Now let me explain a bit by what I mean by empath because I do mean this to some level in an extreme extent.

Now empathy is described as the recognize and on some level feel the emotions of other.

However, I don't mean just that. I mean to where you honest to god on some level function off the emotions of others. That their emotions can very easily become yours, so that it becomes almost impossible to distinguish between what you are actually feeling and what you're feeling from the people around you.

Sometimes, before I understood this a bit more and before I had more control, I would avoid contact with people because I would loose whatever I was feeling to the emotions of those around me.

Even today, it makes functioning around people difficult sometimes because if people are angry, I will become angry. If people are crying, I will want to cry with them. If people are happy, I will be happy with them. It is often very hard for me to tell when what I'm feeling is my own emotion (especially with people I'm close with because I feel their emotions far stronger than people I don't know or with acquaintances). I can't tell you how many times I've cried just because my mom was cry or my best friends (even on days when I've had a really good day). Their emotions trumped mine.

So my question for my fellow Menewshans is do ya'll ever feel this way too? Not just that idea of sympathy and not just basic empathy (because all humans have that to some extent) but this feeling when you know the emotions you are naturally feeling for yourself have been trumped by the emotions around you?

I've only ever met a couple of other really strong empaths and I don't get to talk to them all the time about it. So I'm really just extremely curious.

By your definition I'm not very empathetic even though I am empathetic. xD
I know their feelings and can understand them along with their reasoning and so on but I don't personally feel what they feel.

I'm empathetic, not an empath. xP I can put myself in someone else's shoes easily, and feel what they feel, but I don't automatically do so by proximity.

One of my absolute favorite book characters, Bowman from the Wind on Fire trilogy, is an empath, though. :yes:

I'm a bit of an empath. Though usually the only emotion I feel from others is sadness. I don't connect well to their happiness or anger.

I can feel other people's emotions easily. It's an energy they give off and I can just tell what they're feeling even if they're trying to hide it. I hate it but at the same time it's interesting to me. It's not easy for me to block out other people's emotions and focus on my own sometimes. I can also normally pin point why the person is sad or stressed if they're upset or stressed. I have gotten advice from my psychic on how to block that kind of thing and it seems to help to some extent. It's not a good thing to allow yourself to be taken over by other people's emotions. It just causes more stress.

What I do feel from others tends to automatically be consumed by my own infinite well of rage.

I can do something similar, but I'm not sure that it would be classified as empathy.

It's a bit difficult to explain. I can basically "sense" the emotions of other people. It's not just intuition or merely being good at reading body language or analyzing people (although that's pretty easy for me as well); I can actually physically sense what I sometimes call "energy waves" coming off of people when they're feeling a particularly strong emotion, especially if they're trying to hide it. I really only notice it when it's a negative emotion, but it "feels" kind of like something extending out from the person's "aura" (for lack of a better word) and touching mine.

The difference between me and everyone who calls themselves "empathic" is that I don't actually experience the other person's emotions myself. I sense them, but they don't really affect me emotionally at all (well, aside from warning me that the person next to me is in a really bad mood... xD).

I don't really know why I'm able to do it; it wasn't something that I ever sought to teach myself or anything, it kind of just started happening a few years ago. I do kind of wonder if I might've been an empath if I hadn't learned from a relatively young age to put my own emotions at a distance and block them off most of the time.

@Mystic: so yeah, you basically understand a lot of what I'm going through. I do have a pretty good control over it because. I spent years working on controlling my own emotions, so I can exert some level of control over it. But not all the times. Like, I had someone else's emotions overtake mine last night and it had been a long time since that had happened. So I'd forgotten a lot of what it feels like and didn't recognize it until later.

@The Half-Blood Princess: That may be part of it. I know I am an empath but I also do on some level do what you do. I am always keenly aware of the emotions of those around me. At least to some degree depending on if I'm focusing and if I am not actively trying to block my emotions and the emotions of others (which is something I do 95% of the time so that I can function a bit more like myself in social settings). So it is very possible you would be an empath if you didn't have that ability.

I struggle with this sometimes as well. Not always, but often. It's hard for me to have a separate energy from someone with a dominating emotion like anger or sadness, but I've gotten pretty good at boosting both of our moods at the same time. The problem is really that I have no choice but to put everything into making someone feel better, because if I don't, then I'll be really sad until I feel some kind of closure or get far far away.

That makes me feel pretty selfish, haha.

I'm like that a lot, but I've learned how to not let emotions affect me, so I don't feel much, and what I do feel has to be pretty strong to show when I'm in public. For the most part, though, I'm an empath with energy. I can't ever take energy, but it is sapped from me pretty easily. That's why I can't go to concerts, because by the end I can barely walk. @,@ And everyone around me is bouncing off the walls, and dancing, and wanting to go party...

Originally Posted by Anaxilea

I'm empathetic, not an empath. xP I can put myself in someone else's shoes easily, and feel what they feel, but I don't automatically do so by proximity.

One of my absolute favorite book characters, Bowman from the Wind on Fire trilogy, is an empath, though. :yes:

THANK YOU SO MUCH
I have been looking for this book from my childhood.

Originally Posted by Pa-chinko

THANK YOU SO MUCH
I have been looking for this book from my childhood.

