Tag: Empathy

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Depression series – Empaths and concern for others or Why didn’t you call?

Over-concern for others.

Check-list

  • You worry about others
  • You feel bad about when others try and fail.
  • We feel anxiety when others don’t come home when expected. 

Empaths often get depressed in regards to other people. 

It might be for the person who has gone to buy a special present for someone, only to have gotten it very wrong, due to lack of knowledge. You may feel bad for them because you feel all the effort they put into it has gone to waste.  You wish things had worked out for them with all that work, and it makes you feel, sad, bad and terribly depressed.

Perhaps you might be worried about a friend or a loved one in regards to how life is going for them, or if they are doing well or not.

If we fear something is wrong with them, we, ourselves, may feel anxious, and will not be able to rest until we are reassured that all is well. We tend to experience that awful sinking feeling of anxiety in the pit of our stomach until we hear some news that reassures us.

This is especially true for empaths with children who are out late or their partner has not returned at the normal time. We immediately imagine the worst and fear that something terrible has happened.

It’s hard to disassociate ourselves from the fear to check on your feelings, as we are too attached to the outcome, and that colours what we are feeling.

Intuition works well, but if it’s tainted by our fears, it can make us feel things which aren’t true. It’s hard to step back and be objective in these kind of situations as we tend to have too much of our own selves invested in our relationships.

For some empaths, they often don’t feel good unless others are feeling good. If they are having a rough time, we will put our own happiness on hold until they are doing better.

This is not healthy as it not only hurt you, but actually makes things worse for those you are concerned about. Not only do they have to deal with their own problems, but they also have to take you into account, putting pressure on them.

I know, from personal experience, that I can’t have a bad day without everyone around me going into melt down over it. It drives me crazy. Sometimes I just want to work through things, and not have to go into damage control because of it. Sometimes I just want to have a bad day and work through my feelings.

People have bad days. People need bad days. They need those times to let out their frustration. Or maybe they just aren’t feeling well. It doesn’t really matter what the reason is, it’s important to give them space to be, and show that they are supported, without making it into something it isn’t.

Of course, being empaths, we can’t help but care.

I would suggest that the key to dealing with this is to understand that the other person does know exactly what they are doing on a soul level. Everything is as it should be; even those really crappy events that seem to crop up in one’s life. If you can know and accept this, and know it in your heart, then you can let go of the fear, and understand that they are living their life as needed.

Bach Flower Remedy: 

Red Chestnut.

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Depression series – Empaths and Anger or My depression is making me very angry.

Anger

Anger, while not actually a type of depression, can often be triggered by depression. This is an article on the type of anger that empaths tend to suffer from.

Empaths, particularly those who are on the spiritual path, tend to repress their anger.
This is extremely unhealthy.

There is this stream of thought that states that spiritual people do not get angry. I understand that in some religions and cultures that even thinking anything negative is forbidden.

There is a  perception that we should always be love, peace and joy and not allow such emotions to come up, otherwise how can we claim to be a good person, or a spiritual one?

While I can understand that we should try to avoid giving energy to negative thoughts, denying them is not the way to do it. In fact, all it does it make them fester and grow stronger.

Remember, what you resist, persists and what you look at, bring into the light and make your own will no longer have any power over you and disappear.

But anger is anger. Just denying it doesn’t make it go away. It needs to be dealt with, and you can’t do that by refusing to acknowledge it.

Repressing anger produces harmful negative effects.
We become angry at not allowing ourselves to be angry in the first place, and then we supress that, which in turn creates more anger. It’s a vicious cycle.

This can lead to several things.

A great amount of repressed anger.
A psychic pain around the third eye. By psychic, I mean it’s not physical pain, but a mental, sharp pain, like someone sticking an ethereal knife into that area.
Episodes where you suddenly feel that you want to take a weapon of some kind, and use it on anything that seems to be in your way.  Such thoughts such as, ‘kill ’em all’ might be typically going through your mind.
You are afraid to let go of your anger, because you fear the outcome of it.

Such repressed anger not only has a toxic effect, but it may lead to explosive events, such as road rage. It may be the quiet person who snaps and everyone says, I never would have suspected they would do something like that.

Anger is borne from fear and when we a lot of fear it may become malignant.

Expressing anger is healthy. Just don’t hold onto it once you have done so. Empaths tend to worry about the consequences of showing their anger. They believe they will drive others away, or enter into a confrontation they do not want.

While both may lead to such things, there are ways to express anger without being violent, or abusive, or demeaning about it.

Express how you feel and letting others know that this is something you need to do and let out is one method.

