Acknowledging EmpathySource: Empath Zone - Acknowledging empathy There are many levels of empathy, and besides the inherent abilities there is a personal growing path to develop those gifts. In a nutshell, empathy is the ability to feel other emotions as our own. From the romantic perspective is great, and actually from the practical point of view is a gift. But, the only way to have a balanced life is to take the challenge and develop the gift. A "newbie" empath will usually have a hard time to connect with others as he or she will suffer from emotional overload. Natural solutions for this are overeating, avoiding others contact, or trying to close the empathic channels. All these solutions lead to health issues, and in general you might find that a person with natural empathy in the stage previous to acknowledge it can be emotionally unstable. Now, things turn out good actually once the empath is able to acknowledge that some of those feelings crawling inside don't belong to him/her. The second the awareness hits you, is the second you are able to own your gifts and believe me... things get really fun from there. Empaths and boundariesAll the clair abilities are highly tied up with low boundaries and, maybe, awareness.
And the low boundaries situation, in many cases, goes beyond the ability to feel people. It is engrained as a psychological mechanism where we tend to give more importance to the others than we give to ourselves. When I was about 18, I had a friend who was the daughter of a pastor. She used to be with her Bible all the time and read parts every day. So it picked my curiosity. I had a wild ride reading the Bible from first to last page; it took me a whole year at a rate of about one hour a day. It changed my perception about many things. But it is not what I want to talk about, what I would like to mention now was one single phrase that took some thought… “love the others like you love yourself” Till then I had always interpret it as “don’t be selfish, consider others”… this is what the priest talked about in church the two or three times I attended. And it always felt weird, as I was the opposite of a selfish person. ............ Read more: Empaths and boundaries in the Empath Zone Forum, full discussion |
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