Empathy
[September 2005]
This
is currently just a conglomeration of thoughts, my responses
to a person's email on an empathy YahooGroup. It will be revised
into essay form eventually.
"What is it that I am dealing with here?
Have I come to the right place, this group? Or am I losing
my grip and really need a psychiatrist?"
You're dealing with empathy. It's not insane,
it's not you going crazy, it's not some psychological disorder,
you're not being delusional. A good place to go for thoroughly-researched
information on empathy is the
Universal
Empath Report. A sort of "empathy 101" site
and collection of essays. Read through that, first of all;
it should help a bit.
"Is it possible to learn to shut people
out?"
Yes, it's called shielding. Call it a visualization,
mind over matter, whatever you wish, if you're not comfortable
with more new-age-ish concepts and ideas. Perhaps it's energy
manipulation, perhaps it's meditation or concentration on
something other than emotion that shuts outside emotion out,
but it works for a lot of people. Visualize a wall, bubble,
sphere, whichever, all around you - above, below, around.
Whatever visualization works for you. Build it piece by piece,
brick by brick, or start it as a small bubble or egg in the
palm of your hand that grows and grows till it surrounds you,
keeping out everyone and everything else, containing you.
Some people visualize an egg, some a wall,
some a bubble, some a globe of white light. For instance,
A friend of mine has a highly sensitive 8-year-old daughter
who gets easily overwhelmed when around too many people or
too much emotion - one time, at a funeral of a person she
didn't even know, she started crying and couldn't stop, almost
seeming to have a sort of panic attack, because she was being
so influenced by so many peoples' emotions. She didn't like
the egg visualization, so my friend asked her what she thought
would work. So her daughter visualized a banana peel around
her, complete
with stem. If it works, use it!
I myself tend to visualize a globe of silver
fire when I need to throw up a quick shield, or a thorough
layered web overtop obsidian rock when I know I'm going into
an emotionally charged situation and need strong impenetrable
shields. I, however, hate shielding and do it only when others'
emotions get to be overwhelming, to the point where I feel
like I'm going to panic or break down. Why? Because it feels
like muting a vital sense, like putting cotton in my ears
or having gauze over my eyes, or wearing gloves. I rely on
my empathic sense more than I usually realize, when dealing
with or reacting to people.
"Can a loss of a person or something
similar heighten a person's sensitivity? Is it permanent?"
Highly emotional occurances, often to the
level of emotional trauma, tend to have an effect on one's
psyche, and that often extends to sensitivity. It can dull
it, heighten it, shut it off altogether, or blow open previously
inactive abilities, depending on the person and the event.
It can be permanent, but not always, from what I understand.
"I also feel like I am invading people's
privacy. Can I learn to do this selectively? Is this really
that unusual? Sometimes it is so strong that it almost feels
like telepathy (although it is not). I can't always put a
name to the emotions I get from others -- I just FEEL them,
which makes it worse."
Yes, you can do this selectively. Shield constantly,
and just drop shields or send out "feelers" (reach
out mentally to probe someone's thoughts/emotions/sense) when
you want to feel someone out, feel someone's emotions. It's
not incredibly unusual; I know a fair amount of people with
varying degrees of empathy, whether they call it that or not.
Strong empathy, overwhelmingly strong, is a bit more unusual,
but not insanely rare. I understand not being able to put
a name to incoming emotions or feelings, though; I have the
same problem at times as well.
"I still find it hard to believe that
everyone can't do this, thateveryone doesn't have this ability.
I have felt this for so long(although lately, as I mentioned,
it has gotten more intense), that I always thought that this
was just a normal thing."
A lot of people I know believe that everyone's
empathic to some level - only sociopaths have absolutely no
empathy, or completely blocked-off empathy. However, some
people have stronger empathic sensitivity than others, and
some people shut it off or block it off early on. You can
imagine that some people just can't deal with it, and so they
do a sort of dissociation.
"What do the rest of you do? I mean,
when you have strong feelingsfrom another person who needs
you, and you need to share it with another, but you are afraid
of how they will react to what you say?"
I have a couple pagan friends I can talk to.
People who aren't involved with mystical stuff, new-age type
stuff, etc tend not to believe such things or be at all knowledgable
about such things. I was accepting of my empathy and a couple
other odd things before I ever converted (that the right word
for the situation?) to paganism; I was christian before.
"Is there a way of SENDING, not just
receiving, for those of us who have this...ability?"
Yes,
it's called empathic projection, but not everyone can do it,
and the person you're projecting to has to be aware of things
or conscious of stuff to receive it (or realize what they're
receiving beyond mistaking it for their own feelings). I believe
someone else already touched on this in reply to your posts.
The best way I've found to deal with empathy
- the only way, besides blocking it all off with constant
shielding - is to know yourself, your emotions, the way you
react to things. And to be aware of yourself and your own
emotions, at all times. That way, if you start feeling someone
else's emotions, you can recognize that it's not *your* emotion,
and you can deal with it accordingly. Oftentimes, when I start
feeling any strong emotion, I stop and think "Why do
I feel this way? What situation or thought caused this?"
and if I can't think of a reason for the emotion, then I start
looking around me to see who else seems to be feeling it.
