Today I feel like crying. Actually I get that at least once a week. I will pass a person in the street or see someone’s expression on TV or feel some anxiety from someone and I’d well-up. Considering I’m male I always put it down to ‘being more in touch with my feminine side’ My wife despairs at ever playing any kind of chick flick to me because I’ll get angry to cover up the fact that I’d probably burst into tears.
The main reason I feel like crying today is actually, for once, as a result of my own emotional state. I only just found out I am an empath. I’ve been trying on and off to channel various energies without much success (I can channel creative writing quite well but any kind of entity or being is still beyond me) and today, on a whim, decided to research Orion energy. (I’m cycling through trying to focus on different energies to see which suits me) At the moment Orion energy ‘may’ be the one, though there are others I haven’t tried yet but I’m resonating with that one at the moment. So, after looking into why it wasn’t working for me I stumbled across an article on empaths and channelers. Apparently empaths have difficulty channeling entities due to wanting to absorb all the energy into themselves and not release it. ie they can be completely overwhelmed by it so, I guess, the entities tend to avoid strongly empathic people.
I was surprised by this and I always know I was sensitive to how other people around me felt, but it wasn’t until I read this article that I put two and two together. I am an empath. Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God!
No wonder I hated working in retail.
No wonder I have difficulty being around less than positive people.
No wonder I sometimes turn to anger to try and cover up overwhelming emotions that I collect from people.
No wonder I feel sick in the stomach when a child near me cries or is upset.
No wonder I felt completely drained from a recent trip to China and actually almost died.
This post is most definitely about me, sorry about that. But if you’re an empath you can probably understand.
The big thing though was I searched out empath forums and found so many people talking about things that resonated with me and really answered unspoken questions from the past 40 years of some difficulties I’ve had with people. Sometimes I can be so overwhelmed with how a person is feeling that I am rendered speechless. It’s also why I became an entrepreneur. That way the only stressed boss I feel is myself. That way I can be the sort of boss to my staff that other bosses can’t. That way my staff are treated how I would like to be treated. That way I can attract people into my business that have the same emotional understanding that I do.
I am feeling quite ill right now and so I thought I’d post this post for any new empaths out there that have suddenly found they are and that is why they have so much trouble with other people around them that are not.
You may be reading this thinking, well, if you felt all these things, you should have adjusted to it. You should have worked out some way for these feelings to fit in with your life.
Well, my problem was I assumed that everyone else had the same emotional state that I did. I was frequently surprised when people would do something that was obviously not nice to another person or behaved in an offensive way and I always wondered why that person could even do that. It was because, being empathic, I was the different one and only empaths would consider that kind of behaviour as rude, obnoxious or disturbing.
So, today, I’m at my computer at work, unable to concentrate on work, working out how I can assimiliate this side of my being without breaking down and hoping there are some support groups for empaths in the Sydney area.
There has not been a time before today that I have been so thrown. How on Earth could I have not realised I was an empath before? Why has this piece of information come out now of all times? It completely and totally changes how I view the world and the people around me that I have co-created reality with.
I did further research on this and I’ve got to tell you that the information regarding positions for empaths is pretty depressing. It’s actually recommended by some psychics that empaths take healing positions. I can’t believe that healing is going to be any good for an empath. We take the pain of the people around us every day. Why would we want to do that as a job?! Some people recommend empaths become nurses or doctors. That’s not an option. That’s an exterior recommendation as in ‘I want my nurse or doctor to be an empath’. If any doctors or nurses were that empathic they’d burn out pretty quickly. You have to be sympathetic but not empathetic. Now I know why I hate walking through a hospital or even being in a medical centre. The suffering can be overwhelming for me and I have, on a few occasions, had to hold onto a hand rail to stop myself from falling over when I feel someone’s pain. (In some cases that is a psychosomatic response rather than an actual physical feeling but it’s still feels real enough for me to make me sick and weak)
Some psychics also recommend empaths go into energy healing or massage. The fact that empaths feel the pain isn’t a good enough reason to do that as a job full time. A better option is to avoid it. For those who are only slightly empathic it could be a good idea as they would quickly learn how to transmute the energy and discard it. For strong empaths like myself I’d probably need quite a lot of training to stop myself being overwhelmed.
Recently two healers came into my centre on separate occasions. They were burning with so much energy I was literally shaking as I stood trying to talk with them. I can feel healer’s energies when I am standing pretty close and it can cause me to shake, similar shaking to if it was a bit colder than you’re used to. So not really that noticeable outwardly but I have been right on a number of occasions when an energy healer has come into my presence and I have asked them whether they do energy healing.
So, what next? The best thing for an empath is to avoid people. I like being around positive people and my challenge has always been to find them. So I work in the city knowing that there are enough positive people as tourists and workers combined to outway the negative workers. I also try and move to areas where there is a sense of community as those areas tend also to have more positive people than negative. Taking a train can be a bit trying at times as most people on the train are workers drained of energy and I can pick that up, so I tend to take later morning trains to work and later evening trains home where there are more happy people on board.
All these things I’d done automatically without really thinking about it. Now that I’ve found every tiny nuance of my behaviour has also been done by other empaths and discussed on several empath discussion forums, articles and blogs I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am one.
Where to from here? One way for empaths to cope is to drink alcohol. It seems to somehow block the empathic sense on Earth for a short time and allow a stronger connection to source. But that is only a temporary relief from the pain of other people. Empaths tend to become hermits or writers so, as I’ve already taking the writing path, I’ll try and make it a full time occupation.
The positive side (though I can’t really see one being an empath) is that now that I know for sure that I am one I might be able to learn some transmutation techniques, be able to block the exterior emotions and energies that I pick up all the time, and start doing what I’d really like to do, which is to trance-channel.
It looks like 2012 is definitely shaping up to be a year of change. I’ll keep you updated!
[showmyads]
Hi Manus. I’m a bit late in responding to this awesome article. I absolutely know exactly the feelings that you describe. I hate being an empath…there’s no other explanation for these feelings (crying for people I’ve never met before), and there are some people that make me sooo exhausted just them being around me. It’s absolute torture, the whole empath thing. It has made relationships so difficult because I can’t handle constant closeness even if I love the person…just can’t. So I’m pretty much a hermit and can only handle my immediate family. Distant relatives are like the black plague I’m afraid, debilitating, nausea inducing, emotionally and physically demanding. Meditation helps some but the feelings can become so overwhelming that no amount of meditation or chakra clearing can help. There are also things I know that I don’t know how on earth I know.