When Is It A Good Time To Be An Empath?

For an empath, probably all of the time, but lately, being an empath has become almost debilitating.

There are some empaths who struggle to be in public places because they constantly absorb other people's energies and that is paralyzing for them. For me, for the most part, I am able to manage those interactions so that I can function socially. Of course, then I need to retreat, clear out, and recharge and then I can go back out and face the world again.

For as long as I can remember, I feel other people's experiences. I can hear a story and it's not just relating that affects me, it's as if I am in that person's shoes. I think it's why I don't care for violent or sad movies (truth be told, I don't watch many movies anyway), or movies with animals or children. Despite them being fiction, the possibility of another's suffering hits me hard and deep.

On top of this, I have a blunt sense of right and wrong, often much to the chagrin of others. Over the years, I've been working to integrate a gray area in this duality, but I am a fierce defender of those upon whom an injustice has been inflicted.

Back in the early 90s, I chased a claim of sexual harassment toward a young woman in my office all the way up to corporate counsel of one of the largest accounting firms in the world because it wouldn't stop and I was not going to let her leave her job because of it. I filed a complaint with the supervisor of a Department of Labor auditor who sat in front of me and told me my records were wrong because there was no way a woman named Alicia Anderson living in that neighborhood was white. I spoke up for the young couple who were visibly disturbed by service they received but didn't have the tools to rectify the situation. I got on the phone with an office in Wyoming who mistreated an Eastern Indian woman on my team most certainly because of her name and accent. I called animal control and worked with the sheriff to be sure a herd of horses rapidly losing weight would either get the quality hay and water they needed or they'd be surrendered. I can make a crying baby stop almost instantly, just by looking at her or him with understanding. And I smile, at anyone.

Being a social justice fighter isn't just about right and wrong, it's about feeling another's suffering and doing what I can to bring about relief. I am capable, competent, resourceful, and quick to act. You'd want me on your team if compassion and justice were your mission.

I walked to school in the 70's in Boston. If you don't know about school busing, it's worth a dive into a few books or a listen to a podcast. I walked past buses with black kids behind the windows and I heard what white adults would say to these kids. I'd seen people spit as they walked by. At kids. KIDS! Like me! Every n-word, every curled lipped pejorative, every huff of disgust was slung at me too. I saw no difference between those kids on the bus and myself. I listened to family members talk with disgust about black kids "coming in" and my heart hurt. My stomach cramped. My head swirled with the question, how can you hate someone you don't know? If you hated them, you hated me. I distanced myself from my family for some time because I didn't know how to deal with that.

Expressing compassion is part of an empath's life. Over the years, I have learned to feel compassion not just for those who are hurting, but for those who do the hurting. I have been able to still love family who say some really racist and hurtful things. I would say friends as well, but I choose my friends. I can separate love from agreement. I can love someone and not agree with their beliefs. I can have compassion for the hurt they have deep inside that would cause them to hate others and deny current events.

But something is happening. Over the past two years, the global injustices, persecutions, separations, discriminations, murders, court decisions are taking their toll on me and now I am having a hard time not absorbing so much suffering. I cannot hear a separated child's cry without breaking down with a split heart: one half feeling the fear and terror of a confused child alone in an unfamiliar world, and the other half feeling the helplessness, despair, and agony of a parent whose child's whereabouts are unknown. I cannot look at a photo of a starving seal cub or polar bear disoriented by a landscape that no longer provides food and the map needed for survival, because I cry knowing we ought to be doing better. I cannot sit at a table with a dead animal in the center because I know it was once part of a family unit and I know of the fright it experienced right before it was slaughtered. I cannot read a headline of a mother screaming because her child's leg was just blown off, literally, in what is one of the most senseless and egregious abuses of power in my lifetime, because her voice and pain permeate my entire being. I cannot listen to a privileged man berate a woman for speaking out about sexual abuse many years ago because I know her story and I know why she kept quiet, and I know what shame of privilege looks like. And here I sit feeling helpless and hopeless.

I am the fixer, the protector, the one who knows what someone is feeling and can be there to offer comfort and guidance. But I can't fix this. I can't help them all. And my ability to send compassion to those who are complicit by way of choice, silence, ignorance, convenient disregard, vote, is fading. And that is a horrible sinking feeling. It feels like a personal failure.

Can I still love all as one when so many others are suffering, and hurting, and dying? I cannot give up on that.

I cannot.

I must not.

#chooselove
#weareone
#itshumanity