Am I An Empath?

so are you an empath or is somebody that you know an empath today I'm going to take you through four required signs or traits to qualify as an empath and then I'm going to take you through four signs of an empath who has not yet done boundary work right because it is different and then I'd also like to discuss some traits that are being spoken about on the internet as if these are signs that you're an empath and while these things might be very common for empaths they also some of them can also be common for narcissists or introverts or other people who would probably not consider themselves empaths right so there does seem to be a lot of confusion about this term anyway sharing with you my perspective of having been a psychotherapist for 20 years worked with lots and lots and lots of people and if you have questions or comments as you're going through this video please do jot them in the comments below I love to read them I respond when I can and if you end up liking this video please do give it a like thanks so let's start with the four Key signs that you are an empath and remember that number four is very very required so if there is some way to have the first three but not the fourth I'd say not an empath all right let's get going so number one is that you have a very strong ability to recognize understand and even feel and share the emotions of others so that is basically the definition of empathy and it would include both the physiological the feeling in the body the emotional connection and the cognitive elements of empathy and I do discuss this more in my video on what is an empath and what is empathy and I will link that at the end of this video but basically number one required sign is that you have a very high level of empathy all right we started right there number two people have been coming to you for emotional support your whole life more than what you observe with other people you feel like you end up being sort of the therapist to your friends or your family the life coach these support giver and people come to you for support number three is that you have a very high level of intuition about what other people are feeling so I differentiate this from the first one I stated because in the first one if somebody is sharing their emotions and letting you know what they are right and you really relate and you're connected right that's empathy this third one is really that somebody could be saying no I'm fine I'm fine and you know they are struggling you can sort of see under the surface in a way that other people don't seem to be able to do and maybe also in a way where you know other people don't do that for you but you know that you sort of can do this and you are off often right like nobody is 100 right but if you pick up that somebody's actually sad or in grief or angry and they're hiding it you can tell so those are three of the required signs the fourth is that you care you truly truly deeply care and wish you could relieve others of suffering so if there is any way that you could have those other three qualities but not like truly care I would say that you would not qualify as an empath so comment below let me know what you think let me know if you agree that those are sort of like the four critical signs although maybe wait till I go through the ones that are sort of commonly talked about because you might get a different perspective than you've gotten from other videos or books or information that you've read and you still might disagree with me and I always like to know so do let me know but anyway without that quality of really one daunting to relieve others of suffering even if you don't take the action because you know it's not the right thing to do it's not always the right thing to do sometimes it's impossible to relieve other people from suffering and you may know that so you may not act on it but you wish you could you had the true desire to relieve others of their suffering okay now I want to share four traits of empaths before they do boundary work and I'm going to start with the one that really underlies all of these and that is emotional contagion you don't just relate to other people's emotions you take them on they're almost contagious to you if you're with somebody who's anxious you feel anxious if you're with somebody who's angry you might feel angry you might take on other people's emotions to the extent that you don't even know which are your emotions and which are someone else's and this is actually a very very very key area in which I work with people through the boundary program that I have on differentiating techniques to begin to figure out where do I end and the other person begin how can I be empathetic and caring and have this ability to pick up on others emotions without taking them on as if they're my own so a sign of an empath prior to boundary work is emotional contagion and from emotional contagion comes an element of jumping in to fix other people's problems so that would be the second sign of an empath who hasn't yet done boundary work jumping in to fix other people's problems and again this is one that people who are not empaths sometimes do also and I'll talk about that a little bit later but the term codependent is often used for somebody who takes on another person's problems as if it's their own and and spends a lot of time trying to fix them even though they really can't but that likelihood that you jump in to fix other people's problems that could also be a sign the third sign of somebody who's an empath but hasn't yet done boundary work is that they might ignore their own problems focusing on the other persons so again related right but it's a little bit different because it doesn't mean you necessarily jump in to do it but you ignore your own to spend a lot of time worrying about the other persons whether you do something about it or not and then the fourth sign is that you actually absorb other people's energy like physically absorbing their energy to the point that you might frequently feel totally physically exhausted not just emotionally exhausted and again these are all kind of in the same soup I'm separating them out but they're all very very related to the issue of the emotional contagion and the taking on of somebody else's emotions both not both three ways cognitively physically in terms of energy and emotionally okay I want to talk about some signs that I hear mentioned a lot about this is a sign that you're an empath and while these might be things that are common for empaths they definitely would not Define an empath and there are many different types of people who might share these signs so let's talk about these there are eight of them I'm going to go through them quickly so number one is that you need time alone to recharge okay so this is basically one of the defining elements of an introvert and some introverts might be highly empathetic right but it is a different thing than being an empath and as I go through this I'm not like categorizing like oh introverts aren't empathetic because I'm not saying that in any way some introverts are very empathetic and some are not all all that empathetic but needing time to recharge could be a sign that you are an empath and you find it exhausting to take on other people's emotions and you find all that caring really exhausting but it also could just be that you're introverted and being around a lot of people being in crowds being in crowded places is exhausting and you need time alone so that in and of itself is not a defining characteristic of an empath number two is that you are highly conflict averse okay lots of empaths are conflict averse most empaths can see both sides of a situation but I would also like to say that there are many empaths out there who are doing advocacy work being Advocates supporting trauma victims fighting for animal rights fighting for people's rights and fighting for change is conflict right it is conflict is inherent in it so being conflict averse is not required for being