empath

 

What Is an Empath?

Signs of an empath
Managing empathy
Pros and cons
Next steps


Empathy involves being able to understand and relate to the emotional states of others. When you’re highly attuned to this form of perception, you may be what’s referred to as an empath.

Being able to understand why someone feels the way they feel, and to know what it’s like to feel that way yourself, is what it means to have empathy.

Empaths are people who are highly sensitive to the affective, or emotional, states of others.

“They often intuitively understand the feelings of others, sometimes even before the person has communicated them,” explains Hannah Mayderry, a licensed mental health counselor from Jacksonville, Florida. “This sensitivity allows empaths to connect deeply with people, but it can also be overwhelming at times.”

An empath isn’t a formal designation. It’s a term used to describe a collective experience of heightened emotional sensitivity.


Signs of an empath
Although there’s no clinical set of guidelines that determines if you’re an empath, people with high empathy may:

feel drained when exposed to intense emotions
avoid emotionally-impactful media
naturally be the person everyone confides in
be compelled to practice compassion in everyday life
have strong, often correct, intuition
dislike crowds
regularly feel burned out
experience emotions without knowing why
express deep emotion, like tears, in response to someone else’s story
Empaths are attuned to moods and emotions, but being an empath may also coincide with other forms of elevated perception.

Living with sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), for example, means you’re a highly sensitive person (HSP) who experiences an array of heightened perception toward environmental and social stimuli, which includes emotions.

In this way, an HSP can be an empath, but not all empaths are HSPs.

Am I an empath?
If you’re curious to know about your level of empathy, this empath test can provide insight about where you rank across several different empathy categories.

If you score high in empathy overall, you may be an empath. Scoring low in one or more categories can indicate areas of empathy to further develop.


How to manage your empathy
Empathy is inherently a positive thing. It allows you to interact with others in meaningful ways, form bonds, and sustain relationships.

But being hyper-attuned to every emotion from everyone, can take a toll. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed and burned out.

Managing empathy can help protect your mental well-being, but that doesn’t mean you should eliminate your empathy. Instead, “managing” means creating an environment that helps safeguard your heightened sensitivity.

Creating boundaries
Boundaries are there to let others know how you expect to be treated and what behaviors won’t be tolerated.

Dr. Maya Weir, a licensed clinical psychologist from Napa, California, says, “Oftentimes, empaths will need to work harder to feel justified in their boundaries but doing so will create the freedom they need to experience increased well-being.”

An example would be making your availability clear — and sticking to it — for that coworker who always wants to grab a coffee after hours to vent.

Evaluating relationships
Weir also recommends taking a close look at the relationships in your life to see which are reciprocal and which aren’t.

High empathy can be draining, especially if you’re the one always listening and never receiving equal consideration. In this scenario, your emotional battery is being depleted and never recharged.

“As much as possible, it’s important for empaths to work on establishing relationships where both people are caring for the other rather than a more common dynamic where the empath is taking care of the other person,” Weir says.

Making self-care non-negotiable
When you’re feeling overwhelmed from emotional stimuli, time to decompress is essential.

 cultivating habits of self-care that recharge you, like meditation, spending time in nature, or participating in the hobbies that bring you joy.

You don’t have to figure it out alone. “Seeking therapy can also be beneficial for developing strategies to manage empathy without becoming overwhelmed,” she indicates.


Is it “good” or “bad” to be an empath?
Empathy is considered a positive trait, but like many things, it can have pros and cons — and it depends on how you use it.

Being sensitive to the emotional states of others can help you practice compassion, but it can also allow you to use people’s emotions against them.

Dark empaths are people who use empathy for personal gain or manipulation.

“Unlike empaths, who are generally compassionate and understanding, dark empaths can wield emotional insight in a malicious way, combining empathy with darker traits like narcissism,”

Benefits of being an empath
According to Weir and Mayderry, benefits of being an empath include:

strong intuition
excellent social awareness
ability to create deep, meaningful relationships with others
being well-suited for a career in a caregiving field
Challenges of being an empath
The life of an empath can come with its fair share of challenges, as well. You may notice you’re more likely to:

have trouble setting boundaries or saying “no”
feel regularly overwhelmed and emotionally drained
ignore your own needs to focus on the needs of others
 many empaths also find it challenging to separate their personal feelings from those being channeled by the people around them.




