Empathy

What is empathy like for you? Ive always been empathic and I never really understood that until a few years back. I know for me being empathic is really good since Im a medic, I tend to know when a patient is lying about how they feel or not. Its been interesting sort of rediscovering and experiancing my empathy.

For myself, it's similar to what you said about knowing when someone is telling you a lie; but it goes somewhat beyond that.

I know random things about the person. Nothing major, usually just their surface emotions, a little bit about what's causing them, that sort of thing. Sometimes this comes about as a detached thought that doesn't match my own, and sometimes, I think when I'm not really paying attention or expecting it, it'll come as a FEELING, like as a pain or what have you. It takes some moments sometimes to figure it out. "Hey, that wasn't here a minute ago. Nothing's changed, this doesn't make sense. Oh, wait... maybe it isn't mine? Ah yeah, there we go". That sort of thing.

For me it's being able to feel a person's (or animal's) feelings even from a room away. It's frustrating because I don't always want to know this information! In some ways it is good, other ways it is bad. My mood tends to reflect the mood around me of those more I think than if I didnt have as high a level of empathy (talking about going beyond a typical level of empathy I think).

I don't have the standard emotional empathy. I can read people well yes but I can't "pick up" on their emotional state in the same sense as empaths usually do. Instead, I have a good connection to the hardware. That is, I pick up on their physical state. People who have migranes, give me a migrane, from across the house.
Needless to say, I hate hospitals but do have a bit of extra fun with the bedroom activities.

It always seemed as if I didn't have any sort of empathy at all, or at least very little. I can rarely catch on to other's emotions, unless they are obviously showing it or it just "radiates" off of them (in that case, everyone can feel it). But I can feel other's anger, whether it's strong or not, which can be good in case of protection, I guess.

Empathy is a huge pain in the arse for me. Sometimes it's good to be able to read emotions, but mostly I'm just overwhelmed by them. It's not so bad since I've started regularly wearing hematite, though... it's a rather good buffer. Before I started doing that, if I even walked into a room where a lot of emotional energy was expended, I'd get sick and panicky.

Shyrokino Wrote:What is empathy like for you? Ive always been empathic and I never really understood that until a few years back. I know for me being empathic is really good since Im a medic, I tend to know when a patient is lying about how they feel or not. Its been interesting sort of rediscovering and experiancing my empathy.

A bit off-topic, but that is honestly awesome! <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s -->

I pick up the mood of the environment. Whether I like it or not. One of the most annoying points of this is when I try to be a psychiatrist (an empathic person treating depression gets a little depressing). More annoying is after I've watched a movie for the first time. After leaving the theatre, I'm stuck in the persona of one of the main characters for a good fifteen minutes.

I am EXACTLY the same way, Deros! Ever since I was a kid. I thought it was just imagination or something when I was younger, and it probably at the VERY least partly was. But it still happens now, and lasts quite awhile sometimes... Good to know it's more common than I thought.

When I was very young I was EXTREMELY empathic. I was also very into fantasy and sci-fi literature. I encountered, in one story (I actually forget the specific one) where the main character was a young man who needed to do some very hard things, and basically how he got through it was to completely discard all of his emotions.

It struck me, due to how much I hated my empathy that was a FANTASTIC idea, and I spent probably about 10 years working on that. I worked off and on, sort of whenever my empathy bothered me, to completely seal that sort of thing off so that it couldn't bother me. My last really 'intense' empathic experience was from a friend of mine.

We were riding in the car, a couple months after his mother died. A song came on the radio that I had never heard before, and for no reason I felt complete despair and actually started crying on the spot. He was concerned and asked what was wrong. I didn't know, just said that song was making me cry for no reason. Turns out it was a song his mother used to sing to him.

Yeah...kept working on killing my empathy and haven't had any 'problems' with it for a few years now.

However, my mother's commented, at least once, that she noticed the change...and I don't think it pleases her.