Emotions can be funny things. Some days you know exactly why they’re there – you’re going through a crappy experience, for example, you’re stressed or you’re hormonal. Other times they seem to come out of nowhere, zapping your reserves and leaving you struggling with self-care. If this happens to you regularly – and predominantly at the end of the day – there’s a good chance you’re actually picking up other people’s emotions.
Science calls this ‘mood contagion’, and, unfortunately, it’s often negative emotions that are transmitted between people more frequently than positive ones. Certain people are more likely to pick up emotional frequencies than others. In psychology, these people are often called highly sensitive. In spirituality, we call these people empaths. If that sounds like you, here’s what you need to know.
You are awesome
Being an empath sounds like a drag, but it’s actually a gift. I love the way Glennon Doyle describes the sacred role of an empath in her book Untamed: “In most cultures, folks like [my daughter] Tish are identified early, set apart as shamans, medicine people, poets and clergy. They are considered eccentric but critical to the survival of the group because they are able to hear things others don’t hear and see things others don’t see and feel things others don’t feel… But our society is so hell-bent on expansion, power and efficiency at all costs that the folks like Tish, like me, are inconvenient… We’re on the bow of the Titanic, crying out: ‘Iceberg! Iceberg!’ while everyone else is below deck, yelling back, ‘We just want to keep dancing!’ It is easier to call us broken and dismiss us than consider that we are responding appropriately to a broken world.”
(Photo by Yun Heng Lin on Scopio)
Even though being an empath means you care a whole lot, it’s important to understand that you do not serve anyone by making their pain your own. There is a difference between caring for someone and letting their feelings shape your own emotional landscape. Trouble is, there’s a prevailing belief in some corners of spirituality that taking on other people’s feelings is simply the price you pay for being an empath. There’s also a belief that shouldering other people’s emotions for them is an act of kindness. These ideas are BS and they need to be cancelled, stat.
It is possible – and, I would argue, essential – to allow others their pain without feeling compelled to shoulder that emotional burden or try to fix them.
You need protection
Honestly, I can’t overstate the importance of this enough. I shield my energy every single day to protect me. Every. Single. Day. It’s very simple: I ask Archangel Michael to place me in a protective bubble of light for the day. It takes me less than 30 seconds but decreases the chances I’ll finish each day curled up on the floor in a ball of misery. Shielding does not mean I don’t still feel challenging emotions such as frustration, sadness and annoyance – it just means I don’t unwittingly adopt these emotions from the people around me.
Think of it like this: if you talk to a therapist about sad experiences in your life, do you want them to start crying and then go home and bawl their eyes out some more? Like, how would that even help you? What you’d really want, ideally, is for them to feel sad for you but not to make that sadness their own, which frees them up to actually help and support you.
More information about shielding is available here.
Empath vs codependent
I used to know a girl who would constantly disappear into whoever she was dating. When she dated a mountain biker, she bought a mountain bike and cycling gear, and hit those hilly paths like it was her raison d’etre. When they broke up, the bike was promptly forgotten. Then she dated a fisherman and was suddenly out every weekend with a rod and reel, ditching plans with her friends in favour of this all-consuming pastime.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with having a shared hobby, but this was so much more than that. She was outsourcing her sense of purpose, passion and entire identity to her boyfriend – and, consequently, her emotional state was totally enmeshed with his. She was totally miserable when he was upset about something. If he had been treated poorly by a manager, she believed the entire world was against them both. She lost herself not because she loved him so much but because she didn’t have a strong sense of self.
If you can’t tell where you end and where your partner begins, you may have a problem with codependency, and that is not the same as being an empath. Codependency means you are not just feeling someone else’s emotions, you’re actually feeding off them. This can happen if you’ve had a narcissistic parent, which instilled the idea that your needs always have to come secondary to those of the person you love (read more here). You end up spending your life walking on eggshells, trying to avoid upsetting people. You end up desperately lost – guilty, even – when people you love are upset, and you feel compelled to try and fix their problems. You end up never saying ‘no’ to people or setting boundaries against bad behaviour.
Whatever the cause of your codependency, I would recommend doing some energy healing to clear these unhealthy attachments to other people’s emotions, so you can still feel empathy but not lose yourself.
Examining your conditioning
(Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash)
Regardless of your childhood experiences, there may be other social and cultural forces influencing your emotional MO – especially if you’re a woman. Often women are conditioned to be helpers, being taught that it is their job to sacrifice their own happiness to make everyone else happy. We are told – both implicitly and, in the case of Mother’s Day messaging each year, explicitly – that denying ourselves fulfilment is the most selfless, most responsible thing a woman can be. This is BS. (Glennon Doyle talks about this a lot in Untamed, BTW.) Being a martyr may earn us social currency but it costs us dearly. We end up disconnected from our passions, our purpose and our sacred responsibility to further our own growth. This can make it really difficult as an adult to make choices that are necessary for your development but which might meet with disapproval or disappointment from some people – for example, if you want to quit your job and start a new business or go travelling. Although I see these struggles in men, too, they generally aren’t tied to social conditioning.
A final note
Just to be clear, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with caring about people and wanting to help them. What I’m talking about is getting OVERattached to their emotions and dramas, and holding the belief that you can’t be happy unless other people are also happy. That’s very unhealthy, and it will hold you back from being your brightest, most awesome self.