Probably a lot of you have seen @edhellenarn‘s post about esoteric empathy and the necessity of empaths staying in their own lane, so to speak.
I wanted to just make a separate post to add a bit of my own thoughts. Suffice to say, I agree with most of what the OP is saying, but there is more that can be said, as well, concerning the modern “empath” identity trend as it has developed over the years.
The main problem I have with a lot of folks who self-identify as empaths is, well… they seem to lack empathy, and will often minimize other people’s trauma and/or attempt to invalidate the perspectives and experiences of others.
By “lack empathy,” I mean that they usually are very preoccupied by the alleged “suffering” their “gift” causes them, unwilling to listen to possible solutions, and generally turn things into a pity Olympics, especially on social media sites like Facebook.
I had one lady in a group go on at length about how her empathy was so strong that she couldn’t leave her house, even to take out the garbage, because the pain others caused her was so great, despite all the crystals she’d gotten to help her ground herself.
When I suggested maybe she should consider cognitive behavioral therapy in lieu (or in addition) to the crystals and try to get herself to a better place, she made a separate post implying that I was an “inauthentic” person and a “psychic vampire” trying to feed off of her by having the gall to suggest she might need someone to talk to like that.
It’s weird because I wasn’t sealioning or anything - I genuinely thought my comments might be helpful. I mean, I have certain empathic abilities myself and CBT really helped me cut through a lot of stuff in order to hone them and become a better friend to those I care about.
Oh yes, “psychic vampires,” the favorite topic of the empath world. That and “narcissists,” even though most of these people know fuck-all about psychology or what NPD even is.
I was in one group on Facebook for a while, just for empaths, and almost every single post was someone going on about all the evil narcissists in their life.
Oh, their spouse is a narcissist! And it turns out their boss is, too, and the mailman, and oh, they need to buy six more crystals to counteract this horrible assault.
I never tried it, but I’m pretty sure if I’d brought up that NPD is an actual mental illness (not some magic energy suck woo thing, either), I’d have been banned and probably declared to be a narcissist/vampire myself.
That seems to be the favorite tactic of a lot of the more toxic in the New Age psychic/empath community - “Anyone who questions me is a narcissist and therefore evil.”
I’ll be honest, I don’t actually know that much about NPD, but I’m pretty damn sure a personality disorder doesn’t make someone a reprobate evil energy sucker or whatever.
I mean, sure, if someone in your life is acting toxic, you can and shoot evade them, regardless of whether they have a mental illness or not but… c’mon.
I don’t believe it when these folks claim every single person they disagree with, dislike, or interact with unfavorably is a “narcissist.” I mean, really, plenty of people with or without mental illness can be abusive; no reason to turn a personality disorder into some big bad woo bogeyman.
If anyone reading this knows a bit more about NPD, I’d love to get a perspective on this, because, like I said, my experience with personality disorders is limited and I’m no psychologist.
And plus, the whole thing just reeks of “spectral evidence” in a witch trial.
It’s basically, “Some people are evil, but I can tell they’re evil and warn people! Even if nobody else knows!” It’s pretty easy for someone who’s set themselves up as psychic to target their enemies by claiming to “sense” something that nobody else can prove.
On that note, some of the most cringeworthy moments I’ve seen have involved the “empath” identity folks trying to talk about mental illness. As I said, they seem to see NPD (and sometimes, any personality disorder) as some kind of evil woo-woo thing. To me? That’s asinine, completely.
When it comes to mood disorders like I have, they tend to write them off as “misdiagnosed empathy.” In fact, a lot of sites and blogs around the internet (less so on Tumblr) will whine about the evils of psychiatry and how it’s just an attempt to suppress the magical empath gift.
The thing is, none of the people saying this seem to understand what (for example) bipolar disorder actually is.
They seem to think it’s just moodiness or feeling sad sometimes. It’s kind of impossible to explain to them the realities of mania and depression because most people will never experience them.
And, if you use a bit of logic, you can easily see why (in most cases) bipolar disorder wouldn’t be “misdiagnosed empathy.” The mood states you see in bipolar are, by definition, neuroatypical.
They aren’t seen “in the wild,” in neurotypicals. It’d be impossible to experience a mania empathically from being around a bunch of regular people because regular people do not experience mania.
I guess that maybe if you’re an extremely strong empath and constantly around someone with bipolar, you might deal with blowback from their moods, but I doubt it because I don’t think most people’s neurology is even conducive to having those experiences. I’m no neurologist, though, and I could be wrong.
So yeah, I get tired of people telling me I just need to “ground, center, and shield” like a good lil empath, and how my meds are “dampening” my “gift.” I usually just change the subject whenever it comes up because it’s easier than explaining how mania and depression actually work.
I mean, if anything, those experiences seem to make me (might not be true for everyone) less able to read other’s emotions, because the low self-esteem that came with my depression just caused me to assume the whole world hated me.
So yeah. I think the “empath identified” community is in dire need of cleaning itself out a bit and reformulating how it approaches this kind of thing.
On Tumblr, there are many genuine people and many genuine empaths, and you barely see any of this kind of thing on here. Still, I’ve seen enough of it out in the world that I thought it was worth posting/ranting about.
At this point, I rarely dare even call myself an empath (even though I definitely have an esoteric empathy “thing” going on, particularly with animals) just because I don’t want to be associated with this.
That doesn’t mean the concept is irredeemable, though - there’s been a lot of good books written recently about empathy, managing and honing it.
I recommend almost all the works of Raven Digitalis on the subject (Everyday Empath and Esoteric Empathy), and, heck, a lot of “mundane” books on CBT and even DBT can help with improving your functioning and best using your gifts.
I hope this post isn’t too offensive to everyone - I just wanted to get this off my chest, since I’d been pondering it for a while.
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