an empath and nor are you necessarily an empath if you are conflict averse a lot of people are conflict diverse people who tend to have a flight reaction you know sort of the automatic reaction of flight instead of fight or freeze right the flight people very conflict averse this third one I think is super important to understand so I've heard a number of people say that a sign of being an empath is that you can pick up on subtle cues in people's Expressions their eye movements their body language their facial expressions and their non-verbal gestures to know how they're feeling in that moment now I do think this goes with what I said earlier about being intuitive and really understanding people's emotions right so it can go with that but honestly like government forces I know in the U.S and I believe elsewhere as well they do specialized trainings for people of how to pick up on all these cues and not necessarily for incredibly empathetic means right so here's also an area where sometimes somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder can be incredibly skilled at picking up on the slightest movement of somebody's face or you know what might indicate what that person is feeling and then they do it to exploit the person sometimes people can really pick up if somebody's lying and who better to do that than somebody who lies right so the fact that you can pick up on other people's facial expressions nonverbal gestures to get a sense of what they're thinking and feeling does not qualify you as an empath even though it is common for empaths okay hope that makes sense the fourth trait that I see mentioned a lot as being a sign of being an empath is that you are not good at boundaries that you do too much for other people you have a hard time saying no you emotionally caretake other people right so yeah lots of empaths have those boundary problems right they're connected to that thing we talked about where we take on other people's emotions right but lots of people have boundary problems lots and lots of people have boundary problems so while it's common for empaths it's also common for a lot of people who would not consider themselves or probably qualify as an empath and then there are those empaths who have done their boundary work and now have good boundaries and I highly recommend that if you're an empath you can improve your enjoyment of Life while remaining connected to other people through boundary work the fifth one I see often is that you dislike crowded spaces now you might dislike crowded spaces as an empath because you do pick up on all the energy of other people but there's a lot of other people who don't like crowded spaces that might include the introverts might also include anybody who has a panic disorder it may also just include people who don't really like crowded spaces right I think there's a lot of people in the world who don't like crowded spaces alright number six I've seen and heard people say that if you feel like you don't fit in you might be an empath okay that could be true there's a lot of people in the world who feel like they don't fit in in fact I think I often meet more people who feel like they don't fit in than people who do feel like they fit in so again a very common trait that would not be a defining sign number seven you love animals okay I do think that when you have empathy you have empathy towards animals a hundred percent but that does not necessarily mean that you surround yourself with them that you would be with somebody else calls an animal lover and then the other thing to be really careful about here is that animals particularly dogs give back a lot of admiration right dogs just love you if you're their owner they could not be more excited all you have to do is walk into the room and they are thrilled well what kind of people love that sort of feedback narcissists okay so again I'm not saying that everybody who loves animals definitely not saying the people who love dogs are narcissists some are some are empaths others are just kind of like normal people who enjoy dogs okay so again not a defining characteristic so this last one is really interesting to me because it's very commonly stated that empaths might feel too overwhelmed by too much closeness and intimacy and I actually don't think that that's true so again an empath who hasn't yet worked on boundaries might feel overwhelmed by other people's emotions but most empaths really value intimacy really value closeness they're on the sort of front lines of understanding emotion they view the world through an emotional lens and I don't mean that in a negative way I don't mean that in terms of like it doesn't bring in the cognition but that the emotions are really and this is true for all of us we just don't always realize it but our emotions are really the core of what makes life worth living right and in a lot of my material if you've seen a lot of my videos you'll know that I talk like emotions give us enormous information of a series on shorts of emotional intelligence but our emotions communicate to us incredibly important information if we try to make decisions without our emotions we are not going to make good decisions and it is different to say that you make decisions with emotions and that you put emotional feelings front and center in your relationship or in your choices does not mean you're emotionally unstable it doesn't mean your emotions are all over the place okay they're different things you can be emotionally regulated and and prioritize emotions to live a happy life now with empath's extra ability to do that both for themselves and for others once they've done boundary work once they've really healed the parts of themselves that they may have shut away or ignored or pushed down once they've healed those parts and perhaps healed some of the experiences that led them to being an empath right because that's the topic for a different video but it's also something important to consider so once all of that is healed empaths highly value connection emotional connection intimacy and closeness so let me know what you think about this and let me know if you agree or disagree or if there's a point or two which makes you think no don't agree or if you have research that disputes anything I've said I would love to see it you can put a link in the comments and I guarantee I will read it if you send me some reputable you know scientific research because that's really where I go so I was trained as a therapist I think many of you know my first career was in business I have an MBA and then I went back to school and got a second graduate degree became a therapist was a therapist for 20 years did lots of training specialized with anxiety and Trauma then I began this YouTube channel and throughout my years actually both when I was on Wall Street and while I was a therapist and obviously doing this channel I'm a researcher I love to dig into information and look at actually like the original research that was that's been done in different area is I'm a petrol learner so when I do a video like this I actually do pull up a lot a lot a lot of research and then combine it with my own experiences and the experiences of all the people I've worked with to sort of pull it together in a comprehensive way to help people around the world understand this stuff so if you support the channel I would love it if you would subscribe and I do love to get your comments both positive and negative and I hope you have an awesome day and stay tuned for more topics about empaths empathy boundaries navigating this sometimes tricky world with joy and compassion and open-heartedness alright see you later

Channel: Barbara Heffernan

Views: 128,389

Keywords: barbara heffernan, am i an empath, are you an empath, emapth, what is an empath, empath and boundaries, healthy boundaries for an empath, 4 traits required to be an empath, what is empathy, empathy and boundaries, traits of an empath

Id: xupJ7A9rl8s

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2023