everything happens for a reason

Are you an emapth? Can you feel other peoples emotions ?

I was reminded of this earlier today .I had woken about 6 am as usual and had a peaceful happy time reading affirmations ,doing a bit of writing and reading a few very kind messages I recieved .So I was feeling positive and motivated to have a productive ,enjoyable day .

My daughter came in my bedroom for a chat as she does most days and was feeling very anxious about a few things ,including the online degree she has just started .She didn’t really want to talk ,didn’t know what she wanted etc and went back to her room .She is overcoming huge challenges at the moment .

My mood just went to rock bottom even though I knew she would settle .I realised how much of her energy I had absorbed ,and the energy in my room changed and how often this happens .She is now fine ,happy doing her degree and I decided to start this thread after reading more about empaths .

I have known for a long time I am one but this morning realised I need to take care of myself and my surroundings as I’m constantly being drained .

It is no use me having this gift if I just allow myself to become drained through feeling the sadness in family,pets,friends,strangers,animals,places .

By taking care I will have the strength to help as well as feeling .

what is an empath

The following list is provided by Michael R. Smith, Ph.D of EmpathConnection.com to help you discover if you are an empath

“You May Be An Empath If…

1. You look at someone and “just know” their emotional state. 2. You can feel the energy coming at you (or being drained) from another person, especially from the eyes. 3. You have a blocked feeling in your chest [or core], as if someone is tugging on it. 4. Tend to run away from people when stressed, rather than engage. 5. You’ve been called “oversensitive,” especially if you’re male. 6. Always know where danger may lurk. (Curiously, you may have avoided accidents). 7. Are drawn to the tranquility of animals. 8. Are drawn to mountains, nature, the ocean – anywhere outdoors. 9. Can not bear violence in any form. 10. Can easily produce tears, sometimes at will. 11. You can feel the physical aches & pains of others. 12. Feel better after a good, intense cry. 13. See things from the “bigger picture” and from “the larger scheme of things.” 14. Are overwhelmed by large crowds or mobs (e.g. shopping malls). 15. Can sometimes feel affected by the energy of the full moon. 16. Have intense, fantastic, and sometimes lucid, dreams”

The following list is provided by Michael R. Smith, Ph.D of EmpathConnection.com to help you discover if you are an empath

“I. CLEARING NEGATIVE ENERGY IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT

As an Empath and a Highly Sensitive Individual, we know how draining it can be when there are negative energies in the area. It can be challenging to keep focus… let alone stay aware and energetic. Here are some quick but powerful ways to clean the “unwanted energies” in your environment. Give it a try and see which works best for you.

Clearing Negative Energy In Your Environment:

1. Smudging your home with sage. 2. Doing Meditation and taking deep breaths. 3. Strategically placing bowls of sea salt in your home to protect you from entrance of negative energy. The salt acts as an absorbent to negative energy. 4. Using protective stones and crystals. Some good protective stones that repel negative energy are Onyx and Obsidian. While Amber and black tourmaline acts more like absorbers. And Amethyst is considered a healing stone. So you may also want to consider wearing protective stone jewelry. (Just remember to clean the stones regularly with sea salt and water.) 5. Physically clean the place. This removes the old energy and keep the place in high vibration”
copied from EmpathSolutions.com

“II. ELEVATING YOUR PERSONAL ENERGY AND GROUNDING YOURSELF

Don’t underestimate the personal daily care of yourself. Many of us can be found guilty of letting the routine slip by without considering the magnitude of its effect. Yet, these little simple actions can mean all the difference… of keeping your world together!

Elevating Your Personal Energy and Grounding Yourself:

1. Take a nice warm shower. 2. Take a nice bath using Epsom Salt. Epsom Salt is to help you cut the psychic connection with others so that they are no longer pulling you. Plus, it helps your tired body relax. 3. Use essential oil or scent such as lavender, eucalyptus, rosemary, etc. to calm and relax yourself. 4. Get a nice massage. 5. Meditate 6. Going outside for some sun. 7. Doing any type of physical activities that will help you stay grounded in your body. (e.g. Yoga, Tai Chi, martial art, jogging, boxing, exercise, or some kind of sports you enjoy, etc.) 8. Get some fresh air. 9. Connect with nature. 10. Going to ocean, forest, or mountain area also helps you rejuvenate. 11. Surrounding yourself around plants or trees of high energy. 12. Drink pure water. (Bless your water with positive energy before drinking it. And remember to thank it for purifying your body as you drink it. 13. Eat proper balance nutritious meals. 14. Feel your emotions. 15. Take care of yourself”
copied from EmpathSolutions.com

In response to mara’s post:
Thanks mara ,I hope this thread helps .