Next steps
If you’re an empath, you have a significantly heightened sensitivity to the emotional states of others.

You might know what people are feeling before they tell you, for example, feel overwhelmed or drained in crowds, or find you naturally avoid emotionally-charged experiences.

Empathy is almost always a positive trait, but when your heightened empathy isn’t protected, it can compromise your mental health.

Setting boundaries, practicing self-care, and focusing on reciprocal relationships are ways you can maintain empathy without sacrificing your well being.

anxiety in relationships

 
How Anxiety Ruins Relationships
 TANYA J. PETERSON
      print    
Anxiety can ruin relationships. Discover how and why anxiety ruins relationships and what you can do to prevent it on HealthyPlace.

The idea of anxiety ruining relationships may seem a bit dramatic, but sadly, it can be true that anxiety ruins relationships. Anxiety is overpowering. When it intrudes on someone, it bulldozes itself into their relationships, too. It affects someone’s thoughts, emotions, and actions, clouding perceptions and leading to misinterpretations and misery. When this happens in the context of a relationship, it can
cause an incredible amount of stress and misunderstandings. Anxiety ruins relationships when worries, what-ifs, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors crowd out the positive that once existed between two people.

Is “ruin” the right term, though? Are relationships really destroyed by anxiety? Let’s take a look.

Can Anxiety Ruin Relationships?
When someone lives with anxiety, their life becomes increasingly restricted so that negative, anxious thoughts and beliefs become paramount. As the focus of the relationship, anxiety wedges itself between the partners, blocking their view of each other. When people lose sight of each other because of anxious ideas and behaviors, anxiety ruins the relationship.

Anxiety has been shown to increase relationship problems. People living with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), for example, are more prone than those without GAD to experience relationship problems, including divorce (Cuncic, 2018). According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (n.d.), people with GAD are twice as likely as those without anxiety to have at least one significant relationship problem and are three times more likely to avoid intimacy.

Intimacy is a vital component of healthy relationships. Avoiding it due to anxiety (such as fear of inadvertently displeasing their partner), can be a deal-breaker. It’s not just GAD that interferes in relationships and causes their demise. Any anxiety disorder can do this as can anxiety that doesn’t meet the diagnostic criteria for a disorder. Essentially, any type of anxiety can ruin relationships.

Anxiety in a relationship is incredibly stressful. Worries, what-ifs, fears, thoughts emotions, and behaviors cause angst, both to the person with anxiety and their partner. Stress becomes a theme for the relationship. Barriers form between partners, which create greater and greater distance. All too often, this unhealthy situation leads to the demise of the relationship. In answer to the above question, then, yes—anxiety can ruin relationships.

By looking more closely at why anxiety ruins relationships, we can gain knowledge that can be used to prevent relationships from breaking apart because of anxiety.

Why Anxiety Ruins Relationships
Anxiety ruins relationships because it intrudes. It creates negative thought patterns and beliefs, and it makes them larger than life (as in bigger and more believable than reality). These issues erode feelings of connection and the ability to trust. Anxiety becomes an obstacle as it commands the attention of both partners. Rather than being fully present with each other, both the person with anxiety and their partner place too much attention on the anxiety. This, in turn, leads to feelings of disconnection, separation, and abandonment.

Anxiety is a critical voice that shouts not “sweet nothings” but “mean somethings.” A big part of any type of anxiety is self-doubt that talks over the rational thoughts and words of both partners. Anxious thoughts and beliefs held by the partner with anxiety says such things as:

You’re incompetent
You don’t deserve your partner’s love
You aren’t a good partner
Your partner is going to leave you
You should protect your partner so nothing bad happens to them
If anxious thoughts would remain mere thoughts, they’d be annoying but probably wouldn’t ruin relationships. Anxiety never remains as thoughts, however. Instead, they bleed into emotions and dictate behaviors. Certain types of anxious behaviors, stemming from both thoughts and emotions, are common in relationships:

Clinginess, overdependence, attachment, and an extreme need for closeness, reassurance
Jealousy, possessiveness, suspiciousness
Withdrawal, retreat, and isolation
Cold, rejecting, punishing, shunning
Avoidance of open, honest communication
Anxiety drives these behaviors, but it’s not just the person with anxiety who uses them. Anxiety ruins relationships because relationships can’t sustain themselves with these barriers to closeness, fun, and intimacy.

