I’m over at Sally Cronin’s Smorgasbord Blog Magazine with my June edition of Realms of Relationships column. In this issue I’m talking about communication through intuitive knowing – #Empathy.
Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – D. G. Kaye Explores the Realms of Relationships – June 2020 – Empaths and Spiritual
Welcome to the June edition of the Realms of Relationships. Today, I’m writing off course about a different kind of communication – through energy. Perhaps it’s these crazy times we’re all living in, but for people who are Highly Sensitive Persons, also known as HSPs, and for those of us who are empaths with similar traits, I’ve found these last few months, and in particular these last few weeks of world-wide protests for justice, weighing me down with a heavier than usual load to carry, emotionally.
For us sensitives, we are uber sensitive to the energies emitted when the hurt in the world becomes insurmountable. For empaths and HSPs, we don’t necessarily have to be directly in front of one person to pick up energies. We can also take in the collective. And I can tell you, absorbing too much of the negativity going on in the world can be very affecting.
Empaths are ultra-compassionate people, and it’s no surprise that we are feeling way too much in this time of the world.
You may be thinking I’ve gone off the beaten path here, talking about empaths today, but I tagged this column Realms of Relationships because in order for any relationship to flourish and thrive, there must be good communication. And when it comes to communication, an empath – receiver of messages through alternate methods of communication, has good experience understanding communication.
The question has often been asked – what is an empath, and what makes empathy different from sympathy? So today I’m going to break it down.
Empaths can literally feel the emotions of another. An inner-knowing through a feeling of invisibly transmitted energy, is how I’d explain it. I suspect every empath has their own unique abilities how they receive messages, just as many sensitive people, including psychics and mediums, feel spirit with one particular sense.
For example, I can sense when spirits are around me by a sudden drop in my body temperature to downright shivering, no matter the degrees it is in the room. I also sense spirit by scent. I don’t see or hear ghosts, but I sense their presence when the room I’m in suddenly begins to feel very chilly to the point that my teeth chatter as the rest of me shivers. I can smell a distinct odor of Export A cigarette smoke just as I always did when my father entered a room and when he now visits me from ‘the other side’. I get the same feeling when a mysterious waft of a certain sweet scent of perfume fills the air when my Aunty Sherry pays me a visit. Not surprisingly, I’m the only one who can smell these visitors if I’m not alone.
But I digress, I was talking about receiving empathic messages before I got lost on the ghostly messages, lol. My superpower? I like to say, I read souls. I can read and feel emotions – yes, goodness, anger, sadness, evil and every emotion in between. It’s not always a good thing, that’s for sure, but it does come in handy for sizing up situations. How to explain?
How does an empath absorb the emotions of others?
I can only speak from my own experience, and the best way I can explain it is – In person, it only takes a few minutes for me to sense emotions from looking through the eyes – beyond the eyes, into the soul, so to speak. Body language and words also transmit energy. Certainly, we’ve all heard some of the old clichés like – ‘the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife’. That example of thickened air is a good indicator of what an empath picks up on whenever encountering negative energy. Empaths can feel the emotions given off by others. Like I previously mentioned, I would describe it as an energy transmission – communication through absorbed energy.
I am like a sponge or a Bounty paper towel, and have therefore, learned through the years, where to keep myself away from to avoid absorbing certain energies from attracting to me. Again, hard to explain, but I’m sure almost everyone has had a superstitious moment in life where we’re convinced there is a black cloud hanging over us, or have once felt that someone has cast an evil spell on us or maybe we just plain feel like bad luck is surrounding us. These examples are what an empath feels when we pick up negative energies about a person. And that person doesn’t have to be physically in our presence for energies to bounce off us. And not to mislead anyone, empaths pick up both good and bad energies – no discrimination. It’s just that attracting the negative energies are harder to repel. And it’s no surprise when an empath is accused of being ‘moody’ that an energy can certainly have us changing our minds like the wind – just ask my husband!
A good example of picking up collective energies is when we’re watching the news. There really is no good news on the news and by watching too much sadness, our energies become ‘empathetic’ to the pain and sadness of others. My heart gets heavy and my concentration is shot as my heart prefers to lead my mood. Just as when we’re around a celebration and our hearts are full, we’re going to feel joyful because that is what surrounds us. And those good energies are like refueling from being drained from other bad energies. It’s a cycle for an empath, but there are ways to help deter attracting those energies by learning how to shield.
Empathy is different from sympathy in that having sympathy is more of an offering of condolence as we may feel sorry for someone because of their loss, but we do not feel that person’s actual grief as an empath can by taking in the griever’s actual feelings and emotions. Our own bodies can feel the pain of others – walking precisely in their shoes.
Some may think it must be so cool to have this ability, but honestly, I’d rather not have it. Being an empath isn’t something we typically train to become, but rather, it’s an inherent or unconscious developed trait. Psychics, spiritualists, witches, and earth angels are more notoriously known for having empathic abilities, but one doesn’t have to be any one of these in order to be an empath.
