As an empath, I have learned to observe, not absorb. Everyday life is filled with people in various states of pain, and it doesn't always have to be some obvious physical pain, they can show it just the way they speak and interact with the world, and through subtle body language.
Not that I avoid those types of people like the plague, only a select few I try to listen to and try to make their journey as painless as possible, and being an empath for everyone you encounter is obviously draining and can sap your energy, fast.
MDMA assisted psychotherapy looks promising, and people don't run the risk of overdosing or using contaminated pills, and they're in the company of trained professionals who are also prepared with medicine to counteract the effects of the drug incase someone has adverse reactions to it.
Mental pain is the worst type of pain IMHO. Physical pain for me is bearable, since it subsides, but there is a strange thing that happens with mental pain and it's the feeling that it's going to last forever and be recursive. Imagine being permanently subjected to mental torture? That's what it feels like, but like physical pain, it subsides, only we don't believe that when we experience mental anguish.
It's difficult but "worry only about that which you can control" is a reasonable rule for sensitive people to follow. I can only control my actions. Nothing else. I can't even control my feelings.
Some feelings can be controlled by appropriate action. For instance if you experience fear because you don't know how something may end. You may start doing research on it and explore different outcomes. Often turns out that these outcomes aren't actually bad and such information makes fear disappear in an instant.
In my world, controlling your feeling means being able to turn it off or change it by sheer will. But yes most feelings can and should be managed through positive actions which you can control.
controlling feeling is black and white all we need absence of blood flow so we can tense our muscles we can go to near hypothermic conditions and stil we are subject to the brain stem survival needs and whos to say that doesnt have feeling
this dangerous line of reasoning we can to a large degree control our actions however this idea of control in the first place is in the wrong frame ihmho
i feel what beats a assisted therapy 10/10 is in the wilderness completely alone. i would never trip with anyone who had the goal of helping me because this is very dangerous
A person with severe PTSD would greatly benefit from being left alone in the wilderness. How come therapists didn’t think of that? Probably another Big Pharma conspiracy. /s
the point of the above comment is that it's often beneficial to take a solo trip, rather than to take the trip with someone who wants to "guide" or "control" the subject through a certain kind of crafted experience
you're focusing on the particular means of the solo experience, which misses the point
Got it! If by “wilderness” they meant an unguided psychedelic trip then my advice would be similar to what I said earlier.
Do not go on an unguided trip if you have no experience and have mental issues. It could help you or could traumatize you severely. Psychedelics must be taken very seriously - advising to just take them and hope for the best is dangerously foolish.
I relate to the experience you've described in the first couple paragraphs. I agree. Feeling for others can get very draining (as can thinking for other people). You need to make sure you're keeping yourself, uh, healthy in order to be able to keep helping people, and that means setting boundaries. I wish I could help everyone, but I realistically cannot, and while sad, it is a good realization.
I'd say if you rolled the clock back a few hundred years, or even just to post-WW2 (50's/60's/70's) rural America, you would find that there would be a lot of people who would effectively function as empaths to the people around them (family and community).
Industrialization, urban development, crony-capitalism/corporatism, profit-motive (usually involving exploitation), greed, disconnection/breakdown of communities, and dare I say it, even technology (when misused), push people further and further away from one another.
How can you (the average person) be an empath when you have bills to pay and are locked to a 9-5 including a (usually anti-social) commute via car/bus/train/etc., spend the first 18-20 couple years of your life studying in a place that loads you in confined spaces with people who probably don't want to be there and teachers who don't get paid enough, and you most likely live in a place that you (or your parents) don't own; that probably doesn't have a proper yard (with no privacy), you get minimal sunlight/outdoor time, and your place of living probably has poor sound isolation between units if you (or your parents) rent something other than a house.
Socialization and time is measured and controlled in school and in the workplace, and when you have down-time, how can you worry about somebody who has problems that you probably can't solve because 1) they are not a part of your community, 2) you lack the time, resources, or ability to help, and 3) you have enough problems of your own to solve.
