HIghly Sensitive People and Empaths

[coda]

For me being empath was, and still is, rooted in survival.  As a child having my mother enter a room and be able to pick up on her emotions without a word or so much as a look in my direction was critical to my survival.
...
It was because there was no boundary between where she ended and I began, there was no "me" and there was no "her" - we were we. I was her emotional storage place. It was my job to take all her emptiness and make it better. Take her bad emotions as my own and give her all my good emotions. This is her expectation to this day. Therefore with everyone else in the world I met I didn't know where they end and I begin.

An empath cannot turn it off, cannot stop. The emotions and energy transfer and become part of you. Friends and family walk away feeling better but I was left feeling physically drained and in bed for sometimes days. It takes effort and training to know when to let others emotions in, how much to let in, how to process that emotion as someone else's and not your own. It is difficult, very difficult.

Wow, Butterfly, I don't think I've ever read a better description of how it was, and still is. And that goes to the heart of a question that's always haunted me. Might I have become less compulsively, exhaustively sensitive to others if my very existence hadn't depended on accurately reading, and endlessly serving, the needs of my mother? I applied the same principles to the rest of my family, to schoolmates, teachers, really anyone I came in contact with. I never quite understood why that annoyed her so much, since that was the "right" way to be. I do now of course: she owned me, and didn't like sharing my attention or devotion.

But there was no way to stop it. Not then, not ever. Not for her and not for me. I saw and sensed and felt constantly, like a dog sniffing the air and picking up a thousand more scents than those around me. What did they think, need, want, care about? How were they reacting to me? Was that approval or was it something else? Anything less than appreciation was instantly unbearable, and humiliating. That is one terrible way to live.

So while my innate empathy is a gift and talent, it is also a vestige of the twisted way I was raised. My mother was socially isolated and insulated by her family. She was hypersensitive to all criticism and "disloyalty" (meaning any disagreement or opposition). Her antennae and fragility seemed astute and sensitive to me, but it was the polar opposites of empathy - she was not aware of anyone else. As a kid, I knew that pleasing her was the only permissible way to be seen, or loved. Every child, indeed every adult, needs to be acknowledged, recognized, respected. Being understood, praised and loved are fundamental desires. But even when that doesn't happen, I think they can survive intact if their own internal mechanisms aren't interfered with, recalibrated to put others' feelings before their own.

Can one "know" how to help without acting? Without the guilt and draining sense responsibility? I think so. But like you, I don't want to turn cold hearted or oblivious, insensitive to those around me. As insensitive as they usually seem to be. Withdrawing has always been my default, because I've never quite learned how to temper the automatic desire to be of service, to treat their problems as my own. My solution - shutting down, shutting out - is no solution at all. The relief from people became a way of life, and left me as isolated, bereft and resentful as the histrionic woman who engendered it. That elusive middle ground of treading lightly seems farther and farther away. I miss people, I miss activities, the life I once knew. But that life took too much out of me, and left me with too little, exhausted and spent and, yes, not a little wounded. It's that self-pity I hate most, because I know it's of my own making. I keep wondering if the gift of perception can't be turned into something healthier, stronger, more productive.

[coda]

Being a hsp feels like being an electrical wire without any plastic covering ---

Am learning to deal with the guilt - ie guilt of not being fully there for someone -
For example I've just spent time with a friend who talks - and talks and - talks and ....
Learning to butt in / change the subject / not fully listen are all things I am learning -
Also to 'be myself ' plain and simple.

The stripped wire is a perfect analogy, I've often felt I lacked the natural insulation other people seemed to have...the ability to ignore (maybe not even see) or brush off things that would have triggered me, sent me reeling with embarrassment, shame or anger. Or guilt - oh, to have no lingering sense that you've failed someone and you must atone. I usually admire that reflexive self confidence in people. Struggling to feel less, sense less of what you're capable is strange, it can feel so superficial to not act on what's apparent. I think you're right: the trick is learning how to be there for ourselves first and foremost, even in small ways.

[tired]

Missbliss- this is so interesting. And scary!

[Boatsetsailrose]

Thank you for sharing. This
Gee nerves that's it ! Have always felt 'nervess ' like jumping beans inside -
At times it goes when I exercise or have deep relaxation

I wonder how 'normal ' people feel

[Butterfly]

This thread continues to be so very helpful. Thank you all!

The good news is that as we learn to value ourselves, learn to make boundaries, and learn to be assertive about our wants and needs (both to ourselves and to others) then we become less vulnerable to those who would try to cause us harm.

I like vanilla, this is exactly it and how it is I'm becoming balanced. For the most part my personal belief is other individuals do not intentionally intend to cause harm but the needy tend to latch on to empathetic helpers. Even personality disordered FOO doesn't set out to hurt, it's just their mode of operation and many are just oblivious to others (our) needs. Many are unaware they are wearing on me and its up to me to speak up. I was raised to be the family fixer of all things and carried that tendency throughout my life into other relationships.

