Empathy is a gift - don’t let it work against you

An empath can be susceptible to manipulation. Historically so disempowered by shame.

By historically, l mean early childhood. Empaths are not only carrying their own shame but everyone else’s too. It can then be so easy to become and identify with everybody else’s version of them, because individuation is felt as loneliness and non-belonging, like being on the outside looking in. It is not felt as a natural right to be separate in your identity and your feelings and values or even your perceptions because you are continually devalued by others' imposed assumptions of you - they take precedence instead. 

Yes, when it is here and in black and white it reads as ghastly because it is!

When we become disconnected from self or the “adapted” version of self, the lost authentic self longs to be seen, heard, known and understood both by others and by oneself. So there is an innate felt sense of non-belonging yet hidden, perpetual and palpable loneliness.

This is often why yoking to corrupt harbours are felt as better than nothing. But 'nothing' becomes the predictable disappointment and the nothingness confirms the sense of worthlessness that is so easy for predators to rely on with empaths, where underserved understanding and compliance are given out like sweets! 

Signs of being stuck in a wounded child state 

Watch out for when your feelings don’t match your thoughts

You tell yourself one thing but your feelings are telling you something else. Listen to your feelings you will find them in your gut they count no matter what you are told. 

Becoming a version that fits someone else 

It is OK to be who you are.

Start to recognise flooding

Flooding is when you are overwhelmed by stress or feelings that you can’t identify but you don’t feel safe or good, you might feel depersonalised or lost, none of these feel good and they can come on either right away or later on they might be felt as anxiety.

This state is a navigation tool of dysfunction that was learned. This place is a maladaptive survival tool within us where depression, low self-worth, worthlessness, and fear live. 
Everything will be about getting approval either through achieving or caretaking. This state is where feelings are being walled off or walled in.

Fitting in at the price of authenticity

There are so many examples of this l came across in my own life when l wanted to fit in. How l would do things like listen to a radio station that mostly bored me to sobs because “my friend” listened to it every day or mention programmes and films that l didn’t connect with personally that would make me seem more like them. It was subtle but there, the upholding of an inauthentic self to please and fit in. This was because l mostly hung out with people who always made me like l wasn’t enough and inside l was angry with them, and angry with the 'myself' of self which l thought l needed, this was inauthentic too!

Does any of this ring any bells with you?

Please also refer to another article l wrote about hanging out with your own tribe.

These are old survival tactics they were, heaven help us, once scarily necessary and they pop up shiny and bright when we are “fitting in” and giving and being empathetic to survive or stay in something that we fear we won’t be able to be our real self and expressing our real thoughts and feelings.

What we need to remember

Boundaries and being authentic don’t work with toxic people. Because in truth they are about relationship, and relationship is not about being subtly or perpetually demeaned. It is about respected and cared for individuation, it is about you being celebrated for who you are not by fitting in. Also “fawning” has been noted by a well-read and well-loved expert on CPTSD, in one of the flight, fight, fear responses which are trauma states.

Empathy and being an empath are, as this article title suggests, a gift. 

Offer it without strings from a place of contentment and pride in being enough, in being who you are wounds and all and being ok with that. Don’t offer it to garner something with someone where you have to sacrifice who you are.

It will only lead to a disappointment that is felt “as old as the hills” inside of you and a path you need to change. A neural pathway, which can be changed.

Take the better path towards celebrating who you are.

Please remember you’re not helpless anymore. Through choice and awareness, you can make better choices of being surrounded by people who can be yourself with who will be so thrilled you are in their corner too, because you are a treasure.