Empathy is a feeling different from sympathy. When we are sympathetic, we feel pity but maintain a distance from another person’s feelings. Empathy is more a sense that we can truly understand or imagine the depth of another person’s feelings. It implies feeling with a person, rather than feeling sorry for a person.
Do you ever feel yourself in company… happy one minute and the next feeling sad?
Could you walk into a shop and start feeling anxious very quickly?
Do you find yourself talking to a friend online and feeling happy and the next thing a sense of sadness surrounds your entire being?
If you are well and a friend comes round to your home and your friend isn’t feeling well, do you suddenly feel pain somewhere in your body and didn’t have it before your friend came?
Are you overly sensitive?
Do you find it hard to say no?
If you have answered “Yes” to most if not all of these questions then you most certainly are empathic… which is when you pick up and feel happiness, sadness, anxiety, any pain at all from another person…
This is a very special gift however it can be very hard when you don’t realise that you have this gift of being empathic… You don’t have to be in front of a person to pick up and feel what they are feeling, you could be thousands of miles away from each other and still pick up on them.
You feel what they are feeling and also feel these emotions and pain etc much worse than the actual person suffering them.You may also find yourself finishing what a person is saying, this has happened many times with me, if I don’t actually come out with the words I think them.
There are 3 types of Empathy which include… emotional, physical and also intellectual shape shifting…
Emotional Empathy, is when you actually pick up the feelings of someone, who could be a total stranger, and feel their emotions, for example, feeling suddenly sad or on the other hand feel uplifted and happy in their presence
Physical Empathy, is when we suddenly feel pain, which can be quite severe, this is you picking up someone else’s pain… also you may feel this before the other person too.
Intellectual Empathy or shape shifting, is when you tend to finish off what someone is saying to you… this just happens and is very common amongst empaths.
Empathic shapeshifting is the ability to read a person’s emotions, physical pain, and see through their eyes, and take on their characteristics to better understand them as you work to heal them.In understanding them to such deep levels, you are able to, without conscious thought, change your own personality to fit any given situation or problem.
You simply know, without rhyme or reason, what to do or say to help the person you are working with. It can be very hard to deal with being an Empath… especially if you feel you are on your own!!
Please never feel you are on your own as we have thousands of fellow Empaths in this world.
I do strongly advise that you do ground & protect each day and put extra protection up also as with being empathic, we can be as open as a book!
We can also get drained very easily, which again is why it is so important to ground & protect!
Grounding and Protecting was of great benefit to myself when I was nursing, in a caring roll, we meet emotion, anger, sadness on a day to day basis, this can be very draining, at this time I used to nip to the Loo and Top Up my protection, I did this for some time until I was able to regulate my Empathy to suit each situation,