I just found a great quote which I’m going to make into posters for round our home

“‘Please take responsibility for the energy you bring into this space”

BY Dr Jill Bolte Taylor

Me too! I cannot be in a room full of angry or sad people. It affects my soul and my mind. I recently purchased an audio tape about psychic attacks and protection. I don’t know if such a thing is true. But I am too sensitive and need protection or just being able to let things go.

4 Signs You’re An Intuitive Empath (Not Just An Empath)

It is often said and written that empaths are very intuitive people, and this is true for some, but there is nothing that says an empath must be intuitive, or that an intuitive must possess great empathy.

While the words are seen as interchangeable by some or intrinsically linked by others, it is very much the case that not all empaths are intuitives and not all intuitives are empaths.

In fact, the two abilities – empathy and intuition – are quite different in one important respect.

Empathy is, very generally speaking, the ability to sense and feel the emotions and energy of other people and your surroundings. It is almost entirely outward facing and concerned with things other than oneself.

Intuition, on the other hand, involves turning inward and consulting your unconscious mind and ‘gut feelings’ to assess and understand a situation. It certainly relies upon absorbing and processing the world around you, but the final element is very much internal.

Thus, the assumption that people endowed with highly levels of empathy are equally as blessed with intuition is misguided. They are distinct aspects of one’s personality and should not be merged into a single trait.

With this in mind, how can you be sure whether you are an intuitive empath, or some other type of empath? What marks one apart from the other?

Here are 4 signs that you are an empath with a high degree of intuition.

1. You Can Tell The Difference Between Your Feelings And Those Of Others

One of the major struggles facing many empaths is the assimilation of other people’s feelings into their own mind and body. The energy they absorb merges with their own and pollutes their inner river. They often become like those around them because they cannot tell what’s theirs and what’s not.

For instance, if they encounter angry people, they grow angrier; if they meet an anxious person, this feeds their own anxieties; and if they come across sadness in others, they become sad themselves.

It’s very different for an intuitive empath. They are so in-tune with their inner state that they are able to easily differentiate between it and anything they might soak up from their surroundings.

They are less influenced by the emotions of others. While they can still recognize and feel these emotions, the impact upon their own mental state is less noticeable than it is for other empaths.

They are better at creating a permeable, but controllable, barrier between their own feelings and those of others. They are able to let the two merge should they wish, but they can also keep them separate for the most part.

2. You Can See Beyond Feelings To The Reasons For Them

While empathy allows you to detect and embody the feelings of others, it cannot, by itself, tell you why they are feeling that way.

For non-intuitive types of empaths, this can be a source of great confusion because they end up feeling something that they can’t fully understand or explain.

One of the traits of an intuitive individual, however, is the ability to take a step back and view things from a broad perspective, and this allows them to identify the links – both direct and indirect – between cause and effect.

Intuitive empaths spot things that other empaths don’t; they let their unconscious reflect on what they see, and it provides them with insight into why a person may be feeling they way they are.

They don’t necessarily do this with any conscious intent; it is simply a natural instinct and skill that comes from having both empathy and intuition in abundance.

Sometimes an intuitive empath may even have a better understanding of a person’s feelings than the person does themselves. This is a major reason for the next sign.

3. You Help People Understand Their Own Feelings

If you’re an intuitive empath, there is a good chance that you’ve helped many people figure out what they are feeling and, more importantly, why they are feeling it.

You probably enjoy talking with others about their emotions, their thoughts, their dreams, and their worries. You just seem to be able to ‘get’ what it is they are telling you even if they can’t really put it into words.

Like most people, you have probably experienced the full spectrum of feelings during your lifetime and these are stored, along with the relevant context, deep within your unconscious. It is your intuitive ability to perceive and understand the signals sent by this part of your mind that prove so valuable in identifying why others feel a certain way.

You aren’t just able to put yourselves in their shoes from an emotional standpoint; you can grasp their rationale and the wider circumstances too. These help you to piece together a more detailed picture and give them potential reasons for their feelings.

4. You Are The Go-to Person For Advice And Counselling

With their abilities to understand and appreciate the feelings of others and their inclination towards taking a bird’s eye view of things, intuitive empaths make ideal counselors.

You are probably the person others turn to first when they are facing a problem and are unable to see a solution to it. Once you have spoken to them, felt what they feel, and understood why they feel that way, you have one last trick up your sleeve: your creativity.

Intuitives tend to be creative people and their knack for thinking outside of the box means they are exemplary problem-solvers. You are able to suggest various ways of approaching the situation and offer the pros and cons of each.

Where third parties are involved, you are also adept at stepping into their shoes so as to consider how they might respond to each given option – even if you have never met them and are simply going on what you’ve been told.

