“The hardest thing in the world is to live in it,” said Buffy the Vampire Slayer, just before leaping into the abyss to stop the (an?) apocalypse-in-progress.
That was in the year 2000, and more than 20 years later, this is even truer. For those of us who are sensitive, empathic people with big, unwieldy feelings, it can feel crushing.
And yet – and it took me a long time to get here – I don’t think that being an empath is a negative trait. It can be a difficult trait to possess, but it also makes the world keep spinning. If it’s true, as MLK Jr. said, that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, it’s the fighters with big, squishy, untethered hearts that make that happen.
If you are a person who experiences big feelings and takes on the big feelings of others – or if you love someone who’s like this – here are six things to know about that:
1. Sensitivity is a strength.
Sensitivity – having big, easily triggered feelings – leads to empathy. When you take on the emotions around you, you are internally mandated to do something about hardship. When you see something that feels wrong, and your emotional world won’t let you ignore it, that spurs action.
Sensitivity and empathy are the linchpin of activism, allyship, and the ability to envision a better world. These traits breed the kind of compassion that keeps the world spinning.
It’s so hard to remember, when you’re a person like this, that emotion is not the enemy, because it can be so hard. But if you’re a person who experiences the world through a lens of empathy, try to keep in sight that your feelings are your power source.
2. Being an empathic sponge can really, really suck.
Sometimes, I walk into a room of 100 people, and if 1 if them is really upset, I have a hard time relaxing and enjoying myself.
If you’re a sensitive person with big feelings, you may wish – perhaps more often than not – that you could turn off your feelings. Because walking through the world like this hurts sometimes.
You may lose hours or days of your life to being immobilized by a hard feeling. No feeling lasts forever, and eventually, the feelings will get less intense and you’ll be able to resume your usual life, but when you’re in it, it feels permanent.
Over the years, so many clients have asked me how to turn down the volume on their feelings. As an empathic person, I’ve often wondered this myself. And the fact of the matter is that the Big Feelings are something that are part of you, something that you need to work with, not against.
3. You can’t fundamentally change the fact that you’re empathic.
We could talk all day about whether it’s nature – the way you’re wired – or nurture – the result of the life experiences you’ve had – that make you feel things as deeply as you do. But regardless, if you’re a deeply empathic person, you’re not going to be able to rewire yourself not to be.
This doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do.
You can numb out. You can drown your feelings in drugs and alcohol, working too much, have lots of anonymous sex, focus on a crash diet, get sucked into screens, or any number of other things. The world provides us with no shortage of ways to pretend we don’t have feelings. These things work for as long as they work, but they also come with devastating mental health consequences: the crash when you stop using your “tool” of choice, physical health maladies, atrophied relationships, and the general sense that you’ve lost your identity. But this is an option and, indeed, one that many people choose.
More healthily, you can build resilience. You can learn to be kinder to yourself when you’re stuck in a big feeling. You can learn to interpret your emotions as information to be processed and used proactively, instead of suffering to be avoided. You can wield your powers for personal growth or social change. This, of course, is the work of therapy for those who seek it.
4. Boundaries are really important.
You may need to take breaks to recharge. This can mean breaks from work, breaks from social situations, breaks from reading the news, and breaks from holding yourself to such a high standard.
What this means is that you may also need to ask for things from others – emotional support, logistical support, and time away to process your feelings. This may begin with a quest for people who are compassionate and able to meet those needs, and you may find that you need different people to meet different needs.
The reason these things are important is that you can’t go 100 miles an hour forever without taking breaks and having help. You’ll run out of gas.
5. You might be a bit misanthropic.
The most difficult thing about being deeply empathic is that most other people aren’t.
Some people are deeply compassionate, constantly aware of the effect they have on others, and studiously intent on doing everything they can to be a good person. Other people are narcissists, terrorists, or just out for a fight. But most people are somewhere in between.
This is a hard pill to swallow. When you expend mountains of energy being thoughtful and taking care of everyone around you, even the middle ground people – the generally good people who manspread, don’t think to bring a mask to the grocery store, or follow the oppressive status quo without pausing to examine it – can start to feel like terrible people. When you walk through the world constantly concerned about the wellbeing of others, it’s infuriating when others don’t pause to consider you.
The fix here, to the extent there is one, is twofold. First, you need to find zones of safety – places where you’re surrounded by people whose perspectives and intentions resonate with your own – so that you don’t feel like you’re all by yourself and shouting into a void. Second, it’s important to challenge the “all or nothing” thoughts you have about people who aren’t as far along on the empathic spectrum as you are.
6. You are not broken.
The world is a hard place, and being a person is difficult. We exist in broken systems, and this is especially challenging for sensitive people.
Capitalism, which gives much to a few and little to many, is a broken system. Government and politics are broken systems. The gender binary is a broken system.
We live in a culture that socializes people to be hard, self-interested, and out of touch with their feelings. Deeply empathic people don’t have the choice (other than that numbing stuff) to be out of touch with their feelings.
Opting into an emotional life is hard, but it is the healthy choice, and I believe that it reaps rewards that are far greater than its challenges if you have the fortitude to stick with it.
Therapy can help.
If you’re a sensitive person with big feelings, I’d love to help you shift your perspective about what this means, learn to be kinder to yourself, and exist in the world we have, rather than just feeling bad all the time. Reach out to schedule a phone call to talk about how I can help.