Feeling other people’s feelings? Support for empaths
If you’re an empath, this advice could help you navigate life (and your own emotions) more smoothly.
At first, I thought it was just allergies. Through the sliver of space between the two bus seats in front of me, I could just make out the shape of a black-haired woman snivelling and dabbing at her eyes. Then came the shuddering of shoulders and the unmistakeable sound of someone crying her heart out, only marginally diluted by the roar of the bus engine. I could see enough of her phone screen to understand she was watching the rolling coverage of Kingi Tuheitia’s tangi (funeral), the Maori king who had passed away the week before. Her grief was too raw, too heavy for the banality of an intercity bus journey through New Zealand’s North Island. I stretched an arm forward gingerly and handed her a tissue; her gushing eyes met mine without a word as she accepted the tissue with a nod. I had felt her sadness before I could see its physical evidence, and soon after the moment had passed, my eyes were leaking too, and the lush green mountains outside had lost all their colour.
It’s always been that way.
Growing up, I didn’t know it wasn’t normal to feel what other people felt. I didn’t know that most people were watching terrifying scenes on TV without ever giving them another thought, never tortured by fragments of terror unfolding in their own bodies for months afterwards. I didn’t know that emotions could be as contagious as the common cold, especially for someone like me. It wasn’t until my early 30s, when everyone around me was enthralled by true-crime podcasts which made me feel physically ill that I realised I felt things differently to many other people.
Most folk seemed to be able to sidestep the discomfort of other people easily. But for me, feeling other people’s emotions meant being plunged into a deep, icy ravine I could not easily swim out of. For the most part, I became the friend who avoided difficult emotions, who skated over unpleasantness and glibly dismissed other people’s feelings. It was survival.
I wish someone had sat me down and explained what it meant to be an empath. Of course, that terminology didn’t exist until recent years, but it might have helped to know that there wasn’t anything wrong with me.
What it means to be an empath
Being an empath doesn’t mean having empathy (we all have that – unless you’re a narcissist, which means my Substack is probably not for you), it means being highly sensitive to other people’s energy and emotional states. If you don’t know how to manage that, it can be a little challenging.
It was only in my late 30s that I learned feeling other people’s emotions isn’t a problem – it’s a strength. For example, in the workplace, being tuned into the emotions emitted by colleagues who are making poor choices can help me know when to cut them some slack and when to give them a wide berth. Walking into a workplace during a job interview can, and has, helped me assess whether the atmosphere was right for me (too much tension = hard pass). Being an empath only becomes a problem when other people’s feelings take up residence in my emotional field, and I become irritated, pessimistic or distressed in turn. But thankfully, I’m much better at avoiding that now (more on that below).
To clear up a common misconception, some people think being an empath is a sort of curse because they believe it means they will get pulled into other people’s dramas, and be taken advantage of. I cannot overstate how inaccurate this is. If you feel obliged to intervene in someone else’s problems this isn’t because you’re an empath it’s because you’re codependent (I wrote about that here). Sure, I gave the woman on the bus a tissue, but I didn’t try to tell her everything was going to be okay. I felt her pain but I did not feel compelled to help her carry it. I thought about her in the coming days but did not worry nor fret about her. But being able to set those boundaries was not automatic – it’s something I’ve had to learn.
Managing life as an empath
If, like me, you’re an empath, here are my suggestions for managing this so that it can be an asset instead of a weight:
Shielding. This is fundamental to the way I move through the world. Every morning, without fail, I ask Archangel Michael to place me in a protective bubble of light for the day. This means I still feel the emotions of people around me, but those emotions don’t attach to me.
Explore codependency. If you’re inclined towards rescuing people from the consequences of their actions, or trying to fix their problems, being an empath will feel like the anchor weighing you down instead of the compass helping set your course. It might be worth working with a therapist or healer to address underlying patterns of codependency.
Ground yourself. When you’re grounded, you’re in a better position to choose what you’ll invest in emotionally and what you’ll gently pull away from. Great ways to ground yourself include spending time in nature, meditating or walking on the earth barefoot on a regular basis.
Shore up your sense of emotional safety. If you grew up in a household with a volatile parent or sibling, you likely adapted by learning to take the emotional pulse of the household and adjusting your responses accordingly. Even if you no longer feel like you’re walking on eggshells, you may still be misinterpreting other people’s emotional displays as threatening. Remind yourself that you are safe, even when other people around you are struggling or acting out. Reassure yourself you can support people without taking on board their emotions. No matter what you’re feeling at any given moment, you’re safe. And definitely work with a healer or therapist on this one if you’re getting stuck – this pattern can be tough to shift alone.