Judith Orloff - The Empaths Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People

For Corey Folsom

CONTENTS

Our innate capacity for empathy is the source of the most precious of all human qualities.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Chapter 1

ARE YOU AN EMPATH?

Introduction to Empathy

I m a physician with fourteen years of conventional medical training at USC and UCLA. I am also an empath. In my medical practice of over two decades, I specialize in treating highly sensitive people like myself. Though there is a spectrum of sensitivity that exists in human beings, empaths are emotional sponges who absorb both the stress and joy of the world. We feel everything, often to an extreme, and have little guard up between others and ourselves. As a result, we are often overwhelmed by excessive stimulation and are prone to exhaustion and sensory overload.

Im so passionate about this topic both professionally and personally because Ive had to develop specific strategies to manage the challenges of being an empath myself. These allow me to protect my sensitivities so I can maximize their benefitsand there are so many! I want to share with you how to become a balanced, empowered, and happy empath. To thrive, you must learn ways to avoid taking on the energy, symptoms, and stress of others. I also want to educate your loved ones and peersfamily, coworkers, bosses, parents, and romantic partnerson how best to support and communicate with you. In this book, I will show you how to accomplish these goals.

I offer The Empaths Survival Guide as a resource for kindred sensitive souls to find understanding and acceptance in a world that is often coarse, heartless, and disdainful of sensitivity. In it, I challenge the status quo and create a new normal for how to view sensitivity, wherever you are on the spectrum. There is nothing wrong with being sensitive. In fact, you are about to discover whats most right about yourself. Through this book, its companion audio program, Essential Tools for Empaths, and my workshops for empaths, I want to create a community of support so that you can find your tribe, be authentic, and shine. I want to support a movement of people who honor their sensitivities. Welcome to a circle of love! My message to you is one of hope and acceptance. I encourage you to embrace your gifts and manifest your full power on the empath journey.

WHAT IS AN EMPATH?

Empaths have an extremely reactive neurological system. We dont have the same filters that other people do to block out stimulation. As a consequence, we absorb into our own bodies both the positive and stressful energies around us. We are so sensitive that its like holding something in a hand that has fifty fingers instead of five. We are truly super responders.

Research shows that high sensitivity affects approximately 20 percent of the population, though the degree of ones sensitivity can vary.It lets me sense the secrets of the universe and know passion beyond my wildest dreams.

However, my empathic abilities havent always felt this incredible to me.

GROWING UP AS AN EMPATH

Like many empathic children, I never fit in. In fact, I felt like an alien on earth waiting to be transported to my real home in the stars. I remember sitting in my front yard looking up at the universe and hoping that a spaceship would take me home. I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time by myself. I had no one to relate to who could understand my sensitivities. No one seemed to be like me. My parents, who were both physiciansI come from a family of twenty-five physicianssaid, Sweetheart, toughen up and get a thicker skin, which I didnt want or even know how to do. I couldnt go to crowded malls or parties. Id walk in feeling fine and walk out exhausted, dizzy, anxious, or suffering from some ache or pain I didnt have before.

What I didnt know back then was that everyone has a subtle energy field surrounding their body, a subtle radiant light that penetrates and extends beyond it a distance of inches or even feet. These fields communicate information such as emotions and physical well-being or distress. When we are in crowded places, the energy fields of others overlap with ours. I picked up all of these intense sensations, but I had absolutely no idea what they were or how to interpret them. I just felt anxious and tired in crowds. And most of all, I wanted to escape.

As a teenager in Los Angeles, I got heavily involved with drugs to block out my sensitivities. (Im not recommending this to you!) Then, with my sensitivities numbed, I could cope. I was able to attend parties and hang out at shopping malls, just like my friends, and would feel fine. What a relief that was! In my memoir, Second Sight, I wrote about how I turned to drugs to shut off my intuition and empathic abilities. But after a near-tragic car accident, during which I went over a 1,500-foot cliff in Topanga Canyon at three in the morning in an Austin Mini Cooper, my parents were scared to death and sent me to a psychiatrist.

Naturally, I fought my psychiatrist the whole way. But, in fact, this angel in human form was the first person to help me realize that to become whole I had to embrace my sensitivities, not run from them. This was the start of my healing and self-acceptance as an empath. Since I was so frightened by my childhood empathic and intuitive experiences, part of my evolution as a physician and a woman has been to learn to embrace these abilities. They are precious and deserve to be nurtured and supported. Thats why I specialize in helping empaths in my psychiatric practice and workshops.

IF YOU FEEL AS IF YOU DONT FIT INTO THIS WORLD, ITS BECAUSE YOURE HERE TO CREATE A BETTER ONE.

Author Unknown

Yes, we empaths can flourish! Empathy is the medicine the world needs.

THE EMPATH EXPERIENCE

Now lets explore in more detail the empath experience. See if you relate personally or have a loved one or colleague who qualifies as an empath.

First, what is the difference between ordinary empathy and being an empath? Ordinary empathy means our heart goes out to another person when they are going through a difficult period. It also means that we can be happy for others during their times of joy. As an empath, however, we actually sense other peoples emotions, energy, and physical symptoms in our bodies, without the usual filters that most people have. We can experience other peoples sorrow and also their joy. We are supersensitive to their tone of voice and body movements. We can hear what they dont say in words but communicate nonverbally and through silence. Empaths feel things first, then think, which is the opposite of how most people function in our overintellectualized society. There is no membrane that separates us from the world. This makes us very different from other people who have had their defenses up almost from the time they were born.

Empaths share some or all of the traits of what psychologist Elaine Aron calls Highly Sensitive People, or HSPs. These traits include a low threshold for stimulation, the need for alone time, sensitivity to light, sound, and smell, plus an aversion to large groups. In addition, it takes highly sensitive people longer to wind down after a busy day because their systems ability to transition from high stimulation to quiet and calm is slower. Empaths also share a highly sensitive persons love of nature and quiet environments.

Empaths, however, take the experience of the highly sensitive person further. We can sense subtle energy, which is called shakti or prana in Eastern healing traditions, and we absorb this energy into our own bodies. Highly sensitive people dont typically do that. This capacity allows us to experience the energies around us in extremely deep ways. Since everything is made of subtle energy, including emotions and physical sensations, we energetically internalize the feelings, pain, and various physical sensations of others. We often have trouble distinguishing someone elses discomfort from our own. Also, some empaths have profound spiritual and intuitive experiences, which arent usually associated with highly sensitive people. Some empaths are even able to communicate with animals, nature, and their inner guides. But being a highly sensitive person and an empath are not mutually exclusive: you can be both at the same time.