Living with empathic abilities.

[Max_V]

About a year ago something terrible happened in the Netherlands that really hit me. A young girl was murdered and raped while she was taking a ride on her bike through the forest. For some reason I still feel a deep emotional connection to what happened to her which causes me to feel a lot of sadness and anxiety.

I've always been quite empathic but since a while now, this has really deepened a lot. When other people feel sad, I feel sadness, when people feel depressed, I feel their trouble. I don't really know how to deal with these abilities. 

I feel quite a lot of guilt because of how I feel about what happened to this girl. I don't even know her, yet what she dealt with really pains me.

Does anyone here have experience or knowledge on how to live deep empathic abilities? I want to find a way to use these abilities for helping people instead of letting them get to me as much as they are right now.

[Toby]

For me it is a matter of how "resilient" my system is to feel the emotions without doing anything with it; without making a story about it. Also - paradoxically - it is important to have healthy boundaries. Connecting very deeply and having healthy boundaries go together imo. Then what is felt is not a problem.

[zoey101]

@Max_V I agree with @Toby

What you are feeling is a GOOD thing, if you didn't feel anything at all, you may be a sociopath. But boundaries are good. You need to be able to feel what you are feeling without it bringing you down. That is a very sad story and I know I cry every time I hear a story about a baby's wrongful death, mainly because I think of my daughter, it's okay to feel that. But once I feel that emotion, I let it go. There is nothing I can do or could have done, as sad and cruel as that may sound. I let it go and try to learn from the situation whatever I can, but I don't let it consume my thoughts. 

It is perfectly normal to FEEL, just know when to let those feelings go once they are felt and which ones to hold onto.

[ajasatya]

@Max_V being able to explore emotional connectedness is an extremely rare ability and is totally worth the time to master it.

it can be used to listen deeply to others, know how they feel and why they suffer. answering back is not needed... just by listening to them deeply you're already helping them release suppressed emotions. thich nhat hahn has some profound teachings on this subject.

[Preetom]

@Max_V

Follow the advice stated in almost all Matt kahn videos.

You can't help anyone by lowering your consciousness/freedom in the name of empathy. The only way is to keep yourself elevated no matter what.

 

[Sahil Pandit]

@Max_V Did you experience sudden strong emotions with this? Like, flashes of emotion or trauma? 

[Max_V]

@ajasatya I will look into it, and try my best to find a way to use these abilities to help others, thanks for your suggestion.

@zoey101 Thank you for your empathy. It is hard for me to not be consumed by these emotions, they hit me so deep. I guess like @Preetom says, I will need to sit down and share love and compassion with these feelings. Hopefully I can reach her spirit or whatever remained of the energy of that situation.

@Sahil Pandit I have a strong imagination so whenever I think about what happened to her, these images and scenarios start playing into my head. It makes me quite sad. 

 @Toby It's like I don't have control over these boundaries, these strong emotions just hit me and fill me up out of nowhere.

[Toby]

Ok, let's assume my "body-mind-system" is traumatized by some events in my life ("shock trauma") or by early childhood experiences ("shock trauma" or "developmental trauma"). Then, the activation of the nervous system would be so high that there were "weak" or lacking boundaries. Overwhelment by emotions / thoughts to a degree where "just feel it" doesn't quite work or "retraumatize" me. But there were also higher emphatic abilities (out of hypervigilance really). So, if that were the case I would educate myself about trauma and developmental trauma and look for ways to bring the activation of the nervous system down which automatically leads to being more in the body, having better capacity to feel what arises and having more healthy boundaries. I don't know if that applies to you, but if it does I would look into Peter Levine's books and Laurence Heller's book (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1583944893/). Practices that could be done more or less alone to discharge activation of the nervous system are TRE (Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTPFbd-5xmE) or SE (Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine).