In school, sports, and in most workplaces, you're taught and conditioned to compete (outperform others). This is a sink-or-swim, fragmented, and cruel world for the average person.
You can't worry about John's debt, or Joe's medical problems that they can't get fixed because they can't afford it/don't have insurance. You can't help somebody with their house or yard.
So where does community usually reside nowadays? Only in very niche circles and activities, usually non-competitive hobbies. Definitely not the classroom or workplace, probably not your neighborhood/apartment complex, the bar, or most other common gathering spots for people.
People don't smile to strangers. Nobody waves. Sure, people ask you how you're doing if they're directly interacting with you through the course of business, but any answer other than "I'm doing good" is usually met with indifference.
Most self-proclaimed/actual empaths nowadays, are people with a rare personality type and/or they are people who are heavily traumatized and truly understand the depths of pain/suffering/loneliness/etc.
The fact that another commenter is interpreting the person you're responding to as joking/memeing, highlights just how rare/unheard of such a way of being is to fathom in the modern world. And developing in such a way that you become an empath is indeed usually an anomaly/maladaptive for your own "success" in the grand scheme of things.
To me the most interesting part of this thread is the comment about someone explaining their own experience of being empathic. They describe their approach for handing it and that comment has been bouncing around karma wise for the last two hours.
My interpretation of what they saying is maybe different. There are people who are naturally more prone to mirroring the feelings they perceive through words, actions, faces, etc. In modern accepted terms, mirroring this behavious without reasoning or any boundaries in place would result in you splitting your experience. If you have no boundaries emotionally, physically, or mentally you risk being steam rolled by outside influence. This is a fairly well understood effect in psychology, even though the term “empath” or highly sensitive person isnt as widely regarded. In either case I think its strange that someones personal experience and they way they deal with it results in so many divsive comments.
I never experienced anything like this until my wife had a baby.
NOBODY prepares women for this, but the cervical examinations can be extremely painful. She has an exceptionally high pain tolerance. But the excruciating pain she was in as she squeezed my hand - I felt every bit of it except the actual physical sensation. It was a flood of panic and adrenaline as I desperately wished it to be over for her sake. It was like all the reactions were there, just not the physical sensation.
(she had a c-section, hence I didn't mention the pain of delivery)
I think it's also a lesson in love. This study uses strangers but I don't think I'd react as strongly with a stranger. When my wife has required surgery in the past I'd give anything to trade places. But trade places with a stranger? Nah, I'm OK.
I'd be interested in knowing if there's a link between how emotional an individual is and how much empathy they feel.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate too much from this, but I think this could explain why kids who are beaten or were sexual abused are more likely to go on and do it themselves? My understanding is that to cope with extreme emotional stress people often learn to blunt their emotions, so if these findings are correct, then perhaps this results in a lack of empathy for their actions later in life.
And perhaps same could be true in reverse too. I think most people who know me would say I'm an overly an emotional person and
I often struggle with overwhelming empathy to the point I think you could argue my sense of empathy is misaligned.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 78.9 ms ] threadNot that I avoid those types of people like the plague, only a select few I try to listen to and try to make their journey as painless as possible, and being an empath for everyone you encounter is obviously draining and can sap your energy, fast.
MDMA assisted psychotherapy looks promising, and people don't run the risk of overdosing or using contaminated pills, and they're in the company of trained professionals who are also prepared with medicine to counteract the effects of the drug incase someone has adverse reactions to it.
Mental pain is the worst type of pain IMHO. Physical pain for me is bearable, since it subsides, but there is a strange thing that happens with mental pain and it's the feeling that it's going to last forever and be recursive. Imagine being permanently subjected to mental torture? That's what it feels like, but like physical pain, it subsides, only we don't believe that when we experience mental anguish.
Next up: homeless people should just start doing research on the property market and buy a house.
