Empathy is a bit of a double-edged sword.
Being tuned in to the emotional and mental state of people around you has pros and cons.
On one hand, you are able to anticipate people’s responses, get a good read on a room, and get a decent grasp on how people are feeling.
On the other hand, you are susceptible to being influenced by the state of those around you because how they feel impacts how you feel too.
For those with a heightened sense of emotional empathy, it can be challenging not to instinctively read what other people are feeling and pull some of that energy into your own state of mind.
Honestly, it can be a bit draining. Not to mention stressful.
What is interesting is that most of the people around someone who is hyper-sensitive to emotional states don’t realize just how much emotional energy they put out into the world.
A lot of us probably feel like we’re pretty good at keeping our true feelings close to the chest. Or at least, that we aren’t bleeding our stress onto others.
It is sort of like someone who is oblivious to being a loud eater. They just don’t realize that every lip smack and food chew is resonating into the ears of everyone around them. Of course, not everyone is able to hear the sounds of other people eating. It doesn’t affect everyone the same.
Or maybe another analogy is how some people will listen to music loudly in their headphones, not realizing that the sound is bleeding out and can be heard by everyone around them.
Emotional states, for those who are sensitive to their resonance, are just as disrupting and noticeable by those with heightened sensitivity, even if the people who are emanating those emotions don’t realize it.
Another challenge is that high levels of empathy also cause one to over-analyze and over-think situations. Or maybe a better term is “over-interpret”.
Because you think and make decisions based not just on what is being said, but on unspoken emotions that are being received.
And here’s the thing: sometimes empaths get it wrong. We misinterpret someone’s emotional state as meaning something it doesn’t. We see someone is feeling a certain way and assume the reasons have to do with us. When it is completely unrelated.
Or, worse yet, we take on the responsibility for the other person’s emotions by adjusting what we do and say in order to help them out. That isn’t our responsibility to take that one for someone else.
That isn’t to say it isn’t great that we are sensitive to what they are going through. But the moment an awareness turns into an assumption, you start to tread down a slippery slope.
Hyper-sensitivity is sort of like what Superman must go through when he shakes someone’s hand. He has to constantly remind himself to put 0.01% effort into the hand shake or he risks damaging the other person.
What is the solution? I wish I knew.
I’m mostly just tired of being stressed out all the time. I’m tired of being around people because it is super draining. (I like people, mind you. It’s just exhausting to interact with them.)
It makes me wonder if my introversion stems from my empathy, or if they developed separate from each other and now they just like to feed on one another.
Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash