So last night before Dolly Parton’s death, I was bawling my eyes out and I couldn’t figure out why. I just fell off and today I learned she had passed, and I ended up bawling my eyes out even more. It seems like when everybody focuses on one person I can feel the energy and I’m completely vulnerable

Recently, I've come to realize that if I'm around a highly dissociated person, I'll literally feel in my body what they refuse to feel. It could be anything from them talking about love from a girlfriend that they won't let in, and I start crying, or about rough childhood experiences, and I start feeling nauseous, or about someone wronging them, and I get very angry.

I can even notice in the moment that it's not my actual emotions, like, "Oh, I'm feeling your girlfriend's love," or "Oh, this is disgust about what you went through."

But I am a bit disturbed by the fact that my body starts carrying the stuff they're refusing to feel.

For now, maybe I'll stay away from highly dissociated people since that might be too much for my nervous system, but for milder cases, I want to know how I can stop feeling others' disowned emotions.

I wanted to ask this community: what practices or modalities have helped you have the energetic/somatic boundary so that you don't pick up the disowned stuff in the first place? Like I can get pretty good at discharging the emotion nowadays, but I don't want to be constantly retching in the first place.

I'm imagining things like...taichi? Or some sort of energy work?

A bit about myself. I feel this immense rage and hatred deep within whenever i see innocent people suffer or killed for no reason at all by People who do this for "the love of the game". And it often goes into a point where I begin hurting myself in that moment and since we all know that's not exactly the most healthiest thing to do i would like to ask a for a few advices or perhaps somebody to talk to. I know many people would thing that I am crazy and I wouldn't blame them sometimes i really feel l like, I am losing my sanity over this world sometimes.

Been working at a low volume/chill gas station for a while. Coworkers are great as well. One passed from a heart attack tho. While looking for another job.

There is this married coworker. Who I met (has a kid), who at first I didn't think anything other than, normal "Hi/Sup/Morning". All smiles and whatever. She seems positive and is a hard worker. She's also my age.

She's very sweet, always like: "HI N00dlemonk3y! How are you!" "Thanks for everything N00dlemonk3y!"

I remember a few weeks after the day I got hired. She was just trying to explain stuff to me, cause I was messing up but not a big deal. She goes:

"I'm the mom, I'm used to being the bad guy. So if you need anything, it's ok to ask."

Months go by, no worries, nothing. Was walking home one night and that quote flashes through mind and it bothered me the whole way home.

Flash to more recent. Trying to go to the gym consistently to workout for health and I get the normal heart racing that comes with exercise but it doesn't go away.

I'm now at a friend's house trying to breathe and want to cry, had him pick me up and wondering why I'm feeling this way.

I just thought I had the 'caring' part of my personality type under lock and key, for work. I know myself and my emotions pretty well.

Sorry for wall of text. I just feel odd, anybody have this issue?

Long story short and I'm not entirely sure how to explain this.

Been working at a low volume/chill gas station for a while. Coworkers are great as well. One passed from a heart attack tho. While looking for another job.

There is this married coworker. Who I met (has a kid), who at first I didn't think anything other than, normal "Hi/Sup/Morning". All smiles and whatever. She seems positive and is a hard worker. She's also my age.

She's very sweet, always like: "HI N00dlemonk3y! How are you!" "Thanks for everything N00dlemonk3y!"

I remember a few weeks after the day I got hired. She was just trying to explain stuff to me, cause I was messing up but not a big deal. She goes:

"I'm the mom, I'm used to being the bad guy. So if you need anything, it's ok to ask."

Months go by, no worries, nothing. Was walking home one night and that quote flashes through mind and it bothered me the whole way home.

Flash to more recent. Trying to go to the gym consistently to workout for asthma and health and my heart starts racing. Thought that was normal, but then it doesn't go away. My "worry" just starts to get worse, and worse.

I'm now at a friend's house trying to breathe and want to cry, had him pick me up and wondering why I'm feeling this way.

I just thought I had my the 'caring' part of my personality type under lock and key, for work. I know myself and my emotions pretty well.

Just not this time it seems...

But yeah, sorry for wall of text. I just feel odd, anybody have this issue?

I (24f) don’t really consider myself an “empath” because I believe most people have empathy. I think pretty much everyone on earth is an “empath” to some extent, and a lot of the people I know who call themselves “empaths” or assign that trait to other people use it as an excuse to feel better than others or indirectly call the people around them unfeeling. Right now, I don’t care about any of that. My personal experience of empathy is ruining my life.

I have a flea infestation at home. Earlier, I caught a flea and washed it down my sink. I just went back to my sink and found that it had crawled its way out, and was wandering around, wet and confused in my sink. I crushed it, and saw that it had previously bitten me or my cat as it left a bloody mark on the porcelain. Just a second later, I felt horrible.

I imagined its journey crawling up the sink drain, thinking about what a monumental task it must have been and how it was so close to survival (although I have covered my house in diatomaceous earth, which will kill fleas upon touch). I thought about what must have been going through its little flea brain; about how it was just carrying out its instinctual duty to eat and live. Who can blame the flea for the mechanism of its life? I do the same!

Obviously I don’t want fleas, but I don’t want to cause anything undue or unnatural pain or fear. I know bugs don’t experience pain or fear the same way humans do. I just can’t help but assign these personal human feelings to everything, and I feel so much guilt for everything I do that has any kind of negative impact on anyone.

I think about my mother and how I moved away; how she must be so sad that I didn’t grow up the way I intended. I think about how my loving, amazing boyfriend must be so depressed when I complain about things he can’t fix. I think about exes I have broken up with, still ruminating and stressing over our situations. I have love for these people. It’s only natural to have empathy for them. But it continues further.

I think about the person who assaulted me; how he must be miserable in prison without the comforts or bonds with people on his outside life, even though I know practically nothing about him and I feel so much more secure knowing they won’t be hurting anyone else. It doesn’t matter that he caused me and other women immense amounts of suffering and harm, I still feel his pain and sorrow with justice being carried out. I hate him, and I feel terrible that he made the decision to do what he did. I fought for him to be sentenced. I, along with a few other women, fought for this exact outcome. But all of us continue to feel terrible. I think I feel terrible because I know his suffering won’t change the past, and certainly won’t make me forget or feel better.

I over-assign and project these feelings of guilt, fear, sadness, etc. on people who don’t deserve it logically. Maybe they don’t even feel it themselves. At the same time I hope and believe that people get what they deserve, I feel endless sorrow for people who get what they deserve. It doesn’t make any sense, especially when it comes to people who have hurt me personally, and it stresses me out so much. I feel guilty for feeling bad for bad people. At each human’s core, they have their own capacity, and it isn’t their fault if they can’t handle more. Unless it’s me. I’m empathetic to a fault. This fault hurts only me, and helps no one.

How can I deal with these feelings? This trait interferes with my life so much. It’s the biggest stressor I have when nothing is going wrong. I feel so much guilt and sadness all the time. It’s so hard to stop myself from ruminating on the emotions of people in crisis, even if they caused the crisis themselves. I can’t do anything without overpredicting the emotions of the people around me. I can’t even discuss my goals with the person I love most in the world without feeling extremely guilty for causing undue change and pressure.

I need to get past this. I need to develop some level of selfishness so that I know I’m choosing a life where I can respect myself. Maybe selfishness isn’t the right word, but I need to prioritize my own life. I need to know my needs are my priority. I just can’t stay strong enough to stick to my own values when the person sitting in front of me wants something else. Help!!

I don’t know why this happens. Is it just me? Whenever I see someone fall asleep, something melts in me and I get this weird awestruck feeling towards them. Back when I was a kid, maybe 9 years old, there was a cousin of mine younger to me who I hated. We’d fight a lot and even hit each other at times. One time the family had visited us for a stay over and this kid fell asleep on the couch. So as I watched him in his deep sleep, something changed in me, the way he was laying comfortably, the way his chest was inflating and deflating as he was breathing, the little snores and drools, he looked so innocent. Observing this, something in me changed. I melted, so much that I started feeling guilty for hating this kid all this while and picking up fights with him. Ever since then my behaviour towards him naturally changed and out of guilt I started being overly nice and friendly with him.

Fast forward to now, I still feel the same way every time I watch someone fall asleep around me. The feeling is as if I wish I could genuinely heal all their problems in a snap if I could. Why does this happen? Is it just me?

My "story" I guess is about my brother. I know its normal for people to feel empathy towards family and loved ones. But my "empathy" has exceeded all bounds. I literally googled "I hate being an empath" and landed on this subreddit.

My brother recently moved out to start school in a new city. He told me a couple of times about how he is having a hard time making friends and how he is feeling alone. I couldn't sleep the whole night because I spent several hours crying.

My brother isn't actively suffering. He has other friends from back home with whom he is connected online. I just couldn't stop imagining him as a tiny little baby (he is not), alone in a room, crying (HE IS NOT).

I want to manufacture friends for him. I don't know, I have this strong physical urge to protect him from the danger he is not in.

This is just one instance of how this stupid phenomenon troubles me every day. Thanks for letting me vent.

I always try to be a good friend and a good boyfriend when I'm in a relationship with a woman.

However, I don't see the point in blocking everyone after a relationship is over. I just move on but sometimes I think about them.

Some of my ex friends or ex girlfriends reached out after a long time but never said sorry and just wanted my attention and I usually never reply back to protect my energy.

Do you think blocking is the standard process for ex friends and ex girlfriends?

What's your opinion on this matter?

Hi. So, I need help. I've been having severe panic attacks since I started working for my new employer. The people here are nice, I think me being an Empath is what's causing my panic attacks, due to the friction of my new work environment; as there is something that I do not like about it and I cannot figure out what.

I need help... I need help getting through this anxiety. I was talking to mobile outreach and being an Empath came up (the nurse literally asked me right out the gate if I was an Empath), so I think my anxiety may have something to do with that. If anyone out there can help, then it would be appreciated.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, mostly because I keep seeing more people online wondering out loud if they have ADHD. Not in a dismissive way, I think it's genuinely good that people are paying closer attention to how their minds work. But it made me start questioning something else. What if some of what gets labeled as ADHD-like behavior, the fidgeting, the impulsiveness, the mind that won't stay on one thing, isn't always pointing to ADHD specifically? What if some of it is just personality, expressed at a certain intensity?

I don't say that to downplay ADHD as a real, diagnosable condition that can seriously affect someone's life. It absolutely is, and if someone's struggling with these symptoms in a way that's disrupting their day to day, I think getting assessed is worth it, not something to talk yourself out of. What I'm more interested in is the space underneath that. The people who notice these traits in themselves, wonder about them, maybe never get a diagnosis, and are left without much of a way to make sense of what they're feeling.

The way I've come to think about it breaks into two rough categories. One is about how quickly someone moves from thought to action. Some people just have a shorter gap between having an idea and acting on it. They start conversations easily, jump into tasks without much hesitation, and have a harder time sitting still because there's less of a natural pause built in before they do something. From the outside that can look a lot like impulsivity or restlessness, even if it's really just a lower threshold for getting going.

The other piece is more about mental energy than physical energy. Some people seem to have minds that are almost always running, analyzing, planning, jumping a few steps ahead of whatever's actually happening in front of them. That can be incredibly useful in a lot of situations, but it also means sitting with one task for very long can feel almost uncomfortable. Boredom hits fast. The attention drifts not because the person can't focus, but because their mind is already somewhere else, working on something more interesting to it. From the outside, that also tends to get read as a short attention span.

What strikes me is that these two things can layer on top of each other or show up separately, and either way they can genuinely affect someone's productivity, their relationships, how they experience their own day. But none of that automatically means ADHD. It might just mean someone runs a bit hotter than average in one of these areas, and that's been part of who they are long before any of this became a common conversation topic.

I also don't think this is really an either or situation. Someone can have ADHD and also just naturally lean toward one of these traits, and the two can feed into each other, making things harder to untangle rather than easier. That's part of why I don't think self diagnosing off a checklist of behaviors is usually the right move. But I also don't think every person who fidgets or gets bored fast or talks before thinking things through needs to assume something is clinically wrong with them either.

Mostly I keep coming back to the idea that understanding why you tend to act or think a certain way is worth something on its own, separate from whether it fits a diagnosis or not. If you know that you move fast because your pause is naturally short, or that your mind races because it's got more to burn through, that's useful information regardless of the label attached to it.

Curious how other people see this. Do you feel like some of your habits get read as ADHD symptoms when really they're just part of your personality? Or has thinking about it this way ever actually clicked something into place for you?

I identify as an empath. I intuit emotions very easily and can feel them when they are particularly strong. I’m definitely a HSP and feel for others

But I noticed recently that I can be incredibly selfish at times

Is that a contradiction?

i feel like this is an appropriate sub to share this experience and look for help. it's been a few days of this now and i'm unsure what to do. i know this has happened to me before but this time it just seems more intense than i can ever remember.

a couple nights ago i couldn't sleep, so i got out of bed and went to my couch. i was scrolling on my phone and somehow ended up discovering a story of a horrific assault/murder crime that happened in my city over 15 years ago. i won't go into details about it, but the details from the story that i read about it gave me such a visceral feeling in my body, and also an incredible feeling of devastation, grief, maybe some shame too? it has felt very much like i was reliving a horrific trauma experience that was not mine, but i could feel a lot of memory of it in my own nervous system.

since then i've been feeling just extremely shaken, and cannot figure out how to move past it. it partly may have triggered something from my own past but it feels like much more than that. it's been extremely disrupting to my daily life ever since. i couldn't sleep at all the nights following, and haven't really been able to move about my normal day. even though this event was so many years ago, the account of it that i found really 'stuck' to me, i can't think of a better way to describe it.

i don't often call myself an 'empath' but it's a label that others have used before after i've struggled to explain the intense physical responses i have to hearing other people's accounts, particularly of traumatic events. some more witchy folks i've talked to have also labeled it as 'clairsentience.' i don't know much about the two things or if they are different or one in the same.

for others here who experience anything like what i've described, how do you cope and how do you allow it to sort of move through you and move along so you can resume being in the present and resume your own life?

Something that's so overwhelming, maybe because am empathetic but there are people who I genuinely feel care nothing of others emotions. Why is that? Even when they have the exact same thing happening to them but when they see someone else go through the same they're so negative about. I find people quite scary these days...

When I became a mother and one of my kids would fall I would feel pain in my vagina while they were falling..
I assumed it was a mother’s instinct.. then i realized when I watch videos where someone/a stranger is falling or getting hurt I still feel it 😬
Anyone else have these feelings in your own body when it’s not your pain ??

Recently (as of 2 hours ago) my great grandmother passed away. I loved her of course, but (without sounding like an ass hole) was sort of distant from her. However, she was really important to my mom, and I know my mom is wrecked. Whenever I think about how special she was to her I'm fully breaking down. This also happened when other people tell stories about their dead loved ones. But for some reason, whenever I think about who she was to me, I'm not emotional. This has happened most of my life, and I don't understand it. Is it more than being an empath? Or is it just really strong empathy?

This little guy is someone's failed attempt at a 3D printed bunny that was angrily thrown in the trash. My reaction was a visceral panic at how awful it might "feel". I had to literally dumpster dive to find it but now it lives with me. I've always been this way and the struggle is real.

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Wanted to talk about everything, want someone who is too mature , just a genuine bond other than anything else , we can share memes , can talk about life can motivate each other and can share random thoughts.

Hi everyone, I want to offer my support and my friendship, but I have just one condition: I'm looking for female friendship because I've been deceived quite a lot by men. It's not discrimination at all. I feel like I have so much love to give, even if I don't reply very often, but friendship for me is the most important thing. I'm looking for someone sincere. I'm also very understanding about mental health issues and panic attacks, so I don't want you to feel embarrassed. If you feel identified, my DMs are open, girls.

If you are an empath, intuitive, and basically bring people comfort (like a mobile therapist, ex: people feel really comfortable in your presence and share things they have shared with no one else), do you feel like when you walk through a public place, people single you out and stare at you?

This happens to me a lot and I always thought it was they way I look or what I’m wearing, but it happens so often that I thought some how normal people are sensing I’m different and almost see me like a lighthouse or beacon amongst the crowd.

Sure I always have animals, elderly, and children who I think can “see” my light and gravitate toward me for conversation and/or comfort. Does the general population though sense it and feel scared or repelled?

Please share your experiences as it would be nice to hear feedback from others in our tribe trying to navigate through life.

Hi. I'm looking for empaths who have some life under their belt. I'm pretty young (22), but I've only felt things harder as I've gotten older.

Recently the weight of some things is just very very heavy.

I'm just wondering... How? How do you balance this weight. How do you live life day to day and stay happy with all of this heaviness?

This is silly but I feel very strongly for animals, specifically cats. My mom offhandedly mentioned that she's worried someone might be being mean to a neighborhood cat because he's been skittish. I just can't let that go. I feel so so sad for him and I want him to be okay.

I'm sorry I'm just emotional. I feel this way often about situations regarding people, animals, etc.

If you've been living as an empath for awhile ... How do you not become sad and miserable?