“An empath is a person who is highly attuned to the feelings and emotions of those around them. Empaths feel what another person is feeling on a deep emotional level.” ~ Leah Campbell
When I learned the word “empath” about ten years ago, it felt like the most amazing relief. I thought to myself, yes, this is me! Finally, an explanation of why people tire me so much. One reason is that I had the ability to read people instantly and I was always there to help, listen or support other people in crisis.
But now I no longer believe that definition.
I am no longer an empath.
Am I healed? Or was I not an empath in the first place?
For me, I found a different understanding that unlocked the ability to not get stuck empath-prison I found myself.
I discovered that I could change my response to people’s emotions so that I no longer directed my life according to them.
When I discovered the concept of empathy, I found that I faced many challenges: attracting people who were struggling and needed my support like moths to a flame; my inability to disengage from the stress and emotions of other people’s lives and focus on myself; I’m tired of spending time with people.
I started following the general advice for empathy, but it started to feel like another cage. I had to build my life around “emotional bloodsuckers”, avoiding “toxic” people. But I found that even if I covered myself in white light or avoided certain people, it didn’t stop me from feeling completely overwhelmed by the emotions of my relatives, my children, my husband, or my closest friends.
It felt like I was in permanent reaction mode, and it was extremely disempowering.
A few years later I discovered a different word that changed my life in a more significant way – joyful.
Pleasing is a survival response that is activated when an emotion or situation becomes too much for us. Similar to the fight, flight, and freeze responses, calming is a response to a sense of physical or emotional safety.
I discovered that I learned at a young age, as many of us do, that if I knew how to anticipate and support the feelings of those around me, I would feel most secure.
My survival response, which helped me stay as connected as possible to the people around me, was to be hypersensitive to their emotions and help them along.
When we learn at a young age that a sense of security comes from suppressing our own feelings in order to help others—or at least to minimize our emotional needs so we’re not rocking the boat, arguing, annoying our parents, or drawing attention to ourselves—we spend our adult lives in the same habitual pattern.
We feel safest when the focus is not on our emotions, but on others.
We are supporters, listeners, helpers, the fixer.
We can draw a sense of comfort, safety, continuity without revealing our emotions or needs, without showing our true authentic self.
I know many times in my life I have felt proud of how helpful I have been. Was I a ‘good person’? How nice and supportive I was. But in fact it wasn’t a response driven by genuine, authentic desire—it was a response driven by the need for safety, belonging, acceptance, and love.
For me, uncovering my appeasement response has been an interesting and challenging experience. It’s so woven into my being, that comes across as a pleasant, easy-going, no-stress, no-drama person.
Someone who does not add to the mental load of a group or individual but helps others overcome problems and challenges.
Getting out of those reactions took a lot of awareness. Building a sense of security in my nervous system and incredible gentleness with myself, I had to learn to pay attention to my emotions.
I’ve had to recognize that other people’s emotions can feel incredibly scary, uncomfortable, frightening, and even dangerous to me. And sharing what I feel and need doesn’t come naturally to me because of these habitual childhood survival response patterns.
But with awareness and the right tools, I learned to slowly walk the path to the safety of being myself out in the world, surrounded by other people’s emotions but not overtaken by them as I was.
That’s how I learned Learned to support people— fixing, smoothing things over, helping, taking charge, constant listening—didn’t really have the emotional support that helped bring about change in them.
True emotional support occurs when we are not reacting to our survival and it never comes at the emotional cost of others.
My support should not be something that risks my energy, my time or my sense of security.
To me, being an empath felt like a lifelong sentence from which I could never escape. But I now know that this is a learned response that can be unlearned. When we have the awareness and tools to gently support the neural activation that comes when we are aware of other people’s emotions.
Here are some tips to help.
Awareness
Creating awareness was the most powerful first step for me. We cannot change what we do not notice.
We can start by noticing: What is it like to be around people or certain people when they are emotional? What will happen to my body? What emotions are activated in me when I hear or witness another person’s emotional activation?
It’s learning to turn our attention away from other people and back to ourselves. What is happening to us?
Do I feel a sense of urgency or doom or feeling trapped? Do I want to immediately jump in and help, fix and support? Sounds like I need to come up with a bunch of ideas to help someone through this? Do I lie awake at night worrying about other people’s emotional challenges?
If we feel this sense of urgency—that we must help, support, do something—it’s a good sign that our survival responses have been activated. And our brain is sending signals to the body that there is a threat, which, if not a real threat to life, is merely a pattern that we need to pay attention to.
So, when we feel this sense of urgency, the next step is to bring a sense of safety into our bodies so that we can come out of needing help/solutions/support which is our survival response.
Creating a sense of security in the body
One of the ways I give my nervous system a signal of safety is to do an orienting exercise when I feel urgent or overwhelmed.
Here’s how you can do this orienting exercise.
Start by slowly and slowly looking around and scanning the entire room. Let your gaze drift slowly. You can turn your neck gently. Take in all of your surroundings.
If you want, stop on any object that catches your interest, not as an object but as an interesting collection of colors and shapes.
Slowly look above you and below you. Then behind you. Look outside if you have a window and the horizon if you have one
The horizon line is very soothing for the nervous system and us survival response.
Knowing what’s around you, that there’s no threat on the horizon, brings a sense of security to our bodies.
Do this for a minute or two, and then see how it feels in your body.
Do you notice anything happening? Any changes in breathing or sensation?
Give your nervous system ten seconds or so to soak up any changes, and then you can go about your day.
This is a great exercise that you can use several times a day. Just stopping and scanning directs the nervous system to our environment and signals safety.
Creating a break
My final tip is to create a break. When we’re in the world, busy and asking for things, it can be hard to remember what we need to do.
When people say:
Oh, can you babysit my five kids and eleven animals for a week?
Can you stay late for work even if it’s your partner’s birthday?
I know you’re working, but can I come over and hang out? I feel very stressed.
When we’re used to being appeased, it’s very easy for the nervous system to read these requests as requiring our attention, and “yes” seem to be coming out of our mouths before we even realize it.
So I encourage my clients to focus on building on a break.
When we learn to pause, we have the opportunity to offer ourselves a regulatory practice such as breathing, paying attention to ourselves, noticing, orienting.
We can notice, do I feel the urge to say yes?
If we feel it is an urgent desire, it is a sure sign that we are in our survival reactions.
I suggest keeping a few expressions on hand that we can say when people ask us something, or when we feel this urge to jump in and support/solve/save at the cost of our own abilities, time, needs or emotions.
Thanks for thinking of me. I have a thought and when I know you will get back.
Gosh, feeling stressed sounds hard. Let me think about what I have to do today and get back to you.
By taking a break, we create a new option for ourselves. If it’s not really urgent (ie, someone doesn’t need to be taken to the hospital), we can sit with ourselves for a few minutes and give ourselves time to see how we’re feeling.
We can ask ourselves:
Do I actually want to do it? Or need?
How is it going to affect me?
Do I have the mental capacity for this?
By pausing and turning our attention inward, we begin the process of disconnecting from other people and their reactions and turning instead to our own emotions and needs.
It’s a more connected and focused relationship with ourselves that we want most when we’re the happiest people.
about Diana Bird
Diana Bird is a neuro-emotional coach and author who helps people move from overwhelm, panic and fear to calm and confidence. Sign up for her free sensory-processing mini workshop And get powerful tools, free training, and ongoing support to transform your mental well-being. Take the first step toward lasting emotional change. Diana lives in southern Spain with her two children and photographer husband.
