Image by Gerd Altmann

The qualities of an empath can change over time as one grows through personal experience, gaining knowledge and honing skills. Some of the qualities below may be present in your life now or have been in the past. Some may show up in the future.

If you recognize yourself in the following descriptions, you may choose to learn more about why you take on energy by observing if there is a pattern to your belief systems and actions to better understand your way of empathing.

• • Inner knowing: knowing, feeling, and sensing things others do not.

• • Feeling overwhelmed or emotionally drained in public places or certain situations without knowing why.

• • Nerves often frayed or affected by noise, smells, or excessive talk.

• • Picking up others’ physical symptoms or feeling others’ emotions, at times without awareness, taking them on as one’s own.

  ---

  

  ---

• • Fear of becoming engulfed by intimate relationships.

• • Discord creates unpleasant feelings.

• • Endeavors to settle conflict or confrontation as quickly as possible, preferring to avoid it all together.

• • Watching violence, cruelty or tragedy on TV or online feels unbearable.

• • Feeling weighed down and anxious by clutter.

• • May carry extra weight without necessarily overeating.

• • Often overscheduled and commonly tired and exhausted.

• • Good listener and others often share their troubles and problems.

• • Strives for the truth, always looking for the answers and knowledge.

• • Likes adventure, freedom and travel.

• • Need for solitude to recharge.

• • Creative and loves to daydream, finding routine, rules or control, imprisoning.

• • Lover of nature and animals.

• • Drawn to healing, holistic therapies and all things metaphysical.

General Empaths

General empaths may identify with a few qualities of empathing, such as feeling overwhelmed by public spaces, being a good listener, or finding joy in eliminating clutter in their house, but their experience of empathing doesn’t often affect their day-to-day life. They are generally oblivious to the idea that there is other energy they are connected to or involved with.

Some may find themselves occasionally taking on the stress of a bad interaction with a stranger or feeling a certain sensitivity in certain spaces and places. Others may feel the overwhelm of collective anxiety at times of great stress in our world, but they typically don’t hold on to this energy for long or they have developed healthy habits (knowingly or unknowingly) that allow them to easily pass through or release energy after an exchange.

General empaths may have a natural way they process the energy of others and maintain their own field, or they may be severely blocked from their feeling centers and have shut down most empath abilities. Nevertheless, general empaths become more sensitive during times when they let their energetic guard down, so to speak, or their energetic fields become more heightened. Especially during times of trauma—such as breaking up with a partner, caretaking for a dying family member, or losing a job—general empaths can find themselves moving into the realm of sensitive empaths.

Sensitive Empaths

A sensitive empath is someone who has many empathic traits or they may have a few that are extremely heightened. Sensitive empaths often find they have a difficult time repelling environmental or external energy and therefore have to be much more aware of how to self-assess what they can and cannot handle in terms of energy and vibrational frequency overload. Being in crowds or large groups can be challenging as other people’s thoughts, feelings and emotions can mistakenly or automatically be absorbed or held as what is known as an attachment.

A sensitive empath could also find they have a hard time letting go of the emotions experienced by family and loved ones. For example, if their partner is stressed after a long day at work, a sensitive empath may find that they themselves become stressed as well. Not only do they take on this stress from their partner, but they often will find they continue to carry that stress long after their partner has let go of that energy themselves. This style of empath often will be triggered by belief systems of their own or others and this will compound the amount of unhealthy emotion or feelings within their system either mentally, emotionally and even physically.

When I first meet a sensitive empath, I find they are generally unaware of their sensitivities on a conscious level and have limited knowledge of their energy field. There is no judgement about this. It’s not often I meet someone who was taught about their energy field as a young child, so it is perfectly normal for a sensitive empath to have or experience:

• • A lack of awareness about personal boundaries and the energy field that surrounds the human body.

• • Little knowledge about using and strengthening the energy field.

• • Trouble being or staying grounded.

• • Feeling constantly overextended and overscheduled in most areas of life.

• • Fatigue or a physically weak or ill body.

• • Areas of weakness or vulnerability in their energy field when interacting with others, allowing for rips and tears in auric fields, which creates energy transference.

Not only can sensitive empaths take on the energies of others, but they can also easily have their energy drained. They find themselves over-committing to activities and relationships to the point of not having any energy left for themselves. Typically, they move through their day on autopilot with routines that are all about just getting things done. They wake up, run off to work in a rush just in time to give energy all day to others, only to come home exhausted, find a bit of family or me time just before crawling to bed in order to wake up and do it all over again. They run to appointments for themselves and others, do chores, pay bills and juggle finances, drop kids at practice and walk pets.

Humans overschedule everything and everyone. This constant drain makes them particularly easy marks for emotional or energy vampires, which are people who manipulate the empath through their own energy field and deliberately drain energy through dominance and control. And at the very same time, the sensitive empath may find themselves the one who is the energy vampire, continually sucking fuel from others just in order to survive whether they know it or not.

