Since the last year, several conversations regarding mental health issues have become very prominent. Maximum time, while professional counseling helps, individuals look forward to having hearty conversations with people who are close to them, such as friends, family, and partners. However, when they only receive sympathy on behalf of all the pain they are enduring, they slowly shut themselves down and refrain from talking.
But before dwelling more on the matter, lets first know about sympathy and empathy-
What is sympathy?
Sympathy means understanding the emotions of individuals. It mainly arises from answering the distress need for someone and understanding the reactions. However, many times the sympathetic reaction can be pretentious, and the weirdest part is that the speaker who is
receiving the emotion from the listener understands whether the sender is truly sympathetic or is just pretending. This could be devastating for the receiver.
What is empathy?
In simple terms, empathy is the act of wearing someone’s shoe to understand the true colors of their emotions. Empathy enables the sender and the receiver to feel the agony of pain or distress and the feeling is so intense that it becomes nearly impossible to fake it. Hence, it becomes easier and comfortable for the speaker to find solace by telling their stories.
How to identify empaths?
While empathy is a wonderful personality, the sad part is that very few people in this world are actually empaths. For instance, according to Talkspace, only 1% to 2% of the global population are able to experience this intense sensitivity in their soul and have the true ability to absorb and feel the emotions of the speaker. Many times, if the speaker is saying something very emotional or talking about their dark days to an empath, the empath starts feeling all the intensity of the emotions delivered by the speaker and reciprocates with emotions such as anger and tears.
What are the disadvantages of being an empath?
Empathy can both be a boon and a curse. While it is wonderful to understand the emotions of close ones, sometimes it becomes TOO MUCH. Sometimes, the distressing emotions from everyone surrounding the empaths can lead to mental health issues such as depression. Many of us have that friend who says, “I am good at giving advice, but I am failing in my own life.” This is a clear signal that the person is crashing down. Sometimes, the distress signals never stop, driving the empath to near lunacy.
How to be an empath?
Being an empath is not an easy job, but you can start by accepting the fact that you lack empathy in yourself. These tips can help-
Understand people the way you want to be understood. If you are thinking of treating someone like trash, wait and think for two minutes, whether you want to be treated the same way you are treating them.
Get rid of your ego. Money, gender, looks, are just temporary solutions to life’s problems. Because in the end, you will only crave support and nothing else.
Listen sincerely if someone is trying to share something. It's not easy to share deep secrets and intense emotions, support them and try to understand how they felt when they went through that situation.
Watch videos of how one single act of empathy can change someone else’s life.
How do stop being an empath?
No one can stop the personality that is the base of their very existence. However, there are some ways to deal with overloading emotions received from others-
Try to distance with people, who are only about their feelings and not yours.
Take a break from watching movies that have death or war scenes or very sad incidents.
Love yourself first, because, in the end, you should matter to yourself the most.
Maintain a journal, because when humans stop listening, pages open their ears.
Practice feel-good guided meditations, because when a voice that you can’t see assures you about yourself, being an empath, you start feeling like the voice is your own and this helps to relax.
In the end, I just want to say to people who lack empathy is that it is not necessary that you
have to be as intense as people who are born with empathy but at least try to understand the speakers’ emotions when they come to talk to you. There is always a reason behind why they chose you, so try to search that out. The world is burning currently, and empathy is what it needs to cool down. And to my fellow empaths, I want to say that empathy is a very powerful tool but remember if you don’t handle a sharp knife with care, it will cut and wound you also.
Lots of love to the people in this world.
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