You Might Be An Empath If....
- You feel an emotional shift when you enter and leave a room
- You feel drained or tired after speaking with someone or a certain person
- You have dreams where you are observing and not participating in them
- You feel overwhelmed in situations where there is a lot of people around (example: a party) and sometimes may even need to head to the bathroom to pull it together for a quick break
- Certain people make you feel a certain way (example: Talking to he or she or they or them always makes me feel so down)
- You always want to help, fix or resolve bad situations for people when they vent to you
- You feel like some people feel ‘heavy’ (example: their energy or presence feels heavy to you)
- When someone is speaking negatively to you, you have a tendency to feel physically sick
- You have a lot of emotions and not all of them make sense that they came from you
- You have major anxiety around people and/or social anxiety
- You tend to like being alone as opposed to a group of people
- You have heard other people say something in your head before they say it out loud
- You need to decompress after social situations (my kids call this waffle time!)
- You feel like you know or can tell when someone is not telling the truth
- You know when something is wrong with someone without them telling you what it is or before they get a opportunity to
- You have moderate or extreme depression or anxiety but the root cause is unclear to you
- You sleep a lot or are randomly tired for no reason
- Certain people make you feel uncomfortable but you don’t know why
- You feel a ‘spider sense’ alarm in your head telling you to avoid a certain person but you don’t know why
Everyone is an empath to a certain degree. We all feel for each other in certain moments, especially when they are of a heightened degree. Really excited for someone for example, or really feeling for them when they are experiencing a loss.
There isn’t a true definition of an empath but identifying emphatic traits in yourself can help you ‘clear the air’ and realize what you are experiencing is totally normal and not weird or crazy in any way.
You do not need to have experienced all these traits to identify as an empath, these are just my examples. Before I realized I was sucking in other peoples emotions I thought I was bananas. Like for real going down the rabbit hole bat shit crazy. It was effecting my life, my friendships and even how I interacted with my family. I would need days to decompress after something like a simple work event or a dinner out with friends.
The best advice I ever got was as an empath: You are not a collector of other peoples energy, you are a curator. For me that meant letting go of the trash emotions other people were leaving behind but keeping what I thought I could use. Like the strength of my boss-lady friends, or the kindness of my neighbor. Once I realized I didn’t have to hold on to it, I could sort out what was mine and what was my ‘psychic garbage’ and cleanse out that trash.