How well do you know yourself?

Some are intimated by their self-discovery; it seems to be a daunting journey.

But those who pay close attention to their traits, thoughts, tendencies, and preferences have a great chance of knowing what makes them special, or even deficient. And in knowing lies a great opportunity for improvement.

1. ?Have you always been called eccentric or just different?
2. Do vulnerable human beings come to you for emotional shelter? Sometimes complete strangers.
3. Can you immediately detect a counterfeit liar?
4. Do you get physically sick around certain people?
5. Can you sense hatred, jealousy as well as admiration, care, authenticity, fear, and love just by talking to someone for 5 minutes?
6. Are you suffocated and noxious in crowded settings, jammed traffic, parties, weddings where there are so many people?
7. Do you feel a deep urge to help others even at your own expense?
8. Do you experience intolerable pain just by watching violence on TV or horror movies?
9. Do loud noises and clutter drive you mad?
10. Do you absolutely need alone time every single day and sometimes for a full day to recharge? Solitude is your oxygen.
11. Does your close circle think you are physic or insightful as you always seem to know a bit more about the future? Not in a magical sense but you always know everyone's next move like an imagined simulation in your head?

The list goes on and on ...

Well, this odd melange of traits belongs to a human personality construct, which has been recently identified; the empath. An evolution of the HSP.

A highly sensitive person (HSP) is a person having the innate trait of high sensitivity (or innate sensitiveness as Carl Jung originally coined it). According to Elaine N. Aron and colleagues as well as other researchers, highly sensitive people, who comprise about a fifth of the population, process sensory data much more deeply and thoroughly due to a biological difference in their nervous systems. This is a specific trait with key consequences that in the past has often been confused with innate shyness, inhibitedness, innate fearfulness, introversion, and so on. The existence of the trait of innate sensitivity was demonstrated using a test that was shown to have both internal and external validity. Although the term is primarily used to describe humans, the trait is present in nearly all higher animals.(1)

An Empath will physically and emotionally sense and feel the experience of the other person. This is quite different from simply understanding someone’s emotional expression that they verbally communicate to you. An Empath will be able to understand the feelings of another by actually feeling them as well, and this can become a lot like taking them on as though they are your own.

Many people who are Empaths and don’t know how to work with their gift, come home at the end of the day feeling exhausted, low-energy, sad or depressed, and unable to express their own true feelings because they have picked up on the emotions of so many others through the grind of the day.

The unwanted emotions of others can cling to the energy of the Empath because of how open and receptive they are to sensing, feeling, and attracting those energies and feelings. If you are simply empathic, then you will not have the same kind of experience that an Empath will. You may feel like a good friend or coworker because of your ability to hear someone’s experience and offer them compassion and empathy, but you are not an Empath unless you are sensing and feeling someone else’s emotions or feelings without verbal communication. It is an energetic knowing on a deeper level that sets the Empath apart from the empathetic. (2)

Neuroscience has proved to identify differences in the mirror neurons of those who have expressed empathetic abilities from those who do not.

Dr. Elaine Aron, an HSP herself and the author of the best seller the highly sensitive person, had spent thirty years researching this phenomena and scientific evidence behind it. Her research concluded that through FMRI that Empaths have a Sensory Processing Sensitivity Which an ordinary person does not possess.

Being an empath is both a gift and a curse.

We do -all- spend so much time on learning about things, others in our environments, even on some celebs while the most important thing you can ever study is yourself.

References

1. The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aaron, audiobook. https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/highly-sensitive-person/61019?a_aid=5ac7fa60b2780&refId=39064&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg_WkrIXr8AIV1obVCh0hyAdREAAYASAAEgKQRfD_BwE#
2. Psychology Wiki https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_persons#:~:text=A%20highly%20sensitive%20person%20(HSP,Carl%20Jung%20originally%20coined%20it).
3. Empath - A Complete Healing Guide: Self-Discovery, Coping Strategies, Survival Techniques for Highly Sensitive People. By Ewan Miller, 2019- ISBN-13: 9781393708193 -