Brazil learns how to stop exhaustion from others needs

An empath is a person highly attuned to the feelings and emotions of those around them. Empaths feel what another person is feeling at a deep emotional level, according to a definition by Leah Campbell.

When the author learned the word “empath” about ten years ago, it felt like a relief. She thought to herself, yes, that is me. Finally, an explanation for why people exhausted her so much. A reason why she had the ability to read people in an instant and was always in the middle of helping, listening, or supporting other people’s crises.

But now she no longer believes that definition. She is no longer an empath.

She asked herself: Have I been cured? Or was I not an empath in the first place?

For her, she found a different understanding that unlocked the ability to not feel stuck in the empath-prison she found herself in. She discovered she could change her responses to people’s emotions so that she no longer managed her life according to them.

When she discovered the concept of empathy, she saw many of the challenges she faced: attracting people who were struggling and in need of support; her inability to get out of the stresses and emotions of other people’s lives; her exhaustion from spending time with people.

She started following common advice for empaths, but that felt like another cage. She had to orient her life around avoiding “toxic” people and “emotional blood suckers.” But even if she covered herself in white light or avoided certain people, it did not prevent her from feeling overtaken by the emotions of her relatives, children, husband, or close friends. It felt like she was in permanent reaction mode, and it was disempowering.

A few years later she discovered a different word that changed her life: appeasing. Appeasing is a survival response that gets activated when emotions or situations are too much. Like fight, flight, and freeze responses, appeasing is a response to a sense of physical or emotional unsafety.

She discovered that she had learned at an early age that if she knew how to anticipate and support the feelings of those around her, she would feel safest. Her survival reaction was to be hypersensitive to their emotions and to help with them.

When people learn young that safety comes from suppressing their own feelings to assist others, they spend adult lives in that same pattern. They feel safest when their emotions are not attended to, but other people’s are. They draw belonging and validation from being emotionally available to others, from being the supporter, listener, helper, fixer.

The author said many times in her life she felt proud of how helpful she was. But it was not driven by genuine desire. It was driven by a need for safety, belonging, acceptance, and love.

Unraveling her appease response has been a challenging experience. It is woven into her being to be a person who shows up as delightful, easygoing, no-stress, no-drama. Someone who does not add to the emotional load of any group but helps take away problems of others.

Coming out of those responses has taken awareness. She has had to learn to attend to her emotions, building a sense of safeness in her nervous system and offering gentleness toward herself. She has had to recognize that other people’s emotions can feel scary, uncomfortable, and dangerous to her. It does not come naturally to share what she feels because of habitual survival response patterns laid down in childhood.

With awareness and the right tools, she has learned to walk toward authenticity and safety in being herself, surrounded by other people’s emotions but not overtaken by them. She also learned that the way she had learned to support people by fixing, smoothing things over, helping, and endlessly listening was not the kind of emotional support that helps enact change in them.

True emotional support only happens when people are not in survival reactions. It never comes at the emotional cost of another. Support should never risk energy, time, or feeling of safeness.

To the author, being an empath felt like a lifelong sentence. But she now knows it is a learned response that can be unlearned. Awareness is the first step. People can start by noticing what it feels like to be around certain people when they are emotional. What happens to the body? What emotions activate when hearing another person’s emotional activation?

If a person feels a sense of urgency, doom, or being trapped, or immediately wants to jump in and help, it is a sign that survival responses have turned on. The brain is sending signals to the body that there is a threat. The next step is to bring a feeling of safeness to the body.

One way to offer the nervous system a cue of safety is to do an orienting exercise. Start by gently looking around and scanning the whole room. Let the gaze drift slowly. Turn the neck gently. Take in all surroundings. Stop on any objects that catch interest as collections of colors and shapes. Look above, below, and behind. If there is a window, look outside to the horizon line. The horizon line is soothing for the nervous system. Knowing what is around, that there is no threat on the horizon, brings a sense of safety.

Do this for a minute or two, then see how the body feels. Allow ten seconds for any changes to be soaked up by the nervous system. This exercise can be used a few times a day. Stopping and scanning allows the nervous system to orient to the environment and signal safety.

The final tip is to create a pause. When people say: “Oh, can you look after my five kids and eleven animals for…” the pause can help people remember to attend to their own needs before responding. This pause gives time to check in with the body and decide if the request aligns with personal energy and boundaries.