Reading information on codependency helped somewhat but a recent read really helped me fill in the final pieces to the picture. The book "I don't have to make everything all better" and the other book that helps so much was Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend.

Both those books are helping me balance as Coda says to not "turn cold hearted or oblivious, insensitive to those around me" but rather to empower others to solve or choose not to solve their own problems. After all, who am I to tell others how best to fix their problems? Only they know what they can or want to do to help themselves.

The Boundaries book helped me balance having needs. As the family fixer I was trained not to have needs in the first place and if I have them I certainly didn't speak about them or ask for help. There was no help to be found so what was the point. To that end I am very self-sufficient and don't really have needs beyond companionship. Both books are helping me find safe people and simple companionship.

My solution - shutting down, shutting out - is no solution at all.

so true

So while my innate empathy is a gift and talent, it is also a vestige of the twisted way I was raised

yes for me too and I am finding ways to leverage empathy as a good thing and limit or eliminate damage.

I keep wondering if the gift of perception can't be turned into something healthier, stronger, more productive.

I am finding it is possible.

Miss Bliss, The above answers the question you had posted which by the way kind of got lost so I edited your post to end the quotation of the previous post where I think you meant it to end.

like being an electrical wire without any plastic covering ---

Boatdailrose, what a very appropriate analogy. And Miss Bliss neat info on the myelin! Yes nightly and morning stretching does help so much with some very low yoga music and dim lights.

Southbound, soul murder, thanks for that and I'm sorry you've had that experience plus the other with the interview.


Finally don't get me wrong on this, there are certain things about being HSP and empathic that I simply cannot change.

The HSP side: Bright lights and loud noise are things that always have and most likely always will cause physical stress and result in mental and emotional stress as well. Therefore I need to know and understand myself, my need to decompress and to grab some calming alone time with some soothing self-care, a blanket, maybe a candle, some stretching. I've always been that way, able to handle being in a social situation but with a driving need to decompress and self soothe daily.

The empathic side: Feeling the feelings of others in a way that people who are not empathic do not understand. Feeling others energy is something I can control but not eliminate. Walking into a room and feeling the feelings, being in the presence of others my brain knows how to read subtle body language, tone of voice, minor facial muscle movement and this is not something I can turn unlearn. What I have learned is to NOT take away others emotions. To let them keep them and feel them, to validate them rather than take and carry their burden for them. I can listen and walk away whole. This is how I'm using my being empathic to be empathetic, a strength rather than a vulnerability, something I value rather than dread about myself.

[spemat]

I wonder if this can come in a spectrum or that it is related to one of the other earlier issues which was when I felt less human so that was part of this.  Sometimes it seems like I have the somewhat emotional empathy.  I have this intellectual empathy too because whether I sense anything I am 3-4 steps ahead whether it is not caring having it consume me or dealing with a perp.

I have recurrent manias in summers without treatment and everything is light and loud.  There are different types of empaths too.  Some seem to have every other symptom of NPD but the lack of empathy part but my mom's borderline PD made me able to shut any of that out.

[EmoVulcan]

I definitely am an empath, and hsp I think.  Sometimes in groups of charged people I struggle to keep my clinical detachment, the sheilds I can sometimes erect.  If not done before or they are breached, I think I get triggered.  Hence I hardly leave the tent. 
But I have pondered this for some time.  I think most people are capable of being empaths.  At least it seems to me emotions spread...like panic or anger in a crowd.  There is a group dynamic in this.  As all emotion is a chemical release in the brain, and pheromones as well..it is transmitted subconsciously, but it is transmitted.  Laughter catches as well as tears.  The apaths have just got real solid sheilds...but they can be breached.
If you have ever been to a southern Baptist revival, the joy and awe makes the hair on my arms stand upright.  Hence uplifting.
Anyway, my musings are just that.

[Boatsetsailrose]

Great to log onto this post today ...

I keep meaning to get into my daily routine some energetic protection such as grounding and shield -
I will endure to do this
Have learnt over time how to download -
Water and burning incense help me ( not together ha ha
I have just been away for the wk end to stay with family and friends ( not something I do often)
Can see where I have grown and work still in progress - was really good to get the chance to evaluate this as I am working to have more people in my life -
Being in the company of others being open yet in my own energy - that energetic balance -
I love 💓 Being an empath despite its obvious difficulties -
Being in nature and the connection - sensitivity to others - the need for calm quiet and spiritual side of my life - the connection with other empaths
Saying that though many days / times I wish I wasn't and could be harder - but then I would t get the life I have
Celebrating and experiencing this life in all its wonderful glory - blessed to have the life I have in its simple form and have relative freedom
Thank u for listening I feel in a lot of gratitude at the moment 💓🌸

[Butterfly]

Found a great series of articles breaking down empathy into six components. From what I've read it sounds like many of us may be stuck in Emotion Contagion:

If your experience of empathy is primarily unregulated Emotion Contagion, such that you act as an emotional sponge, to the point where you become overwhelmed by the emotions of others, you'll probably be unable to provide much support to them. You'll be like the children in the experiment who dissolve into the emotion of the experimenter, and can neither soothe themselves nor offer any support – you'll shut down.

