empathetic abilaties what do i do?

Question

every time someone gets hurt or sick, i get sick and really dont feel good. my mom and counselor have told me many time that i am a empathetic. i know its a gift but i get sick ALL the time. please how can i control this and what do i use it for?

Answer 1

Highly Sensitive Person (HSP):
http://www.hsperson.com/
20% of the population have this trait. The book is available at Amazon.com

It is a challenge to desensitize yourself because this is how you have been wired. It's possible that as you are exposed to more, you will develop a tolerance. If not, you may have to look to alternatives for such situations (relaxation, meditation, nutrional adjustments, etc.) I'm not sure this is classified as a 'gift'; however, there is a good chance that you may have the gift of mercy...as people who have the gift of mercy tend to be very empathetic.

Answer 2

Try meditation. There are ways to separate the mind from the environment and from what you see that you are responding to. It's something that I learned to do, since I have empathic traits as well. I learned to do it from exercising, and when ever I felt the urge to stop my exercise routine before I was done, I would mentally separate myself from what my body was doing, and that enabled me to have more endurance. The key is changing your mental focus. The same practice may be helpful for you, if not look into other forms of mind empowerment and self control. Good luck.

Answer 3

I experience the same thing, only not with physical illness. I can walk through a room and "absorb" the emotions of the people in that room.

The trick for me, which I haven't figured out yet, is to be able to recognize the difference between when it's MY emotion vs. someone else's.

Answer 4

You have to learn to block I know it sounds funny but visualize a wall try to seperate yourself from that person concentrate on lighter things when someone is telling you how they feel whether it be physical or emotional. Try and stay away from hospitals and nursing homes that can mess u up for days. Frankly I haven't discovered an actual use for it either other than just helping people get through things. Hope this helped good luck

Answer 5

Not sure I'd consider this a gift. It's all well and good to be able to sympathize with people's pain, but this much empathy sounds like it's making your life difficult. I would want some therapy to help me find out why I feel this way and how best to control it so it doesn't interfere with my life. Basically, you're going to have to figure out how to stop identifying so strongly with other people.

Answer 6

Being better able to help others because you can empathize with their situation is not a nuisance. It doesn't mean you have to make a career of helping people if you don't want to. You could even use your perceptions of others to prey on them. But it's healthier to use empathy to help people than to be neutral or negative about it.

It's true you have to adapt to feeling everyone's pain from people overseas to those you have relationships with. You need a strong sense of who and what you are. I'm sure your counselor helps you that way. But you say you're still getting too many feelings about others. Then make sure you have enough time just for yourself. Find talents you can work on alone. Develop a relationship with God. Read, study. Have fun, sometimes alone, more often with friends.

The world is full of suffering, and people make excuses to trivialize that or say it's the fault of people who suffer. I find that infuriating, but I know how to channel that anger into determination to help people for whom I volunteer, having spent my life in a helping profession. It takes time and practice to learn to do that. It takes the same to acknowledge someone's pain and walk away from that person, because there's nothing you can do to change it. Heal yourself first, not by becoming numb, but by learning what emotion is good for, why evolution has given emotion to us, so that we can turn fear into prudence and sadness into comforting ourselves and others, as well as learning the determination that comes from anger.

Episode 63 of the original Star Trek series is titled "The Empath". Watch it sometime and understand the religious allusions they make in it. It is not a little thing. It is what redeems human beings from so much of our nature that is selfish and evil.

EDIT - So what do the thumbs down mean? Do you disagree that empathy is a gift? Perhaps you would call it projection and see it as something to be stamped out, to replace with solid boundaries, as if those are the epitome of mental health. One can stamp this out with antipsychotics, maybe with lesser means. Is that what you advise? I don't see an answer here like that, so why not write yours?

Or are the thumbs down here for individual reasons, different ones for different answers, like the first answerer suggesting therapy when the asker is already in therapy of some kind? So are the thumbs down to me something like that, some specific point I made you think is stupid? OK, so where's your answer instead? Is it just thumbs down to Star Trek or any religious allusion? I'm sure that's not healthy to have such a knee-jerk reaction against those.

Well, people can explain themselves with whatever words they want, including none at all. Others will make of that what they will. I'm glad I learned empathy somehow to guide me in that. I truly feel sorry for you who think that's sick.

Answer 7

Sorry, but it is not empathetic, sounds like hypochondriac.

If I am way off base, I apologize.

Answer 8

http://www.mastersinthemaking.com/articles/empathicgrounding.shtml