A coworker asked me today if I was an empath and I had no idea what that was. I asked her to explain and it was basically “someone who knows what other people are going through.” It’s way off from what I assumed it meant (I thought she said “are you in N-PATH” and I assumed it was a certification program lol). But isn’t this just someone with empathy?
I think it originally meant something like a highly sensitive person in that, due to various trauma, the empath is sensitive to and overly identifies with other people's emotions, to the point that they feel what that person is feeling. The rub is that the "empath" only feels what they think the other person is feeling, which may be and often is disconnected from reality, and often feeling it more than the other person does. So they feel and outwardly show a lot of big emotions almost as a fight/flight/appease response in social settings. An example would be like someone having a breakdown because a coworker broke up with their girlfriend
But then people like Shane Dawson use it about them selves to mean "I feel sad sometimes" and it lost all meaning it had
For them those are major milestones which are a celebration of years of work. For you they are a weekend party with your family. It’s okay to not be overwhelmed with emotion when you weren’t involved in that day to day struggle.
probably some kind of neurodiverse because i'm similarly wired. maybe we have weird mirror neurons
Sounds to me like you are obviously capable of empathy, but you just don't give a damn about "rites of passage" in the imperial core
you just don't identify with your family as strongly as you feel socially expected to. that's a function of your relationship with them, not just of your personal psychology in isolation.
Ngl I feel the same way and empathize with animals being given love or elderly individuals learning a cool skill, I enjoy vibing to peeps enjoying life in small moments
Attachment disorder? Tbh, no one uses "empath" in my circles and I hang around a lot of goths, hippies, and needs. I just feel like there's a clinical term for this.
I honestly don't know enough about it. I asked my therapist if HSP/empath was bullshit. She said no, but it's basically different language to describe how trauma effects various aspects of personality and/or coping skills, like it'd describe a broad presentation that is typically associated with similar trauma but isn't specific enough like c-ptsd, bpd etc. So like my partner might present as an HSP, but they actually have OCPD which makes them highly sensitive to things like perceived criticism or routine changes.
The one person I know for sure that could be an "empath" is also codependent, enmeshed, and either anxious or disorganized attachment. So they may present as an empath, but it's because they fear abandonment and are trying desperately to connect. So yeah, there may be something there too with attachment
Finding ones one identity in another to the point where ones own identity is lost, also with an inability to not get emotionally involved with that person, see more here
I always used it in this sense back when I was a teenager, but now I think the term "Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria" is more appropriate, at least for myself.
From what I've gathered (against my will): a few people online needed a new thing to feel special with, this time by convincing themselves that they're especially gifted with empathy.
:edgeworth-shrug:
it's very gross to refer to children by talking about their parents genitals. Kid's weren't anymore concieved by their parents than adults either
which comes from the genitals. either is gross to talk about in the context of kids
yes I get the joke but the joke is gross and extremely inappropriate
Well, for one, being an empath qualifies you to work on the bridge of a Federation flagship.
:troi-grimacing: Captain, I sense... bad vibes coming from that alien vessel.
:picard-pointing: "Red alert!"
I did goto high school with a guy in a vampire coven.
I miss doing silly stereotypical goth shit. I didn't even like cloves but who could say no to black cigarettes that reeked of christmas?
To be fair we all thought we had magic powers as teenagers, these poor fuckers just do all of their embarrassing journaling online where everyone can see it
I have deep empathy for kids who are growing up online these days. . . wait a second!
My take on it is that capitalism has made it necessary to be a sociopath in order have any chance of feeling comfortable in our corporate hellscapes, making basic skills that benefit a social species in most systems, such as outwardly showing empathy, rare.
The only person who can say she is an empath is Counselor Troi, and even then she's not good at it
Just because telepathy is such a fucking trump card in the way it's depicted in Star Trek. Instant total access to a person's entire psyche without them knowing you're doing it? Super OP. I've seen the concept thrown out there of reading minds being like reading books: doesn't mean you'll be able to understand it. Or if you want to make it lame, at least liken it to hacking, in that people would have natural in-born defenses against it and trained telepaths can create much more elaborate ones. As a matter of fact, DS9 had something like this, using an illegal mind-reader device to get information out of a dying man's brain. Much cooler.
