Is Anyone Out There An "empath"?

[Schubert]

Me too! Thank you Hope4now for bringing this up.

My empathy goes totally overboard. Those battery driven plush animals that move make halfway realistic noises... I feel sorry for them, I feel like I need to rescue them from the toy store and take care of them or something. I know it's crazy, but I can´t stop the chemistry that happens when I see and hear those... things... I just have to avoid them. Anyone else experience something like this?

 

[precious-things]

Yes! I'm an INFJ, and I have a MENSA level IQ. To be frank, it's killer. Being hyper-aware and analytical, hugely critical of society, and extremely empathetic on top of preexisting anxiety and depression, as well as PTSD... it's a soup from Hell. Do you know your MBTI by any chance?

 

[Schubert]

Hi precious-things, good to hear I´m not alone. No, I don't know my MBTI. I tried to take it a long time ago, but the either-or alternatives made me anxious, so I analyzed them to death and it became impossible to choose : )

 

[macca]

I haven't felt able to read the whole thread right now, but this is me as well. I ignore myself, and empathise deeply with others. Others' needs are always put above my own.

 

[seedling]

Since PTSD therapy I've discovered a part of me - her name is Voiceless - that I believe is the empathic part of me. She has started to grow up and be stronger now in my internal world.

As a child I used to have a lot of stuffed animals that I would sleep with and talk to at night. They understood me.

 

[precious-things]

Hi precious-things, good to hear I´m not alone. No, I don't know my MBTI. I tried to take it a long time ago, but the either-or alternatives made me anxious, so I analyzed them to death and it became impossible to choose : )

You don't have to take the test. If I get to know you a bit I could figure out your type. You sound like an NF, the (typically) more empathetic types. I could send you links to descriptions of the 4 NF types and you could decide which is most accurate for you! haha

 

[Hope4Now]

I feel sorry for them, I feel like I need to rescue them from the toy store and take care of them or something.

Well, maybe not the battery operated toys, but yes, very similar. Stuffed animals, trees, old cars, etc. and this is on top of people and actual animals/wildlife. It is brutal! Makes me feel completely insane sometimes.

 

[Barconian]

Told I needed to toughen up.

That's what I did, had to!

 

[Pietro]

Yes, I've wondered if mine grew out of an abusive childhood, or whether I was just born that way

I'm sure my empath skills developed as a survival skill.

It's likely both derived from genetics and environment. For those of us here, it likely became a survival skill.

There used to be a show on in the US called "Lie to Me". It became one of my favorite shows, because the premise of the show was a company that could spot liars, largely through empathic means. The main character would say that such empaths were "made" through their histories.

Being empathic could be considered a part of being "highly sensitive". Being "highly sensitive" enables one to be easily overwhelmed. And the latter can make it easier to become traumatized. As others have mentioned, developing boundaries, which we often weren't allowed to do as children, is the key to dealing with this. And to develop boundaries, you have to believe that you are worthy and deserving of them, and that no one, not even a parent, has a right to make you violate those boundaries for their interests.

 

[Valentino]

Others' anxiety, or sadness, or fear, becomes my own. Then, when I can't fix things for people, I torture myself inside for being useless and ineffective.

This is pretty common with empaths or highly sensitive people, they can easily get overwhelmed and take on other people's emotions or emotional baggage. It's quite opposite with aggressive personalities who actively try to dump their emotional responsibility onto others.

There's many different strategies for a potential Empath or HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) to deal with the dangers of taking on other's emotions. Typically it's some form of boundary setting and learning how to identify emotions.

I like Karla McLaren's work the best, she really can translate and teach the language of emotions for others. Elaine Aron might be one of the earliest pioneers who dubbed the term HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and estimates 15-20% of the population is HSP. Rose Rostetree is more metaphysical/new-agey has developed techniques for empath empowerment and energetic literacy, has also written several books.

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Within a trauma and PTSD context. I think some people develop and refine empathy skills due to adapting and trying to survive in an extended overwhelming and disorienting traumatic environment.

In order to avoid or prevent dangers and outbursts from the abuser, we learned to pay attention and be sensitive to their emotions. Learning to predict when they might blow up, meant a little bit of a head start to run away or defend ourselves. Also learning how to soothe, take on, and care for their emotions, also would help our safety, because it lowers the chance of them getting triggered and taking it out on us.

This becomes a habitual pattern, which might be the foundation for codependence, where personal identity gets replaced with a care-taking (outer prioritized focused) identity, with an unfortunate byproduct of losing touch with our inner self, personal needs and emotions.

 

[NarcSis]

I was reading a book called "Who Are You Meant To Be?" by Anne Dranitsaris,PhD & Heather Dranitsaris-Hilliard (and in typical "me" style got distracted and never finished the book!) but it had mentioned how in coming to assess personality styles all measures in themselves fail to connect the parts they report on to give an over whole of a person's personality. They've developed what they say is a better tool to understand the whole personality, from my perspective it was just the MBTI rewritten and I think this is why I gave up reading.

Anyway, from the little I did read and the few exercises I did take in the book I discovered that according to their measure my main Striving Style was as an Intellectual and my secondary style was Visionary, which from what they describe I take as essentially intuitive, not necessarily an empath but along those lines.

I always thought the term empath was a little New Agey for me but since my trauma I've experienced something that I can't quite wrap my head around - where I used to be able to separate from other's emotions, I now find I practically drown in them. On tv, in movies, real or not, if someone is extremely adept at portraying deep emotion, I will "suffer" that emotion right along with them - it makes it really difficult for me to function adequately in groups. Angry people make me angry, depressed people make me depressed (and angry because I don't want to be depressed!). Let's just say the emotional overload quotient has been severely lowered compared to what it was prior to my trauma.

Now prior to trauma, I was always again afraid to speak of the "quivering" sensation that I would get deep in my gut that often guided me in making decisions. Sometimes a word would pop into my mind and I would be able to prepare ahead of time and 99% of the time that feeling or whatever it was, was right. I just had a sense about my patients and it really helped me to deal with what transpired in the back of the ambulance. Since encountering trauma, that internal sense has seemingly disappeared. If I do get it now, it is often "fuzzy" and unclear or completely off-base because I can't "receive it" properly now.

Again, as a person who loves her science, I am open to things that we have yet to understand, I mean if there exist quantum particles that I can't see, then perhaps there is something to concepts of intuition and intricate complexities of perception that we have yet to understand, right?

I'm not sure if I'm an "empath" per se, rather, I know that as a highly self-aware person, I have experienced these odd shifts in my perceptions that seem to defy explanation.

 

[Hope4Now]

@Medic72 I hope your quivering sensations come back as you heal. I too seem to have lost access to my intuition that has guided my actions in life since these ptsd symptoms have come crashing in. Although I spent most of my life with a major part of myself dissociated in one way or another, I live in a sort of dual consciousness (as far as I know, I do not have DID or MPD etc.), where part of me is completely tuned into others' emotions, and intuits/advises on how I should respond. Now, however, it's just all one big tangled mess. May we both be able to sort it all out and become better people for it!

@Valentino, thanks for the reading suggestions. I'll check them out soon. (Though I have promised myself to stop reading about all this stuff for a while (except on the forum) because I think it is another weird form of dissociation for me--compulsive reading about trauma. But, that's my personality type according to the Enneagram...the drive for knowledge.

@Pietro and others. Ah, boundaries. There were no boundaries in my childhood. In fact, my mother still violates them regularly. Maybe part of my ptsd comes from being an empath (or whatever we want to call it) who grew up with two narcissistic parents. I don't know how to set boundaries very well, especially because I am always looking for then running away from connection with other people. Totally open or totally closed.