Many people are angry in the moment. However, once they have said their piece, they will let it go and forget about it the next moment. Their anger is in the moment and rarely lasts beyond that.

The problem with expressing your anger is that while it is healthy, those who you are expressing it to sometimes can’t let it go. Your words and your reactions will haunt them. Some will hang onto it and let it fester, becoming angry in their own turn.

This is why it’s vitally important to never get personal with someone. Once you start doing that, you will become lost in a cycle of incriminations and accusations that do no one any good and only end up hurting both parties in the end.

No one ever wins such arguments. Generally, all you end up doing is walking away, and stewing over it in your mind, thinking of the injustice of it all until the next time things explode.

If you are able to do so, there are things worth bearing in mind.

Take people in the moment.

We are not our pasts. Yes, they define who we are right now, but remember to take people in the moment. Don’t force them into a pattern they may not wish to be in any longer.  People can, and do change if they are working to do so.  However, do not confuse this with someone who you want to change, but is unwilling to shift. Such people will keep you in your own patterns, which is not healthy.

Do not get personal.

When you get personal, or attack someone on a personal level, you will have lost your case. Once you put someone on the defensive, they will defend and there it is unlikely they will hear what you are really trying to say, because they are too busy trying to prove their own case.

Many people have a strongly defined sense of right and wrong. They generally consider their actions to be ‘right’, which is always based on their belief system and how they view the world. Anyone who has a differing view is considered as ‘wrong’.

Interestingly enough, the other party will have the same type of model of their own world. They feel they are right and anyone who they don’t agree with is wrong.

However, right and wrong are strictly relative things, and in the greater reality, they don’t exist. What is right today may become wrong tomorrow, and what is right tomorrow may have been wrong today.  We, as individuals and as a society keep on changing right and wrong as we go along.

Really, though, there is no such thing. Right and wrong are quite individual. Right can be best described as something that takes you closer to who you wish to be and wrong as something that takes you further away.

As everyone has different goals, to try and fit everyone into one belief system just doesn’t work. Just because they do not agree with your views, it doesn’t mean they are wrong. It is simply another perspective.  The true gift is that you get to see another way you may not have considered. You might not agree with it, at least not at that point of time, but acknowledge it, accept it, bless it and let it go.

I could get more holistic here, but the point I’m trying to make is that our anger at someone generally tends to be a difference in belief systems. Most of the time, there is something going on that we aren’t aware of so it’s best not to make judgements unless you have all the facts; and those we don’t always get.

If we can express anger in a calm and healthy way, and explain to whoever we are talking to that this is what I am feeling, and while I don’t expect you to agree with it, I want you to at least hear me and understand, it can help a lot.

The other thing to make clear is that you’re not looking to be fixed. You’re not looking for solutions and you certainly don’t want to be told what you should do in order to resolve the situation. You just want to express yourself. If you want answers, you will ask for them.

Too many of us, especially empaths, are ‘fixer uppers’. We feel we have the answers, and in many cases we do… for ourselves.

If asked, we best just share our own experiences and perspectives, and say that this is what works for me. Try it if you wish.

We might be spiritual being, but we are having a human experience and with that comes all the emotions that us humans have. If you feel anger, express it in a healthy way. Do not repress it. In the long term, there will be health problems by doing so.

If you’re wondering how to not be angry or how to overcome your anger, I’ve personally found that shifting your perspectives and understanding others points of views goes a long way to helping.

Generally, if we don’t want to see another person’s point of view, it means we have a vested interest in denying it and that’s alright. What we may want for ourselves may not be what others want for us.

We may need to fight for what we desire and I believe that’s best done by convincing the other parties that it’s in their own interest to give us what we want.

Of course, this is not an inclusive list of how to deal with anger, or the reasons for anger.  They are simply my own observations and experiences.  I hope it helps.

Bach Flower Remedies:

Holly is the remedy for anger. Cherry Plum is the remedy for fear of letting go

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Being credulous doesn’t mean I’m not sceptical, too.

The sceptical Empath

My life has been unusual, to put it mildly. Those who know me would not deny that, and there are some things that I just can’t explain away, no matter how creative I become.

I’ve seen and experienced a lot of things, some of which will be posted to this blog in time.

This is what this entry is about. How credulous am I? What measures, if any, do I take to try to ensure that all I’m writing about isn’t just the delusion of some active imagination?

And that is a good question.

I’m what you would call a purist and I prefer to deal with facts and true experiences. It’s easy to ignore things if they don’t fit your belief system. However, believing that the world is flat does not make it any less round.

I truly believe that we do more harm than good to our cause if we ignore explanations that account for why something happens.