Awareness of how anxiety ruins relationships can give couples a starting point in reconnecting. While
anxiety can ruin relationships, it doesn’t have to obliterate them, crushing them beyond repair.
 

psychology india

 Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism and Samkhya

 brief introduction to the psycho-philosophies of India  

Indian psychology is actually an offshoot of Indian philosophy. Philosophy is referred to in Sanskrit as 'Darsana'. The word 'Darsana' means 'vision' or 'insight'. Thus in the Indian context philosophy is viewed as a total vision of life, one's world-view. 

In ancient India spiritual life was the central focus. As such the mundane and the sacred co-existed. The ancient spiritual traditions addressed knowledge as a unitary body. 

Thus Yoga is simultaneously a system of philosophy, psychology, healing and spiritual practice. All these aspects of Yoga are intermingled within the larger framework of Vedic/Yogic approach to knowledge. 

Yoga, Buddhism and Vedanta are not mere philosophies as they have their respective psychological perspectives too embedded within their philosophies.

The roots of most religious and philosophical thought of India are lost in the hoary past. Most Indian thought that we study today as a systematized body of knowledge, has its roots in the pre-historic mists, in the depths of the unconscious. 

The roots may be in the form of spiritual impulses arising from the unconscious minds of the pre-historic people which led to a multiplicity of traditions. What we know of the various sects, cults, traditions and religions of India today is largely based on later periods of time, especially post-vedic, when the various ideas were systematized as distinct schools of thought. 

Quite often the modern versions and interpretations are the result of careful evaluation of the particular school of thought as well as its rival schools of thought. At times certain compelling ideas of a different school of thought that was earlier perceived as a rival, were not only incorporated but also presented as part of one's own school of thought. 

Thus the Yoga that we are acquainted with today is the Vedantic version with a theistic basis and not the same as the original version or the one that was redacted by Patanjali. It should be remembered that even by Patanjali's own admission, he was not the founder of the system. 

Yoga in its earliest forms was a set of psycho-spiritual practices from the hoary past. The theoretical basis for Yoga was later supplied by Samkhya, the mother of all Indian philosophies. Gradually the heterodox practices of Yoga developed into a systematized world view which finds expression in Patanjali's Yoga.

In its original forms Samkhya was a protagonist of the naturalistic, pluralistic and materialistic viewpoints. Originally Samkhya seems to have been non-vedic. From this early non-vedic nucleus that gave rise to the distinct systems of Samkhya-Yoga, other heterodox Indian systems too seem to have evolved. 

While Jainism based its theory mostly on Samkhya, Buddhism took mostly to Yoga. Due to regular systematizations all these systems are now vastly different from their beginnings. 

The impetus for systematization seems to have come from the Upanishadic phase when Vedic knowledge began to be systematized. In spite of the divergent paths that each system seems to have adopted, all these systems continued to influence each other. There were a series of successful contacts between the Vedic tradition and the heterodox systems including earlier Samkhya-Yoga. 

One thing that was originally common to all these four great systems (Samkhya-Yoga, Jaina and Bauddha/Buddhist) is either the rejection or minimal involvement of any Supernatural principle. They were uncompromisingly pragmatic and there was hardly any role for grace. There was a heavy (if not absolute) reliance on human effort or purushardha. 

The Upanishads (and consequently Vedanta too) on the other hand rely also on grace and look to divine intervention, in spite of their emphasis on purushardha. Though different, all these systems (Samkhya-Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism and Jainism) have mutually influenced each other and share some similarities too. Hence they all share the same page here.

resisting awareness

 There are many men and women who resist awareness in some important aspects of life.  

