All the Feels

How many of us feel others’ emotions and struggle with maintaining a connection with our own? The term “empath” has become a common way to describe this experience. Frequently empaths feel cursed by this sense of being overwhelmed by others, but there is also strength and insight to be had in feeling others’ emotions.

Having Empathy Versus Being an Empath

We are all empathic to a certain degree. Unlike sympathy, which is the capacity to acknowledge another’s emotions because we’ve experienced similar situations, empathy is the capacity to directly feel another’s emotions. Much like hearing another’s voice, empathy allows us to feel another’s feels.

Frequently this can be overwhelming as a child. Especially as we go through the Lord of the Flies world of school, we find that feeling other’s emotions can be painful, and we shut ourselves down. We learn how to ignore or laugh at another’s pain to fit in, or to detach so that we can deal with a situation that would otherwise be too painful to manage.

Narcissists are at the extreme end of this spectrum, as they shut off all capacity to acknowledge the heart of even themselves, closing their emotional ears to all cries of pain.

At the other end of the spectrum lies the empath. Rather than closing off their empathic abilities, empaths find themselves overwhelmed by the emotional energy of those around them. They find that they struggle with differentiating between their emotions and the emotions of others. This can make it challenging to maintain equilibrium around others and, at the extremes, they can lose themselves in the wills of others.

The Growth of Narcissists and Empaths

Both empaths and narcissists come from similar crucibles. Empaths and narcissists are frequently raised in challenging homes, where children are raised to serve the needs of the parents versus being nurtured. Physical, psychological and emotional abuse is frequently a theme.

The main difference is their relationship to the power their parents hold. When dealing with parents who demand that the child obey their will, narcissists rebel and harden. They may eventually do as their parents wish, but inside they vow to never allow another person to control them again. In the hardening process, they lose sight of the consequences of their actions on others, until they make sure that they are the only persons who have control in their worlds.

Empaths have a very different view of power in relationship with their parental figures. They see that these figures are the ones who they rely upon for survival. Rather than engaging in a clash of wills, they focus on keeping their parents happy. If the parents are abusive or narcissistic themselves, this means reading their emotions even before they can act on them, heading off painful consequences before they have the opportunity to build. They have fine-tuned their abilities to meet their parents’ needs, even before their parents may be aware of them. In the process, they lose themselves.

Terminology caveats

Again, being an empath is different from having empathy. Not everyone who can sense other’s emotions was raised in an abusive household. But those who identify as having challenges with maintaining their sense of self with others frequently come from this background.

Also, when I speak of narcissism, I’m speaking broadly about the collection of traits that we commonly identify with narcissism: gaslighting, manipulation, winning at all costs, etc. Diagnosing someone as a narcissist is a whole different ball of wax than identifying traits of someone raised under extreme control dynamics. As I use the term “narcissist” here, I’m using it loosely, not in the sense of a psychological diagnosis.

The Empath/Narcissist Relationship

Frequently narcissists and empaths find themselves in relationship, which can be very confusing for the empath, who finds themselves attracted to this person even if they know the signs. There have been countless articles written on this dynamic, but the key thing I want to highlight is the relationship to power.

Frequently relationships grow due to shared worldviews, and it can be confusing for an empath to understand why they find themselves with someone who appears to view the world so differently. The key is that narcissists grew up to believe that, to survive, they must hold power. Empaths grew up to believe that, to survive, they must appease those who hold power.

Both empaths and narcissists believe that the narcissist must hold the power, not the empath. “I will support you to validate my existence,” says the empath. “Damn right you will,” says the narcissist. These views are congruent and create a seamlessly shared worldview.

Owning Our Power

The key difference between an empath and someone who is empathic is their relationship to power. Empaths were taught to externalize power, to see power as something their parents own. This makes it hard for them to feel safe identifying their own needs and desires. When they find themselves with someone who claims power, they lose their own identity, serving the external power holder.

Moving from being an empath to being empathic means finding oneself. It means acknowledging one’s right to exist, to proclaim that I can hold power myself, without the need for a surrogate.

It means learning how to say “no.”

Frequently there needs to be a period of withdrawal, at least energetically, in order to discover which emotions are mine versus someone else’s. To sit alone and see how the body feels when faced with different situations – which foods truly feel beneficial or vibrant, which music truly feels uplifting or emotional, which sights and sounds evoke what kind of emotions – all removed from others’ opinions. Reviewing how the people close to us actually make us feel, versus justifying how we are supposed to feel about them. Reestablishing a connection to our intuition. All of these lead to our capacity to be more authentic with our own emotions.

As we learn to identify our own emotions, the next step is to learn to express them and acknowledge our right to have them.

All of this is underpinned by a fundamental truth: We all have the capacity to act on our own behalf. We own our own power unless we give it to someone else. And we can always take our power away from those we gave it to. We may not be able to have a coherent conversation with the person we gave it to, but we never have to ask their permission to take back our power. We may need to walk away from those who want to hold our power. But there is never a justification required to take your power back.

You will know when you own your power when you don’t need another person to approve of the application of your power. You can explain what you are doing, even take feedback on how to do it more smoothly and effectively, but you are doing it anyways, whether or not that explanation is enough for the receiver.

Owning your power can dramatically shift your relationship with those who previously used your power. A friend of mine had a challenging relationship with her daughter, who used the mother’s desire to be fair and understood to spin her around. The daughter would complain about something trivial, the mother would try to explain why it was important, get exasperated, and punish the child – which was exactly what the daughter wanted, because it gave her ammunition to make her mother feel bad about disciplining her.

Once the mother realized that she didn’t need her daughter’s approval, she was perfectly content for her daughter to get upset over trivial things. Instead of saying “But it’s not that bad!” she would say “Alright, let me know when your done being upset. In the meantime, you still have to do it.” The daughter no longer had leverage, and she stopped playing games.

Moving From Being an Empath to Being Empathic

Owning our power doesn’t mean hardening our hearts. It means allowing our hearts to listen to ourselves. We can still feel others’ emotions even as we learn to speak for our own. This gives us the capacity to use this additional sixth sense of empathy in the service of making better decisions.

By owning our power, by acknowledging our own identity, we can learn to differentiate between our emotions and the emotions of those around us. My former partner Steve shared a story from college where a friend asked him to accompany him to see the dean. As they were sitting in the waiting room at the dean’s office, Steve started feeling anxious, then realized it had to be his friend’s anxiety he was feeling. After all, Steve wasn’t visiting the dean, his friend was. Because Steve was clear that he had no reason to be anxious, he could identify that indeed he wasn’t anxious. Since his friend had every reason to be, it made sense that the anxiety he felt was his friend’s, not his own. This was how Steve discovered that he was empathic.

By being able to distinguish between my own emotions and the emotions of those around me, and by owning my own power, I can gain the capacity to feel emotions without being lost to them. The simple act of saying “Oh, that’s not mine” also gives me the ability to say “Oh, that’s mine, let me take a look at it” without being enveloped by it. We gain distance.

Just as we can retrieve our power from those we relinquished it to, we can retrieve our power from emotions. We can experience them without being crushed by them, because emotions no longer identify problems to be solved. Because they no longer are problems that need to be solved, we can choose when to focus our awareness on them, just as we can choose to focus on sights over sounds, smells over sights. They don’t overwhelm us anymore. They become information to include in our decisions. They become sensations to experience.