I feel that in order to remain objective about things, you need to be ready to accept that what you thought was so, may not be correct at all. I’ve certainly gone through that a few times in my life.

As new information comes up, I take that into account. Sometimes it fits into the bigger picture, and sometimes I have to rethink what I thought I knew. As long as I remain open to new information, I know I will get to the answers.

Over the years, I’ve done some intense studying on universal laws, life before death, after death, reincarnation, souls, manifesting, and so on. I read everything I could get my hands on and ran it through my mind and my feelings.

Eventually I reached a point where if I focused on a subject, I would ‘feel’ the answer. Meaning that I would get answers that felt right to me, and made sense. Sometimes the information would come quickly, sometimes it would come in section, and sometimes it would take years, with refinements and clarifications added.

I believe that getting the answers was a matter of being attuned to the information. There have certainly been times when I’ve been quite surprised by the results.

A lot of my works do have their basis in my studies of other works, and for that I acknowledge people like Neale Donald Walsch and Michael J Roads and Kyriacos Markides as three main sources of inspiration. Those works helped attune me and allowed me to understand and bring down much more information.

All my work is my work. They are my feelings and thoughts on a subject. What I write feels true for me, though, this may not be the case for others, as everyone has their own individual reality.

If you read these topics and it resonate with you, then use it. If not, then simply use it as another person’s perspective, which can be just as valuable.

By nature, I tend to be somewhat of a sceptic and a cynic. While I keep an open mind about everything, I treat many things I hear about with a healthy dose of scepticism. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and there are many people who repeat what they hear from other sources without check to see if it feels right for them.

I also trust my intuition and feelings 100%. Many things that should NOT be possible, feel right to me. When I was younger, I ignored those feelings, and my life just never worked out as I planned. It was only when I started to listen did things shift and my life ramped into high gear.

I am aware that many of the things I say and discuss are really ‘out there’. I could choose to tone it down. I could choose to use ambiguous words or speak in a way that absolves my responsibility for what this information imparts, but I am not going to do that.

There are people out there who need to find this information. They need to find it because they are experiencing the same things, and will need the validation that it is happening, and that they are not crazy.

So should you read my stuff, may you enjoy my writing.

Also, feel free to poke fun at it with your friends. 🙂

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Depression series – Empaths and Anxiety or Everything is great! So why do I feel like it’s not?

Anxiety

Checklist.

Do you feel anxious without any reason?
Do you feel something terrible is about to happen?
Do you suffer from anxiety attacks?

Anxiety, though closely related to feelings of guilt, tends to be a different kind of depression.

It’s the feeling that something is wrong or the sense that something horrible it going to happen. It could be a feeling of impending doom, or problems which you are ignoring, but still are eating away at you beneath the surface.

Indeed, one of the causes of anxiety is us refusing to look at, or acknowledge something that we feel needs to be done. It might be as simple as cleaning your home while you’re choosing to chill out or perhaps that homework you’ve not done, in spite of the fact may be due the next day.

It could be that exam you’re going to take soon, or the job interview that you are about to have.  Maybe it’s that pretty girl you’re about to ask out, or that stunning fellow who you want to look your way. (To be sexist J )

One might also feel anxiety about their personal lives. Especially if they are insecure about their relationships, or feel they should be in a relationship but aren’t.

Both can cause enormous distress, as it’s often due to our self-image, and the belief that something is wrong with us, or we are doing something wrong.

Some of us are experts at avoiding looking at things that we don’t wish to do, but know we probably should. This is different to procrastinating, as with that, you are making a deliberate choice to put something off as opposed to something that should be done, but has not been. This produces a feeling of great unease which is disruptive to our normal harmony.

It could also be due to something we think we should be doing, but are not. This might be as simple as calling someone (such as a parent) or stopping what you are doing in order to placate someone else. This kind of anxiety borders on feelings of guilt.

Empaths also have the extra burden of picking up anxiety from others. You may well be picking up on the emotional distress of another, or even a sense of fear on a global scale.

Some psychic empaths will often pick up impending events some weeks before they happen. For instance, there are some who picked up 9/11 before it happened. They did not understand why they felt what they felt, only that they felt a sense of dying and incredible grief.

Such things are already out there, in the collective consciousness, well before they happen, the greater the probability of them occurring, the more the empath will feel such things.

Is it said that this type of anxiety is us sensing things from the astral levels (that is, that levels which are not the physical realm) but not being able to bring the information fully down, so we know what is going on.

Anxiety is frustrating to live with, and some live with it on a daily basis, never quite knowing the reason why. Many hide it well, but they just can’t seem to get over it.

Bach Flower Remedy: 
Aspen