Pa-chinko: We need to get married and have some awesome literary babies. Like, now. I've never met anyone who's read them!!

Originally Posted by Anaxilea

Pa-chinko: We need to get married and have some awesome literary babies. Like, now. I've never met anyone who's read them!!

But I'm already married D:

Really? They are such amazing books with multidimensional characters. oO
THE GUY WROTE THE GLADIATOR MOVIE ON TOP OF THAT!
I'm kind of shocked by this news.

That's exactly how I am...except it's getting more and more intense as I get older. I very quickly start to feel what the people around me start to feel. If they're angry I become angry. If they're sad, I become sad. If they're happy, I become happy. It's really quite annoying. I wish I could control it better. Someone once told me I act bi-polar...because I so quickly shift emotions...but it's because the people around me have different emotions that I start to latch onto...not because of something like being bi-polar. D: ARG...I like being empathetic...but not to this extent.

I'm more like empathetic. I can figure out people's emotions and feelings about situations very easily (sort of at times like the "sense" mentioned before), but I'm a lot better at keeping calm no matter how the other person is feeling and putting myself in their shoes. I can sort of feel things, but only to the point of knowing how they feel. Not exactly feeling it myself. It's a hard to explain, but veeeeerry good thing to have, believe me.

@Maria-Minamino I'm very glad mine has managed to get better as I've gotten older. But at some level I think it really is I've just gotten better at adapting to it/ignoring it. So that it becomes a bit more like being empathetic.

But in middle shcool and high school, I was so volatile sometimes because I was just picking up everything around me and basically broadcasting it all at once. It ended up eventually just making me seem very angry.

I just realized, I forgot to ask a question that bugs me from time to time to the empaths. Do any of you believe in ESP, or that such an ability comes as a result of some sort of psychic connection with the people around you?

I'm only curious, as someone wanting to be a psychologist such things have always left me wondering. XD

@Wings - Wow that is volatile. I usually just pick up one and then switch to someone else. I try to block it out for the most part. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't XD I just avoid large crowds of people. I was never one to go to parties, etc.

When I was in highschool I had one friend who was very depressed all the time and I had another friend who was always angry. Eventually I cut them out of my life because it got so bad that I got severe depression to the point where I was having thoughts of suicide. I told the one who was always angry (and she was usually taking it out on me...she would get angry at stuff and then get mad at me and not talk to me for a week...then after a week or so she'd walk up to me and act all happy as if we were best friends and nothing had happened.) ....I told her that I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take her anger all the time.

Anyway - I surround myself with happy people these days so I am not depressed anymore. (And a note for correction - I can't blame my depression on them solely - I have severe anxiety which also helped fuel it as well). I'm generally a much happier person these days. Except when I'm at work and some customer is yelling at me I get really upset....or if someone else at work (my co-worker) is upset...then I get upset as well D:

Projectwolfie: I'm not really sure. My feelings on ESP vary based on day. Some days, I believe in it, some days I don't. I've had what I think are 'prophetic' dreams. So I guess I lend towards believing in it a bit more than not. But I also don't believe my empathy has anything to do with that. Because it's not a sensing of their emotions. It's a their emotions become mine type case more often than not.

@Maria: Yeah, it sucked to be that volatile. I really hated being around people sometimes because I had absolutely no control But I then learned how to have a fierce control and suppression of my own emotions and that basically carried over to the emotions I was carrying around me. It helps a lot. I actually think the reason I may be feeling my empath tendencies a bit stronger nowadays is I've been relaxing on the control I normally exercise on my emotions.

Out of curiosity, do any other empaths on here get really bad headaches from being around large crowds of people?

I've been wondering about this for a few days, actually. The reason I ask is, for the past few years I've been pretty much unable to go anywhere with a large crowd of people without getting a migraine and feeling exhausted and unable to think clearly. I didn't connect it with empathy for a while, but I'm wondering if it might possibly have something to do with it.

Lately I get a headache nearly every day at school before the day is over, and whenever I get them, I feel too exhausted to really socialize with anyone and just want to be left alone. The strange thing is, it usually goes away as soon as I get home. The same thing happens when I go to crowded malls, and I had a particularly severe one today on a field trip that involved several schools.

The strange thing is, like I mentioned before, I don't actually experience the emotions of the people around me myself; I just "sense" them sometimes, so I don't really understand why it would have such an effect on me, if it is the cause. I'm just wondering if it might have something to do with the negative emotions of others somehow affecting me physically?

I still kind of doubt that I am an empath, actually; what I do seems to be slightly different than what everyone else describes... I suppose I'm just rambling on now, but I've been trying to figure out what, exactly, is causing all of this for a while now, and it would really help to learn if anyone else has any similar experiences.

I don't particularly no. I've never been particularly susceptible to headaches so I'm not the best person to ask. Anyone else got an answer for her?

This describes what used to happen to me. I would constantly feel upset for some reason, due to the feelings of my friends, even though I would have no contact with them that day. That was very strange for me at the time. Otherwise, other people's moods really influenced how I felt.

Lately, I've managed to build up a barrier so now they don't affect me as much, because they was really making me ill when I 'let' them affect me. Now I just find that other people's negativity affects me the most.