A person with severe PTSD would greatly benefit from being left alone in the wilderness. How come therapists didn’t think of that? Probably another Big Pharma conspiracy. /s
you're focusing on the particular means of the solo experience, which misses the point
Do not go on an unguided trip if you have no experience and have mental issues. It could help you or could traumatize you severely. Psychedelics must be taken very seriously - advising to just take them and hope for the best is dangerously foolish.
Industrialization, urban development, crony-capitalism/corporatism, profit-motive (usually involving exploitation), greed, disconnection/breakdown of communities, and dare I say it, even technology (when misused), push people further and further away from one another.
How can you (the average person) be an empath when you have bills to pay and are locked to a 9-5 including a (usually anti-social) commute via car/bus/train/etc., spend the first 18-20 couple years of your life studying in a place that loads you in confined spaces with people who probably don't want to be there and teachers who don't get paid enough, and you most likely live in a place that you (or your parents) don't own; that probably doesn't have a proper yard (with no privacy), you get minimal sunlight/outdoor time, and your place of living probably has poor sound isolation between units if you (or your parents) rent something other than a house.
Socialization and time is measured and controlled in school and in the workplace, and when you have down-time, how can you worry about somebody who has problems that you probably can't solve because 1) they are not a part of your community, 2) you lack the time, resources, or ability to help, and 3) you have enough problems of your own to solve.
In school, sports, and in most workplaces, you're taught and conditioned to compete (outperform others). This is a sink-or-swim, fragmented, and cruel world for the average person.
You can't worry about John's debt, or Joe's medical problems that they can't get fixed because they can't afford it/don't have insurance. You can't help somebody with their house or yard.
So where does community usually reside nowadays? Only in very niche circles and activities, usually non-competitive hobbies. Definitely not the classroom or workplace, probably not your neighborhood/apartment complex, the bar, or most other common gathering spots for people.
People don't smile to strangers. Nobody waves. Sure, people ask you how you're doing if they're directly interacting with you through the course of business, but any answer other than "I'm doing good" is usually met with indifference.
Most self-proclaimed/actual empaths nowadays, are people with a rare personality type and/or they are people who are heavily traumatized and truly understand the depths of pain/suffering/loneliness/etc.
The fact that another commenter is interpreting the person you're responding to as joking/memeing, highlights just how rare/unheard of such a way of being is to fathom in the modern world. And developing in such a way that you become an empath is indeed usually an anomaly/maladaptive for your own "success" in the grand scheme of things.
https://florida.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/hew06.sci.life...
My interpretation of what they saying is maybe different. There are people who are naturally more prone to mirroring the feelings they perceive through words, actions, faces, etc. In modern accepted terms, mirroring this behavious without reasoning or any boundaries in place would result in you splitting your experience. If you have no boundaries emotionally, physically, or mentally you risk being steam rolled by outside influence. This is a fairly well understood effect in psychology, even though the term “empath” or highly sensitive person isnt as widely regarded. In either case I think its strange that someones personal experience and they way they deal with it results in so many divsive comments.
NOBODY prepares women for this, but the cervical examinations can be extremely painful. She has an exceptionally high pain tolerance. But the excruciating pain she was in as she squeezed my hand - I felt every bit of it except the actual physical sensation. It was a flood of panic and adrenaline as I desperately wished it to be over for her sake. It was like all the reactions were there, just not the physical sensation.
(she had a c-section, hence I didn't mention the pain of delivery)
I think it's also a lesson in love. This study uses strangers but I don't think I'd react as strongly with a stranger. When my wife has required surgery in the past I'd give anything to trade places. But trade places with a stranger? Nah, I'm OK.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate too much from this, but I think this could explain why kids who are beaten or were sexual abused are more likely to go on and do it themselves? My understanding is that to cope with extreme emotional stress people often learn to blunt their emotions, so if these findings are correct, then perhaps this results in a lack of empathy for their actions later in life.
And perhaps same could be true in reverse too. I think most people who know me would say I'm an overly an emotional person and I often struggle with overwhelming empathy to the point I think you could argue my sense of empathy is misaligned.