really interesting. I'm definitely both of these.

Medium Empaths feels, sees, or hears spirits. The other one psychometric empath; receives energy, impressions, and information from inanimate objects.

I am working really hard as part of my therapy to close up the holes in my energetic fields so that I'm not so harmed by the energies surrounding me. It is more than setting physical and emotional boundaries. Has to do with psychic boundaries from the astral body. Way too woo-woo for a lot of people, but if you are having hyper-empathy problems, it's really helpful. Suggestions happily shared.

 

[EveHarrington]

After reading this post I’m more than convinced that “empath” is being confused with “hyper sensitive nervous system” which is a result of trauma.

 

[Hope4Now]

@EveHarrington I think there is a lot of cross-over because people traumatized (early on especially) develop systems that are finely tuned to other people and the environment surrounding them (e.g., dangers, emotions, etc.). I (personally, that is) don't believe that this sort of empathy extends to all areas of being an empath. I believe most people have the capacity to be empathic to some degree, but I don't think traumatization can account for pre-cognition, or spiritual attunement, or communication with environments that hold long past experience, or even with plant life and animal life. For me, at least, these things don't relate to any hypervigilance to potential danger, which would be part and parcel of PTSD & etc.

Some people might call these latter mentioned types of "empathy" just projection, but it is actually very different. I don't have all the kinds of empathy mentioned in this thread--and I am very aware when there are differences between what I project from my own experience vs. what is a seemingly inexplicable connection that makes me actually feel things or know things quite clearly. Some people call it psychic. Others empathic. Not sure it matters what the label is--just that it is a real thing, and it happens to people who have not been traumatized in such a way as to develop PTSD as well as those who have. All said, of course, IMHO.

 

[Friday]

Nope. Been accused of it, tons, but I’m just observant.

 

[Fadeaway]

I am a HSP. Whether it is spiritual in nature trauma in nature or other, the one thing I can't deny is my precognitive dreams. How do you explain dreaming of a place you have never been before of or having things play out word for word as they happened in your dream? I don't know. I go back and forth when it comes to my explanations of it, but when everything is exact, down to the lighting and shadows. I can't deny that something unusual has happened. Maybe it will be explained by science someday, who knows.

 

[Deleted member 43454]

I'm just a, "dude playing a dude disguised as another dude"
Not gunna lie though I got a prestine bullshit detector.
I also have had things come later on that were snippets outa dreams as well from years before. But nothing to bet your money on. Sorta like deja vu only I recall dreaming about seeing myself in that point in my life.

 

[AngelKeeperJ]

Lol..."I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as anther dude." Too funny!:D

There's no way to prove or disprove the manifestations of the SUPERNATURAL world, so it's pointless to try and debate.

LOVE this topic!

 

[Deleted member 8714]

After reading this post I’m more than convinced that “empath” is being confused with “hyper sensitive nervous system” which is a result of trauma.

I just read a website where it explains that empath is at the far end of a continuum which begins with narcissist/sociopath/psychopath and goes through loving empathic people, then HSP, and finally empaths. There is some overlapping in some areas with HSP yet they are different from each other in many ways.

In an article on Psychology Today: The Differences Between Highly Sensitive People and Empaths, Judith Orloff M.D. says, "Empaths share all the traits of what Dr. Elaine Aron has called "Highly Sensitive People," or HSPs." She goes onto explain what those are. In the next paragraph Orloff states, "...empaths take the experience of the HSP much further."

I got a prestine bullshit detector.

LOL I love this. Me too.