Perhaps they

are afraid to
⦁    face the immorality of their behavior.
⦁     look at an unhappy marriage.  

 do not· want to
⦁    look at the lies they live
⦁     look at how they treat their subordinates in the office.  
⦁     examine the anxious emptiness that rises within them whenever they are alone with nothing to do.
⦁     examine a whole range of emotions they feel that clash with their official self-image.

 So they dread
⦁    awareness,
⦁    quiet stillness,
⦁    meditative self-observation,
⦁    self confrontation.

They experience consciousness not as a source of pleasure but as a gun pointed at their head. That is because they identify "self' not with consciousness but with a phony image or with their favorite delusions.
 They have never discovered that our "I" -our deepest identity  -is neither our social roles nor our beliefs nor our feelings nor our attachments nor our defenses nor our possessions, but that inner searchlight we brighten or dim by choice.

Handling Thoughts and Emotions

 Handling Thoughts and Emotions
Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha
  mind and the mind-handling
 here is a method which is instantly effective.
 
A thought becomes bad when the emotional notes it brings about are bad. A thought may
arise in the mind and as soon as it arises, some emotions are triggered. These emotions
instantly engulf your system. Which part of your system gets engulfed, is a matter of further
detail. Your eyes, lips, legs or hands may be affected; or, your breathing and heart-beat may
change. It is an intricate biological process.
But these are only outer expressions. Our focus is on what happens at the mind level. The thought
produces a psychological offshoot. The moment a thought arises, its emotional effects generally
follow. When it happens, try to intercept the emergence of the thought and the resultant
emotional flux. See whether you can understand how these emotions are surging forth.
After all, a thought has arisen in the mind. Let it arise. As a wave in the sea, the mind expresses
itself in the form of a thought. And where does the thought arise? It is within the mind itself.
Consequently, a number of emotions may arise. Let them. Simply tell yourself that you don't like
to follow them. When you take this stand, effects of the thought automatically become weak.
The right way of dealing with these emotions needs understanding the process fully well. Each
thought is a mental expression. Whatever is in the mind, that alone is in the thought. Do not be
moved by emotional flux. Resolve that you will not allow yourself to be swayed by it.
Instead of following the emotions, which are but the effects of the thought, you should go into the
content or the substance of the thought. When you do so, you are making the thoughts thinner,
lighter and feebler. Then you will not be carried away by the resultant emotions. With this idea if
you sit, and allow the mind to think, you will find an altogether different emphasis and outcome.
Let any thought come. Suppose a thought arises: "I would like to scold this person". There are
seven words. These seven words are written where? Are they not generated by the mind, in the
mind itself? As the mind writes on itself, the substance is not non-mind. It continues to remain as
the mind itself. Thoughts originate and disappear. See them as the mind alone – as mind
substance alone.
When, in this manner, you start looking into the content or substance of the thought-process, the
emotional results will simply be non-operative, nonfunctional. This is such a wonderful method.
At most, it may require a little patience.

This is jnaana saadhana. This belongs to a very high level of knowledge. I am not asking you not
to have bad thoughts. I only say: When the bad thoughts come, do not get ruffled and affected. If
you want to eliminate them, simply have a feeling that you should eliminate them. And don't
allow them to carry you through. The power to remain unaffected is also ingrained in the mind
process.
While the mind compels you to follow the thought-process, the mind also has the potential and
the power to recede. It can empower you not to follow the thought-process.
Constricting, harmful and negative thoughts have to be eliminated and in their place expansive,
elevating and evolutional thoughts are to be encouraged. It is actually a process whereby you
abide within the mind and remain focused there. If you go on doing this for a few hours – a
hundred or two hundred hours – you will find the quality of the mind changes.
Do it and see. Instead of being a stockpile of bad thoughts, the mind will become a treasure-house
of good and noble ideas. And you will reach a stage where the mind will start stimulating you
with expansive and elevational thoughts.
Be assured that this possibility is within your reach. The level from which each individual
saadhaka starts may be different. Depending upon how dense your bad thoughts are, the length
and intensity of your saadhana may differ.
But certainly it is possible to deal with the mind. Observe the mind, observe the
thoughts, and make the mind lighter, feebler and thinner. And there will come a time
when the thought process becomes extremely thin. It will come to an almost stop.
Finally, it will become completely still.