[Nahm]

15 hours ago, Max_V said:

About a year ago something terrible happened in the Netherlands that really hit me. A young girl was murdered and raped while she was taking a ride on her bike through the forest. For some reason I still feel a deep emotional connection to what happened to her which causes me to feel a lot of sadness and anxiety

Two things...you did not experience this like you feel you did. You experienced a screen. Might sound like a subtle difference, but if you want to help people, you’ll need to realize the difference. Being on the falsity rollercoaster of sadness, etc, will not result in the high energy you will need to help people to the tune you desire. After you get yourself there, you’ll have all the energy in the universe to help. You are not feeling sadness because you are empathetic. It is because you have not mastered your own energy, and you’re being taken for a ride by the energy of others. If you’re going to uplift anyone, you’re first going to have to learn how to keep yourself “up”.  

[Athena]

On 7/25/2018 at 6:49 PM, Nahm said:

Two things...you did not experience this like you feel you did. You experienced a screen. Might sound like a subtle difference, but if you want to help people, you’ll need to realize the difference. Being on the falsity rollercoaster of sadness, etc, will not result in the high energy you will need to help people to the tune you desire. After you get yourself there, you’ll have all the energy in the universe to help. You are not feeling sadness because you are empathetic. It is because you have not mastered your own energy, and you’re being taken for a ride by the energy of others. If you’re going to uplift anyone, you’re first going to have to learn how to keep yourself “up”.  

How does one keep themselves up. 

[Nahm]

@Athena Short answer, choose a better thought. Long term, vision board, visualization, practices, aligned eating. etc. 

[Hello from Russia]

40 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@Athena Short answer, choose a better thought. Long term, vision board, visualization, practices, aligned eating. etc. 

What do you mean by aligned eating?

[Toby]

23 minutes ago, Feel Good said:

Somatic experiencing is to be avoided as it just doesn't deal with the basic assumptions created at the times those hurts occurred.

Could you explain why from your experience this would be the case?

[Forestluv]

@Max_V I’m still trying to work through it.

One thing I know as an empath: energy vampires, like narcissists, are attracted to me like a magnet.

[Toby]

@Feel Good well... different approaches work in different ways. And Somatic Experiencing as such might be limited if the trauma is more about "relational", "attachment" or "developmental" issues; NARM is amazing for that. I don't understand why there would ever be a need to "install new beliefs" though. Questioning beliefs and exploring what is true and focusing on the resources a bit is enough imo. Yes, doing sessions with someone (who has done trainings in SE, NARM...) would be first choice, but one could certainly try out some things without someone else. And also I would find it valuable to read some books on the topic. Approaches that do not clearly include the body on a fundamental level (as SE, NARM, TRE do and "Shadow Work" most of the time does not) are - imo - not that effective.

[Nahm]

On 7/27/2018 at 8:23 PM, Hello from Russia said:

What do you mean by aligned eating?

You already know what I mean. 

Listen.

[YaNanNallari]

On 25.7.2018 at 11:31 AM, Max_V said:

I don't really know how to deal with these abilities. 

Exactly, which means things can become a lot better. So in a simple way your empathic abilities are making you sympathetic right now. So then it can be possible to learn to recognize which emotions are yours and which are others'. And also knowing where they stem from.

Things like this would be good to have some advice or teachings for if you want to look into them. Mostly because well some people would literally freak out about what they might find or jump to wrong conclusions. So keep in mind empathy includes a "weird" side of spirituality.

If you have the time and energy to do so, then instead of avoiding these experiences of sympathy then look into them more closely and see what is happening. This can be the best way to learn on your own instead of trying to say that it should work some way.

[Toby]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

You already know what I mean. 

Listen.

Is this also a term from Abraham Hicks?

[Nahm]

@Toby I suppose, but also people all over the world are using the word listen too.  

Robots never stop and listen to their spirit.  

You a robot? Are you living in conditional habitual pattern? 

[Toby]

@Nahm I was talking about "aligned eating" and "choose a better thought". Sounds like something straight from Abraham Hicks. And then when someone directly asks you about it you don't even say where you got it from.