It’s taken me a really long time to recognize and embrace being an empath. For the longest time I bought into all the gaslighting, I truly believed the problem was me, I was just too sensitive and I needed to harden up!
My entire life I’ve been told by family, friends, colleagues, strangers, I’m cry baby, I’m oversensitive, I overreact in situations. I need to toughen up. I’ve pretty much received the message that being deeply sensitive is somehow a character flaw. People are confused by my extended emotional overreaction to situations and it’s difficult for me to explain how situations and circumstances that don’t even involve me oftentimes, are so deeply painful and traumatic for me to the point where they cause anxiety and in extreme cases can flare my depression. All the images of burned koalas in the Australian bush fires are a prime example, the images are so deeply disturbing for me that they cause instant anxiety I don’t sleep at night. I’ve spent so much time being told how ridiculous I am that it’s even embarrassing for me to admit to such a strong reaction.
Are You An Empath?
There are so many resources available online and books to read about being an empath and coping as an empath and over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be sharing some of what I’ve learned here on my blog. I’ve also realized that my sweet Hannah Banana is also an absolute empath, which is why she reacts the she does in various situations.
But first of all, I think it’s so important to understand the difference between being empathetic, which most decent human beings are, and being an empath. Dr. Judith Orloff describes the difference as follows:
Being an empath is different from being empathetic. Being empathetic is when your heart goes out to someone else. Being an empath means you can actually feel another person’s happiness or sadness in your own body.
There is a great self-assessment quiz over on Dr Orloff’s website, which you can take here: Empath Self Assessment Test
I scored 14 out of 20, which indicates that I have high empath tendencies. Did you take the test? What did you score?
Key Characteristics Of Being An Empath
There are loads of resources available online to understand the typical characteristics of an empath but these are the most common ones:
- Highly sensitive.
- Highly attuned to other people’s moods and emotions.
- Introverted or become anxious and overwhelmed in crowds.
- Highly intuitive.
- Go out of your way to help others.
- Crave alone time (I always call this going inside my head).
- Overwhelmed by intimate relationships.
- Like to sleep alone – this is so me, even after being married for 19 years I complain about how my husband disturbs my sleep.
Do you think you’re an empath?
I actually stumbled across all of this quite by accident while reading up on overly emotional children because Hannah is exceptionally emotional and very very sensitive to people and situations that most others wouldn’t even notice.
So I scored 18… but I’ve always known that. I’m highly sensitive. My eldest son is the same. It’s not nice for him at all.
Hannah is an empath as well and she really battles. But I do remember it being worse when I was younger too. I feel like I’ve learned to deal with it better.
Oh my word. I’m so looking forward to your posts on this, as I feel like you were describing basically my entire life! It’s reached the point where I have to force myself to not cry in front of anyone, even my husband, for fear of someone judging me for being “too overly sensitive”. Megan xx
Now that I can recognize it for what it is, I feel like I am able to develop coping mechanisms that helps me manage it all a little better.
I scored 10, but I don’t think I’m a low-level empath, just an introvert with chemical sensitivity. That said, both my children appear to be empaths. That scares me. They’ve mostly been home this far, so it hasn’t yet affected them badly, but I can see it in groups. I look forward to your coming blog posts, as I’ve been trying to figure how to help them cope for 2 years now
I scored 11. This was a concise and insightful post., thank you for that. I’m learning so much about myself as my current job has completely taken me out of my comfort zone, given me anxiety and a lot of the topics covered in the quiz. I’ve always felt deeply connected to people and viewed that as a positive thing. This job, however, has brought out a lot of the other, not so easy to deal with qualities. I constantly feel drained in all ways, find comfort in food and apart from that, the main thing that’s brought me peace is social isolation and alone time to recuperate. There’s a lot of good that can come from being an empath and I see that I need to hone in on the good things and focus on coping mechanisms for the challenging things.
Thank you for this amazing comment!
I feel like now that I can recognize all the qualities that come with being an empath, I can better manage my needs and push myself to the egdge.
All the best on your journey to self discovery.