Many of us relate to ourselves as compassionate, tuned in, and occasionally taking on other's upsets as our own. And in the parlance of our time, we refer to certain folks who do this more than others as empaths.
Here's the definition:
An empath is someone who is highly attuned to the emotions of others.
They feel what others are feeling so deeply that they may "absorb" or "take on" those emotions.
Empaths may struggle to distinguish their own feelings from those of others, which can lead to confusion and misinterpretation.
Ring any bells for you? It certainly does for us...
And for those of us who think of ourselves as empaths the world can be a very overwhelming and over-stimulating place. We may even tend to avoid people altogether in order to protect our own energy and capacity.
But maybe it's not "being an empath".
Maybe it's being wired to react to others from a Survival State.
A huge percentage of us accidentally developed a nervous system that manages social situations with the neural network that is meant to manage life or death situations.
This can happen when, early on, our brain wires itself in order to succeed in an environment lacking adequate social and emotional support.
The Survival System relies on coherence in order to keep us alive.
Historically, if someone in our clan was running from a saber-tooth tiger, the others of us most likely to survive were the ones who noticed early and at distance, and acted accordingly!
Our species has survived for eons in part due to reacting with Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Appease whenever someone near us was in Survival Mode.
There are no longer saber-tooth tigers chasing our fellow clansmen, but Survival coherence is still very much alive and active.
Unless we know how to work proactively with coherence, our Survival System reacts to others’ emotional states as if there’s a threat—preparing to “stay alive” even when no real danger is present, just people expressing feelings.
This is why standing near an upset person upsets our own system.
It's not that we're absorbing their feelings, it's that we're mirroring their feelings. And our system (among other things) is preparing to either protect us from the emotion or from the threat of whatever might be inviting the emotion.
In any case, (empath or over-reactive wiring) the answer to experiences like this is to invite our Survival System to "stand down".
3 things you can do...to prevent Survival coherence and the experience of absorbing other's feelings:
What's your breath doing?
Are you panting like you're going to fight or run? Are you barely breathing at all?
Just noticing your breath will cue the Survival System that there's less need for it to get involved.
Can you touch your skin?
Find a little patch of your own skin, and rub your finger over it. If you keep this up for a minute or so, this tiny signal will help your nervous system understand that your body's experience is separate from the experience of the upset person near you, and will begin to down-shift the Survival reaction.
How far away is your pinkie toe from your elbow?
This sounds silly, but if you can ask your brain to calculate the distance between body parts, it helps your nervous system re-estimate the threat level of the situation. A general rule is that if you can notice your body, you can stay out of Survival mode and have a chance of remaining emotionally sovereign in the face of another's emotion.
The best part about this?
Even if we got wired to respond to people and their emotions from the Survival System, we can rewire.
Putting the right tool in place, at the right moment, and repeating that process consistently over time, asks the brain to redevelop itself in order to accommodate the new way of living.
With some work (and especially with support) we can:
Become less accidentally empathic (having the sense that we absorb others' emotions)
Become more empathetic (authentically connecting around emotions)
Maintain a grounded sense of self and sovereignty no matter who we're with
What's your experience? Please share with us if you have identified as an empath and how you support yourself. We'd love to hear!
And if the path of brain rewiring is calling to you, we invite you to join us! We've been at it for 18 years now.
Rewiring is what we do!
And if you have been dealing with the experience of getting too activated around others' feelings, or taking on too much, or cohering too deeply with the states of those around you — please know you are not alone, and you don't have to face it alone. We know what it's like, and we can help.
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Get help discovering how your system works and what it needs.
Schedule a phone appointment at your convenience.