If no one in the area seems to be feeling that emotion, then
I pick up the phone and call the people I have strong connections
to (my best friend, my boyfriend, and a teacher of sorts of
mine) in order to see if they're feeling that.
Differentiation between yourself and others
is probably the most important part of dealing with empathic
sensitivity, in my opinion.
Now, before I talk about psychometry or your
issue with being connected with the one person you spoke with,
I'm going to have to talk about something a little esoteric.
If this strikes you as too new-age or too pagan or too damn
insane to stomach, then just take it as a way of thinking
about things or a way of visualizing. You've had psychological
schooling; you've probably learned the power the mind has
over the rest of the body/psyche/emotions/etc. So chalk the
following up to that if it's too much to believe straight
away.
Everything has energy. This is a law of physics.
Anything you do, whether it be talking, moving, whichever,
expends energy. This energy has to go somewhere; it's often
taken in by other objects, the air, whichever. You jog for
a while, you expend energy, you feel heated, the air around
you heats a bit by taking in the energy you expend - it all
works out. Logical so far?
Let's take it a step further, to the realm
of emotion and the metaphysical. When you chat with another
person, you expend energy, and when they listen to you chat,
they take in that energy. It's an exchange of energy. You
can consciously manipulate energy to certain ends, and this
is what some people call "magic" - simple manipulations
of existing energy. But that's getting a little too esoteric,
most likely, so I'll move on.
Any
energy exchange creates a link between the one who gave off
the energy and the one who received it. This is evidenced
in friendships, love relationships, and other types of relationships.
The more time and effort and energy you put into any sort
of relationship, the stronger it grows, and the stronger the
connection between the two individuals becomes, forming a
link, or even a strong bond in some cases. Sometimes energy
impulses in whatever form (emotions, thoughts, impulses, etc)
can pulse across this link, sent consciously or unconsciously.
Now we come to your connection. It sounds
like you've formed a pretty strong connection with this other
person, a fairly intense link through which emotion pulses
strongly and regularly. As a bond, it can be cut, if need
be. If you do not wish to have a link anymore, you can chop
it off, but the stronger it is, the more painful and traumatic
that severing is, and it takes a bit of esoteric knowledge.
I don't recommend it; when I had a link severed with an ex-boyfriend
of mine, I was shaking and crying for ten minutes afterwards,
and I thought I'd been over the man.
A different way to end a link, less painful
but much more slow, is to stop thinking of the other person.
Don't contact them, don't receive anything from them, shield
the link, and without maintenance, the link should eventually
fade. How long it'll take I don't know, and it can be very
easily rebuilt, so it's an iffy way of doing things.
If you wish to keep the link, however, as
you seem to want, but want a way to deal with the amount and
intensity of emotion coming through it, then you can just
shield the link. I mentioned general shielding before, but
those shields usually don't automatically shut out links.
You have to shield those separately or consciously, and if
you have a very strong link to someone, stuff's going to leak
through no matter what. Use whatever visualization works for
you, as before; I usually think of it as doors shutting, screen
doors if I just want to mute things, or heavy safe doors if
I want to shut as much out as possible.
Now, as for psychometry, the sensing of emotional
residue from objects or places. I talked briefly about energy
before. All energy has a flavor or a form - look at fire,
electricity, wind, friction; they're all energy, just taking
different forms. Energy can be flavored or charged with emotion,
and that can saturate an object or area. Visit the sanctuary
of a very old church sometime; you'll notice it. Or a funeral
home, or a graveyard. Any place where there's frequent amounts
of strong emotion or a specific emotion will have the feel
of it. The knife a depressed adolescent used mostly just for
self-cutting will have a certain feel to it; an engagement
ring exchanged between two people who genuinely, strongly
love each other will have a completely different feel. And
so on and so forth. Oftentimes you can pick up on that emotion,
sometimes get an idea of what the object was used for or how
or where or why, just by probing and concentrating much as
you would in trying to pick up emotions off of someone.
I
hope that helps!
"Feeling
it this strongly and this... focused?... actually feels physically
odd and quite literally electric (<--- anyone else get
that feeling? Is it normal?)."
For me, energy translates to a near-electric
tingling on my skin or just under skin. The two very strong
links I have with my closest companions feel as if they connect
at my chest, so something coming through those links often
feel like pressure in my chest, a tingling outward from the
heart area, that sort of thing. Lesser links connect through
arms, head, etc, and the tingling reacts accordingly in those
areas. Others I've talked to sometimes experience tingling
or reception of emotion as electric, static, warmth, etc,
so it's fairly normal as far as I know.
"I need more practice, but I want to
do this gradually, because I'm afraid of accidentally cutting
it off, rather than just temporarily blocking it out."
Don't worry too much about that; from what
I understand, a link as strong as the one you've described
can't be cut off without great conscious difficulty, often
needing the focus of ritual.
"When other people put walls up, I feel
as if I have lost a sense, and it is very disorienting, like
seeing someone's lips moving but not being able to hear them
speak. I don't much care for that feeling."
I know the feeling! It's why I avoid shielding
unless I have to. It's like losing a valuable sense and is
very off-setting.
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