But Troi just straight-up sucks at being a counselor and reading emotions. She seemed perplexed by Barclay's actions in therapy, even though she should be able to read him like a book. She also didn't seem to take seriously enough the fact that Barclay was creating copies of his co-workers and superiors to take part in elaborate fantasies that re-contextualizes them as objects of ridicule or submissive enemies who will instantly admit defeat when he tells them off, not until her fantasy version showed up. The writers really did her character dirty. They just used her as a damsel in distress. They also took way too long to get her into a uniform like everyone else. And we have Captain Jellico (the greatest and noblest captain Starfleet has ever known) to thank for that. Marina Sirtis describes in interviews just how happy she was that Troi finally got to wear a uniform, just like all the important characters.
Also still mad that they didn't try harder to convince Denise Crosby to stay for season 2. Tasha Yar had so much room for growth, like all the other characters. Instead she boned the robot and got killed by a puddle. I really wish we could have seen her friendship with Data evolve, and take some of the brunt of the Worf Effect off Worf. Yar's Sister episodes, like Data's Brother episodes. Such a waste. :picard-annoyed:
Kind of like people who think they are "good at reading people"
Wait, this is a real thing? I thought we were all referencing Dune or something.
As someone who somewhat (I don't bring it up unless it's already being discussed) identifies as an empath:
Most people who use the term are fucking insane and are probably not any better at empathy than other people. As something non-falsifiable it's going to draw in a lot of people who will abuse the term for their own self-idealization.
That said - there are tons of people who feel emotional energy at an unsustainable "my cup spilleth over" level. So, if emotions are running high, they are deeply contagious for such people and they will either mirror them or retreat from the source. But, more usefully, they also identify subtle emotions more readily. If someone is playing down their sadness/rage, an empath will see it overtly nonetheless. They are really good at reading between the emotional lines as it were. They can be easily exhausted by the emotions of others but paradoxically they tend to always want to help and be there for people (because dispelling/resolving the emotional vector is the goal).
They can't read minds, but they are the first to read the room. Second-hand embarrassment will send them spiraling into orbit.
It's a blessing and a curse; super useful for communication when emotions are SUBTLE and thus, ignored by the non-empathetic. When emotions are running high empaths get incapacitated.
If I had to sum it up in one sentence, an actual empath is someone more attuned to other people than themselves (opposite of self-absorbed).
I just think it's a response to social trauma that makes us really overly aware of minor emotional shifts in someone's tone and body language.
It's probably not even healthy, as you cannot actually know what others are thinking but you still end up feeling like you do nonetheless. Like, I'll agree that reading between the emotional lines is a good descriptor of it, but I do not think that's necessarily a positive, especially if you end up focusing in on it and end up in weird shitty unintended emotional feedback loops between you and another person who might just be having an off day or slightly off moment lol
You're right that it does help you read the room really fast though, sort of a really in tune and always on vibe checker going off.
Yeah, I think we're largely in agreement. The people who act like it's a supernatural ability make it borderline impossible to talk reasonably about it, sadly.
Most people feel empathy. And there is no way of knowing whether your sense of empathy is weaker or stronger than another person’s sense of empathy. So empaths are just assuming that they feel more empathy than most other people even though there’s no way of knowing that. They have never been another person so they don’t have any way of knowing how much empathy the other person feels.
An empath is someone who actually feels other people's emotions. Meaning it's not real and is either a mental disorder(making them intensely feel what they think the other person is feeling) or someone trying to make someone else's feelings about them(I'm so hurt because they're hurt, I need to be the focus of this moment.) Some people do just have a lot of empathy and get called this and ugh. Watch big Joel's video about empathy, it's overrated and weirdly treated in our modern world compared to sympathy or compassion.
I think it's probably related to rejection sensitive dysphoria, wherein you get way way way way overly in tune with everyone's vibe and it fucks your shit all up.
As an empath, I feel you you in this situation and I resent you for making me go through that