Being an empath is sometimes referred to as ‘a gift’, but it’s not always a gift. Many people are empathic. And many more may be but are not aware of their ‘gift’, and some are often hindered by it.
It’s been asked many times, does one just become an empath? Is it inherited? Is it learned? Well, I’ve heard various takes on the subject, but one thought of interest stuck out to me: Some empaths don’t realize that their desire to help others sometimes stems from a lack of nurturing as a child, resulting in an unconscious need to help others. I think that’s just one possible method of how a person can be transformed into an empath subconsciously, and despite there being a ‘how to’ for almost anything available, my personal feeling is that teaching someone to be empathic would be like trying to teach someone to become a psychic. We can read all we want about the subject and watch Youtube videos, and gain lots of insight from doing so, but one cannot simply just ‘become’ an empath or a psychic. Dr. Judith Orloff, Psychiatrist at Psychology.com explains how genetics and trauma can aid in playng a part in becoming an empath, in her article where she explains this a little further
What’s it like being an empath? Well, let’s say you’re watching a depressing movie or reading a sad part of a book and your feelings are touched by what you’re reading and/or watching. You may be feeling anger, disgust, elation or any other emotion from that movie or book. The writer of the story has done a great job of painting a story and bringing the characters to life when they can evoke these emotions and the reader is drawn in and can almost feel what the character is experiencing. For an empath, we don’t require someone to narrate their feelings to us, we sense and feel the emotion. Sure, if someone shares something affecting that happened to them, I can immediately take in how they’re feeling as a result of that incident, often no words are required. It’s a vibe and energy someone gives off and that energy is transmitted into their personal space. An empath only has to look into someone’s eyes to pick up on emotion – unspoken emotions. There is definitely more than meets the eye, to quote an old cliché – ‘the eyes are the windows of the soul’, because they definitely are.
An empath is a receptor for the energy. Someone not as sensitive to these energies wouldn’t be an empath, and subsequently, wouldn’t even be able to take notice of someone around them with a hidden emotional issue unless they were informed. And sadly, it’s sometimes difficult for an empath to shield or shutdown so as not to absorb these energies. Shielding is a protective measure that is learned, it’s the virtual putting up of an invisible wall to repel the energies to keep them from penetrating into us. With that I’ll add that one doesn’t have to be an empath to learn how to shield themselves.
Empaths are usually open targets for energy vampires (suckers) because we take in other people’s energies. Our compassion can sometimes exhaust us when we encounter too much needy energy at one time. Needy doesn’t necessarily always mean the vampire is intentionally reaching out to us, but, because we are susceptible to other people’s energies and feelings – means we can sense the needy energies. We receive the feelings through energy. This is the reason I refer to these types of people as vampires – because they suck out and overwhelm our own energies as we begin feeling their pain or sadness.
Don’t forget, an empath can experience happy emotions too, not just the bad and the sad, but experiencing happy and good emotions do not drain us. In fact, they can be quite uplifting. That’s why happy people are so good for the soul. And negative people drain our souls.
There are good parts of being an empath – despite an empath’s ability to attract others’ negative energy, sometimes having that uncanny ability of reading a person’s soul through looking into their eyes, can also come in handy for staying safe and sensing oncoming trouble ahead.
Just as a fine- tuned intuition will save us from making many wrong moves, an ability to be able to learn people’s intentions through looking in their eyes can help us avoid – or at least, prepare us to avoid danger. My internal alert system flashes before me if I’m in close proximity to something scary. If I’m out in public and find myself in a situation among undesirable people, or feeling a little too close for comfort, I have an early chance of escape.
I’ll observe people when they aren’t watching and look into their eyes at an opportune moment. If there’s an exchange of words, I’ll check if a smile is genuine (an empath knows). Eyes speak, so does an ominous silence – like a smile without matching smiling eyes. But I would have to say my finest tuned skill as an empath is attracting people’s sadness. My empathy is my Achille’s Heel. It may not be that someone is intentionally in my energy space, but my radar picks up on those energies. As I mentioned earlier, we don’t have to actually be in a room with someone to pick up the energy, just as we could be watching something on TV that transmits those same energies. For a seasoned empath, we can also read energies from the written word – some things like a commonly used phrase – reading between the lines, reading ‘behind’ the words that emit the true emotion behind the words.
I’d like to share an example of an experience I had that never leaves me to demonstrate how the energy thing works with me.
The Medium and the broken-hearted woman and my book.
About 10 years ago now, I was invited to a private gathering at my naturopath’s office by my friend Charlene, the then office manager at the clinic. Charlene invited a well-known Medium to come to the clinic to perform readings by picking up energies in the room and afterwards, the group could ask the Medium questions. . . please continue reading at Sally’s blog.
©D.G.Kaye 2020
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