Sensitive empaths also can develop heightened sensory abilities that are not limited to emotions and physical pain. For example, sensitive empaths may have a more developed sense of smell, where they become overwhelmed or experience sensory overload through a reaction to things like essential oils or perfumes or a range of aromas including chemicals and molds. I personally have found it difficult at times to walk through the cleaning supplies aisle at large stores due to the dizzying combination of fluorescent lights and chemical smells. I also am extremely careful in antique stores due to the mold-filled aroma coupled with old energy attached to the artifacts.

Each empath is unique as one may feel relaxed and emotionally supported by aromas, fragrances and surroundings while the other feels assaulted by the experiential smells. It is important for the sensitive empath to become aware of what sort of places are toxic for their fields, and this only comes with being present throughout our day, making clear choices that benefit us versus powering through like the proverbial Energizer Bunny automatically placing one foot in front of the other until our batteries finally wear out.

Empaths can experience sensory overload through any of their five senses—sight, sound, smell, touch, taste—through different developmental levels in their sensitivity. Typically, these types of empaths are very open and psychic as a child and have most likely shut down their sixth sense skills, leaving the other five in overdrive. When empaths begin to experience sensitivities beyond the five senses, they move into the level of psychic empathing.

Psychic Empaths

Psychic empaths are gifted with functioning levels of energy receivers and transmitters that not only connect to others but feel beyond what others can. Through their psychic-empath gifts they connect to another’s energy and can receive information, emotion and feeling through the energy itself. Psychic empaths can perceive physical sensitivities and intuit spiritual compulsions, as well as grasp motivations and intentions of other people through their natural skills of higher sensory perception or psychic knowing.

For psychic empaths, crowded spaces often hold a lot of negative energy build-up that can feel like a direct assault on the physical, emotional, and mental body leaving it feeling drained, depressed, or burdened with heavy energy or toxicity. When an empath is stressed, it is common for their psychic skill set to become even more heightened, all while their personal boundaries lessen, creating a situation where emotional sponging happens even more easily.

For many, this extra sensory gift can feel more like a curse as the empath’s life is unconsciously influenced by others’ feelings, emotions, passions, desires, wishes, thoughts, and moods as they are barraged by external energies from many different environments from this world and even beyond. This can cause empaths to override their own needs and maintain poor personal boundaries because they psychically sponge what is outside of them and, for this reason, many experience chronic fatigue, environmental sensitivities, or unexplained aches and pains making it harder to accurately feel what is inside of them.

Psychic empaths are also susceptible to overwhelm in their spiritual field causing psychic spiritual misery, disconnection and mystical depression as many are approached by spiritual beings from the other side looking for assistance or communication, and if the person is not aware or educated in this realm, this can feel extremely uncomfortable and sometimes scary.

While the extra sensory gifts can be challenging to navigate without awareness or practice to harness those skills, the psychic empath can find that by building their knowledge and developing personal practices, they can live in a more balanced state—being able to tap in and use their psychic gifts while protecting their boundaries and operating from a state of empathy versus empathing.

Human Birthright

Most of us do not grow up in family structures that embrace the idea of being psychic. We think this is reserved for a select few, for “those people’’ and yet this is a birthright of being a human. The skill set of heightened awareness is something most of us shut off in our inner navigation systems quite early in life unless we have a support system surrounding us early in childhood.

We are all designed to be psychic. We all have skills that can indeed be activated, re-activated, heightened or shut off. Even when shut off, the amazingly gifted human vehicle we embody continues to have experiences that interpenetrate the body and energy fields and this is the exact reason I encourage my clients to get in touch with the feel-centers to ensure the energy they encounter is to their benefit and not their detriment. 

Copyright ©2023. All Rights Reserved.
Adapted with permission of the publisher,
Findhorn Books, an imprint of Inner Traditions Intl..

Article Source:

Confident Empath: A Complete Guide to Multidimensional Empathing and Energetic Protection
by Suzanne Worthley

There is no doubt we are living in a time of significant global upheaval and change. Yet psychic empath Suzanne Worthley, a highly skilled professional intuitive energy practitioner, shares how as an empath you can still live an empowered life, energetically protect yourself and your loved ones, and contribute in a meaningful way to creating a more positive, life-affirming reality on every level of dimension.

You will learn how to identify and release different types of limiting beliefs, both learned and programmed into our beings. You will also discover how to prevent unwanted energy transference and learn the fascinating skill of empathing buildings, land and the natural world, and other dimensions. Interspersed throughout the guide are extraordinary and compelling true accounts from Suzanne’s professional work that illustrate the concepts taught.

Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as an Audiobook and as a Kindle edition.

About the Author

Suzanne Worthley has been an energy healing practitioner, intuitive, and psychic empath for more than two decades. She teaches about consciousness studies and energy work and offers spiritual tours in Peru and Sedona, Arizona. The author of An Energy Healer’s Book of Dying, she has played a vital role in partnership with families and hospice teams, helping the dying have a peaceful transition and helping families and caregivers understand what is happening energetically during the death process. 

Visit the Author's Website at https://www.sworthley.com/

More Books by the author.