All of these things mean you are often called upon by friends and family members to lend an ear and provide advice. You become a confidant of sorts; someone that they can discuss anything with and someone they know will give a frank, but constructive response.



Data source: A Conscious Rethink 

7 Signs You’re An Extroverted Empath

The vast majority of empaths would, when asked, probably label themselves as introvert or with introverted tendencies. There are, however, a significant minority of empaths and highly sensitive individuals who are very much extroverts.

You may not have thought about yourself in these terms before, but if you can identify with most of the following points, there is a good chance you are an extroverted empath.

1. You Feel Alive Around Others, But Mostly In Small Groups

As an extrovert, you thoroughly enjoy spending time with other people and you can easily while away the hours in the company of friends. It doesn’t matter whether you are venturing into the wilds of nature, getting a bite to eat, or playing some sport, you just love to be among others.

You do, however, prefer to keep the group size fairly small when meeting up with people because you find it so much easier to cope with. Your extroversion and your abilities as an empath both mean you soak up the energy of those around you and it’s important to you to keep these balanced. Too many distinct energies and it’s a bit like adding more and more ingredients to a cocktail – eventually it ends up as an unpalatable mess.

2. You Are Very Choosy About Who You Spend Time With

As much as you enjoy being in the company of others, you won’t just settle for any old person. After all, you are an empath and this makes you very sensitive to the vibrations given off by others.

If you have a choice between being in the company of someone with negative energy and being alone, you’d take the solitary road every time. You are happy to meet new people, but if it soon becomes clear that they are giving off a vibe that doesn’t harmonize with your own, you find an excuse to leave.

3. You Are Very Choosy About What You Spend Time Doing

While your standard extrovert might be happy to go along with others in whatever activity has been suggested, the empath inside of you finds it hard to get enthused by things you have no interest in.

It feels inauthentic to partake in something that you’d prefer not to do, and so you are more than happy to turn down an invitation if it doesn’t float your boat. This doesn’t mean you are demanding and inflexible – you just know when and when not to say yes.

4. You Experience Swings Of Energy

An extroverted empath has to cope with a very interesting dilemma which can lead to sudden and extreme swings in energy levels. As an extrovert, you are able to replenish your batteries through contact with others, but as an empath, you also absorb energies from all around you.

While you can easily go days or even weeks in extrovert mode, there will almost always come a point where your battery becomes overcharged and you short circuit. Your enthusiasm and excitement for seeing other people almost instantaneously plummets as you struggle to absorb any more energy, and you withdraw into yourself.

For a while, your extroverted side goes on hiatus to allow your energy levels to even out once more. While you may only need to flee to your inner cave for a short period, it can sometimes be that you go on a mental vacation for a week or more. In this time, you almost fall off the radar as far as socializing goes.

5. You Like To Plan Events In Advance

As much as you enjoy getting out and about with other people, you also feel the need to plan such gatherings in advance. Even if it’s just a day or two’s notice, you like to be able to diarize and mentally prepare for the forthcoming festivities.

The reason for this is because you know how easy it is for your inner empath to become overwhelmed. Some situations will involve greater numbers of friends, others will mean exploring totally new places, and others, still, might mean meeting entirely new people.

All these things are potential dangers to an emapth, so you like to have forewarning in order to create a mental shield. This classic survival mechanism for an emapth is something you just naturally like to do.

6. You Need To Feel Free

Despite a preference for planning, you also like to have freedom of choice. This means that you find events with very rigid structures quite hard to deal with. You like things to evolve naturally over time and for the next step on the journey to be taken only when it feels right.

The way you reconcile this with your need to plan is by coming up with a rough idea that is far from set in stone. You may even just agree upon a starting point and then see where life takes you from there because, by this time, you will you have your shield up to deflect unwanted energies.

When travelling the world, for instance, you are more likely to book flights and a couple of day’s accommodation and then let a trip flow from there rather than go on a cruise with predetermined stopovers and excursions.

Because of this, you quite often assume a leadership role among your friends because you let your intuition guide you and, in turn, them.

7. You Have A Not-so-secret Creative Side

Empaths often harbor a highly creative flair within them, but their introverted side can hold them back from expressing it. You have no such problem, however, and feel at home on a stage or in front of an audience.

You might be an actor, an artist, an author or simply a showman; in each case, you are not afraid to gift your talents to the wider world.

You don’t shy away or keep your talents under wraps; you explore ways to further express yourself by seeking out opportunities to get involved in an active, artistic community. Open mic nights, poetry slams, interactive art exhibitions, amateur dramatics; you feel enthused by these scenes and others like them.