So, after a long period of self doubt on the issue and outside influence pushing me away from grasping this 'strength', I decided to stake and claim as an empath, able to connect (not entirely by choice) to one's emotional and mental state and feel it as if it were my own once removed. Difficult to explain, moving on.
My own emotional state is generally one of a very deep calm and the feeling that ultimately everything will work out. I do have episodes of intense emotion, grief, rage and positivity brought on by outside circumstance but they are generally fleeting and my baseline is one of peace.
However, connecting to other's state brings some problems. One large problem for a long time was that of other's anxiety. I have had my own anxiety in life previously, panic attacks and ruminative worries, prior to learning to let shit go and trust that things will work out and if not, that it really doesn't ultimately matter. Detaching from suffering. I know what it is and a certain depth that it can delve to (though my own anxieties can not compare to others anxiety that I have felt) and can discern which is mine and which is others. So, being around anxious people, situations that cause anxiety (even brought on by myself, having been described at times as an intense person and able to cause anxiety (oops)) caused a certain difficulty coping being around certain people. Eventually (after coming to my own bedrock of peace) I learned how to transfer some of my own peace to calm other's anxiety, 'breathe it into them' and made it infinitely easier to be around anxious people and even rewarding to be able to be the spark of their own internal oasis.
Difficulties I run into now:
Other's anger at myself, typically upon being called out. It's probably difficult to describe to someone who hasn't experienced these 'currents' but I can at once feel their anger on the outskirts while feeling my own fear or anger. I dislike it, very uncomfortable. Ultimately it is pushing me away from speaking/acting/thinking out against injustice and shitty attitudes which is not how I want to be, muted.
Others who take glee in other's suffering. I do not find this acceptable. I was raised by a less than stellar family (bless them though for they are who they are) and certainly have a potential for bolstering my self esteem powerfully though enjoying other's suffering. I find it morally repugnant and have no desire to go down that road. However, there are certain people who I can not remove myself from (work, university) that do find glee in this suffering and when people who are down show a weakness and these other people find an enjoyment out of it, it is very difficult to disconnect myself from their emotions as those schadenfreudic emotions are fairly arroused/present/even addicting. I have taken to putting down those schadenfreudic individuals as a response (though they hide themselves, it is possible to trace back) but it is not always possible (wrong setting (like a university lecture) agressive individuals who would fire back twice as hard, superiors, etc.) and so in these situations I am at a loss.
Any other empaths dealing with this? Desperately seeking a way to manage these later described connections as I have no desire to further unfold certain tendencies my inherited psychology and childhood trauma could form into.
A note:
Far too many anxious people in the world who buy into the messages that society bombards us with. Be yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses and be okay with them. Learn to let shit go and know that things will work out. Know that suffering is temporary and self-fulfilling, don't cry over spilt milk, it won't matter down the road. Stop trying to please people by seeking the best jobs, accepting living in horrid emotional conditions because it is 'easier' or 'cheaper', etc. Love yourself. Why would you question yourself repeatedly?
Predators, irredeemable ones, do live among us. Beware those who would seem themselves as your gods and masters.
Edited by withoutlabel (08/01/15 02:22 PM)
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I think most who suffer early develop an extra depth with regards to suffering in others. A fine-tuned sensibility. The serious drawback of this is that often it dominates the emotional landscape. When seeing another suffering, there is little else to be seen. So much thought/feeling is taken up by that sensibility. There are nuanced details tied in; a reflection of personal occurrences. In comes speculation of origin, of consequences, of future suffering. And rather than seeing all of the present happenings, one sees instead the suffering and potential sufferings that came before and will come after.
Now this may often even be correct. In my personal experience the before/after story was often correct. But even that doesn't negate how many other emotional aspects are being missed in that present moment due to so much focus being tied up in suffering.
Speaking again personally, I found relief from this focus in a few places. The first being in meditation. Developing an open, non-specific, meditation practice. Often times this resulted in me suddenly becoming aware of the light play in a living room. Or the shadows moving on the floor/wall. Sometimes sounds became amusing. The rhythm. Sometimes visually there were anomalies. Strange visual occurrences. As an example I recall staring at a point on the carpet a few feet in front of me. Rather unremarkable carpet with a short pile and bland coloring. But it started to become wavy, as those spinning optical illusions can produce on a wall, or as HPPD is often described. Then it started to become smokey, as if there was a fog right in front of my visual field. To the periphery was clear but if I tried to look at that periphery more clearly, the fog was front and center. So I'm sitting there breathing and pondering the wavy smoke
What this did was shift my focus. Instead of always finding suffering, I started finding small but unique elements in the environment. When things started to get heavy it seemed naturally I tended to divert my own attention (and others') towards these novelties. It had the effect of grounding us in the moment we found ourselves. A sweet relief for all involved IME.
Another place that I found some relief is in death. Death, the great equalizer. Contemplating the push and pull of daily life in relationship to the unrelenting force that is death. Thinking about death has pulled me out of my own head on countless occasions. And not thinking about death in some philosophical sense, not trying to establish meaning for death by working at the edges of death. Not trying to determine what comes before death or after death. But thinking about death directly as possible, about my death. The inevitability of it, the helplessness of it, the force of it, the weight of it. How whatever unpleasantness that is happening now almost invariably relates to that same helplessness, that same weight, that same inevitability -- and my visceral resistance.
This over time really helped me to let go of trying to control a lot. A lot. Instead of trying to create the outcome that best subdued these feelings, which increasingly became clearly seen as a fear of death, I allowed myself to feel a fool, feel a pawn, feel an idiot, feel clueless, feel scared, feel ashamed, feel endangered. And feel these with no need to change a thing. To allow myself to be washed over by them. And in turn I started to find alternative approaches to scenarios that had priorly been in control of me. Instead of responding in the same, tired, controlling way, now there was a creativity. I don't really know what is to come, positive, negative, funny, sad, joyous, futile. But I do know that it was never up to me in the first place
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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