This link is the first in the series
http://karlamclaren.com/the-six-essential-aspects-of-empathy-part-1-emotion-contagion/

It makes sense reading through the descriptions of the six components of empathy that to being able to regulate the Emotion Contagion into something productive for both ourselves and others is possible. For me since uPDm isn't able to emotionally regulate coupled with emotional enmeshment meant my survival as a dependent child that's what left me stuck in Emotion Contagion. As an adult I've developed some of the other parts of empathy but can see more clearly in this article what needs further development.

[woodsgnome]

Wow, Butterfly--thank you  for this insightful pointer to what may be going on with this potentially overwhelming topic. As is evident too in the readers' comments section below the article, it's very hard to wrap the right words around the 'ins' (empath contagion/absorption) and 'outs' (empathy). It's a tad scary, even--an emotional mix that rides heavy on the psyches of cptsd-survivors, I surmise.

Two parts of my own life come to mind with this--hospice and pre-school work. I felt drawn to engage with these despite intense social anxiety. By most standards I did well in these areas where lots of empathy is required. But my empath side was able to access wisdom and energy I'd never found elsewhere. What seems to have been key for me was the roles I was in were judgement-free zones, where I felt alright to be 'me', for a change, enabling me to share and display empathy.

This was radically opposed to my early experience of life. Alas, while I'd like to say these experiences put me over the top, I still struggle mightily in most situations with it--I think it's still the old fear of judgement riding high. So any insights such as those that McLaren suggests are most welcome.

Thanks again!

   

[steamy]

I had to look up the words empath and HSP, came to some new age page that likes to take every day things and give them special, almost magical status.

I agree that through our suffering we can better empathise with those who are also marginalised, unfairly treated and not heard by society, I have had some pretty nasty conflicts with my colleagues in healthcare when they wrongly judge a patient as being violent, difficult or uncooperative, when all people need is an empathetic ear and a little time. I have been accused of pandering and setting dangerous precedents - a patient turns up without an appointment and I will see them, others would send them away despite having nothing better to do. I have been ostracised by colleagues by not conforming to their point of view.

however, I don't think that I am connected to the "collective unconscious," neither do I think others are. I did go through a spiritual phase for a few years, I eventually came to the conclusion that there is a lot of snake oil in the mix, a lot of people repeating the same old wisdom and pseudo-science to the same broken people who never seem to get any better. people are getting very wealthy at the expense of people like us. There is value in meditation and self awareness of course - I would argue that that is not spirituality - quite the reverse. When we are broken we will clutch at any straw to try to gain a grain of comfort or a short cut to ending our inner pain.

I am good at reading and interpreting body language and non-verbal communication, it has already been discussed on this forum a few weeks back that our learned hyper vigilance means that we are always reading the emotional landscape for threats. This was essential as a child so we could try to pre-empt parental moods so that if possible we could anticipate trouble. Even now that I have such limited contact with my family, if I have a conversation with my mother, just by her demeanor I can tell how a potential visit might turn out or whether I should sever contact for several months or years.

This could be seen as a gift or curse. I think its both, it can be a self fulfilling prophecy, that we can anticipate things going wrong but we could use that to turn things around .... if we had the interpersonal skills

[Dutch Uncle]

Well said. 

[woodsgnome]

Steamy wrote:

"There is value in meditation and self awareness of course - I would argue that that is not spirituality..."

Maybe there is no no spirituality as a separate category. Rather, ALL of life is spiritual, all inclusive 100% of the time, and doesn't fit neatly into what someone tells others they have to believe (religion, system, technique, etc).

This notion is reflected in some first nations/native North American languages--a few didn't even have a translatable word that meant 'spirituality'. Each may have had beliefs and notions about ultimate reality, but many also considered them more flexibly, as signposts rather than definitions. Some cultures even valued tricksters for this reason--individuals who played devil's advocate and provided a counterpoint. What modern cultures refer to as spiritual concepts were embedded within the overall scheme of things.

In the end words didn't matter as much as how one lived one's daily life. 'Spirituality' was thus freed from its little boxes.

[steamy]

Indeed, that is very true. Its time for some Gin spirit. 

[JustMe]

Im one. I have a different theory. In my case, I think the epathic trait was overly developed as protection. I knew when there was negative emotional energy was around even when I was little. I feel like it was a protection mechanism.