Being an empath is a bit like being emotional baking soda in the big refrigerator of life; you sit there quietly minding your own business while inadvertently soaking up all the funk that surrounds you. It means that you often are not just aware of other people’s feelings, but actually share them, which can be as exhausting as it is confusing. In some ways it is not unlike being a psychic in an old black and white film, minus the dramatic eyelashes and eccentric clothing. As an empath you sense things, you feel things, that others cannot. And as such, you try very hard to differentiate your actual feelings from those radiating off the people around you. It can be confusing, and more than a little exhausting, and is not something that anyone in their right mind would volunteer for, but it can be useful, if you learn how to manage it.
However, if, despite being one of the shortest words in the English language, may actually be one of the most powerful. With this one tiny word, the entire fate of civilizations can be changed or even lost. If managed, empathy can be a superpower that enables one to help others, avoid bad situations, and understand the people around you. If not managed, empathy is the source of immeasurable anxiety, discomfort and frustration. So how does one manage something that cannot be seen, and can just as easily help you as hobble you? Good question! I wish I knew, especially as I sit here typing this surrounded by all four of my children as they learn to navigate the uncharted territories of on-line education.
Thanks to a global pandemic, and a terrible internet connection at home, my family and I have rented an office space for school and work. This means that we now have the lightning speed Internet connection of the modern day, instead of what would have been considered fast for 1995. This high speed connection has brought down the panic that was settling in when we were trying to figure out how to have up to 5 people on Zoom calls on a connection that on a good day would support .75 of one call (you could get the audio content and sometimes a jumpy image). However, this now means that we are all in the same room working separately. My husband is telecommuting. My two youngest children are navigating the virtual hallways of middle school, while their older sister is doing her junior year of high school at the local community college, and my son is starting college, his first “lecture” is in about ten minutes. My job in all of this, is to help the two younger kids with their assignments, feed everyone, and help talk everyone (including myself) down from the proverbial edge when everything gets to be too much.
You see, I am literally sitting here, stewing in a boiling soup pot of other peoples’ emotions. Don’t get me wrong, there is more than a fair amount of my own anxiety in this stew’s recipe, but there is far more angst in this room than even I can produce on my own, and that is saying something, believe you me. At present, the perfectionist who resides in the back of my head is reminding me that I really should have a better handle on this, because I already know what I need to do. But as with most things in life, there is a huge difference between knowing what you are supposed to do, and actually doing it.
So as I found my anxiety level rising toward the terminal velocity of free falling, I began to write this as a way of distracting myself from what was going on in the room around me and hopefully also reminding myself what to do, and how to do at the same time.
The first item on this agenda is, of course, say it with me now, boundaries. The idea behind boundaries, is to decide what is and isn’t acceptable, tell others what those boundaries are, and then stick to them. That sentence is so easy to say, but the truth of the matter is that setting boundaries is difficult for most people and is something with which, I in particular, have always struggled. This is because other people’s feelings, or at least our perceptions of them, get in the way of protecting ourselves. We worry that others will be hurt if we are not available. We forgive other’s bad behaviors by making excuses or explaining them away. Or my personal favorite, “this time it will be different,” “this time I will overextend myself, but the other person will have a breakthrough and it will all be worth it and better forever and ever amen.” In the specific case of empaths, if I do not differentiate between your feelings and my own, then I may end up helping you to avoid things you need to feel in order to learn and grow, simply to lessen my own stress and anxiety. This is a tough one, and luckily, I am not in this gig alone, I have a supportive partner, and parents, all of whom have been willing to scrape me off the ceiling more than once or twice over the years, and remind me that sometimes the kids have to be sad, hurt, and even struggle in order to learn, grow, and thrive. I hate that. But it is a truth, and a boundary that I must respect if I am to maintain my sanity and my children are to grow into independent adults.
The second item on the agenda is to remember the emergency landing instructions given before a flight, put your own oxygen mask on first. If we don’t take care of ourselves, there is nothing left to give and we are of no use to anyone. This of course refers to selfcare in all of its many forms. However, since I am focusing specifically on empaths here, I want to tailor this item a little for those purposes. First and foremost, I want to take this opportunity to point out that setting (and enforcing boundaries/limits) is selfcare, because by deciding what we are willing and able to handle, we never come to a place where we resent others for having a problem, sucking us dry, or otherwise just feeling burnt out by the problems of others. The second, and perhaps even more important tailoring of the notion of selfcare is pointing out the importance of alone time, time away from other people, and their feelings, is not just important, but imperative. I spoke about this at some length in a piece entitled, “A Space of One’s Own.” Time and space to be separate helps to restore the empath, as well as to reaffirm the concept of separateness. Or to say that in a less convoluted way, being alone with your own feelings allows one to start to identify which feelings really are yours and which belong to others.
The third and final item on this agenda, because of course all good things come in threes, is to remember that by not rescuing others from their problems, by not taking them on as your own, you are helping them far more than by just making everything ok. I know I eluded to this before, but it is so important, and hard, that I wanted to give it a spotlight. The natural instinct of the empath is to rescue others, and to calm the emotional climate, as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. But the truth is, often people, and kids in particular, need to suffer a little to learn. By this I do not mean to say that they should be harmed or abused in any way, but rather, failure can be a good teacher. Sadness can lead to self-discovery and growth. Anger can be a constructive force for change. However, if the emotional climate is normalized too quickly, if someone is rescued from that failure, sadness or anger then you both lose. They lose the opportunity to learn and grow, and you lose the opportunity to see them succeed on their own. This one is really hard for me; I hate to see people suffer, especially my kids. But I want them to learn to stand on their own two feet and succeed on their own more, so I keep trying. Or in this case, typing.
During the course of writing this, my son has finished his first lecture, my eldest daughter has entered into hers, and the two youngest have finished their lessons for the day (yeah, I am kind of a slow writer). But the point is, everyone made it through the day, and I think they are all a bit better off for my not having jumped into their panic wagon and gone for the ride with them. Instead, I found something else for myself to focus on, made myself available when they needed (and asked for) my help, and am now ready to go home and start on the laundry, dishes, and dinner…and maybe even a little time alone.
