Article: “The Cursed Gift”, by JediKaren

Many empathic people, who can do empathy, see empathy as a curse, rather than a gift. To give you all an idea as to why, think about the Greek Myth of King Midas. He was given the power to turn everything into gold by touching it. At first, that sounds like a great way to live in wealth beyond your wildest dreams, but look at the catch. There are some things he did not want not turn into gold like his daughter, food, drink, his bed, and so on. He was stuck with this power, cursed to never touch a thing again. Empaths have the same situation.

Empathy is the ability to literally feel the emotions of other people, as if the emotions were your own. An example of this would be walking next to your angry friends, when you are in a calm mood. You don’t see the angry expression on his face, nor do you say anything to him. You are completely clueless of his mood. You suddenly find your mood do a 180 on you, and you’re unexplained angry, just like the friend. This is called natural empathy, due to the fact you weren’t taught, nor tried how to feel other people’s emotions.

Most natural empaths see the world as an emotional, unwelcome city. Everyone radiates some level of emotion and unfortunate empaths feel all the levels. They radiate the emotion like a strong perfume floating through the air, coming to your psionic nose. The only “cure” for empaths is to learn about empathy, to learn how and why it works. Empaths can learn to shield, how to avoid overloads, and how to live with empathy.

The first thing that naturals and non natural empaths should know is empathy can be learned and can be controlled. Not everyone will read this article and know they are a natural. Some psions will find out when they first try empathy. Empathy is one of simpler psi abilities to learn, though remember no ability is very easy to learn. All abilities require constant, consistent, hard practice. The second thing to learn about empathy is learn all you can about emotions and how they work.

Emotions

Human emotions are the most complex emotions to understand, because our brain is the most developed on this planet. Human emotions are also complex because there are so many levels of each emotion. To make it worse, people tend to feel several different emotions at once like they are scared, angry, and prideful at the same time. There is also the division of male and female emotions. Guys react and feel differently in a situation then woman.

There is such a thing as primitive, instinctual, animal like emotions that need to be understood and to be remembered. In dangerous or extreme situations, people unconsciously fall back on instinct emotions which are fear or anger. This is a trait that hangs around from the early days of man kind. You see these emotions, actions, and emotional response in all animals, which brings us to the emotions of animals. Most animals have very basic, simple emotions that are ease to understand and block out. Many animal feelings can be rather comforting to people, and especially to empaths.

Another fact, which can make human emotions hard to understand, is the cause of the emotion and the response of certain emotions. An example of the response to an emotion can be found everywhere. An angry person throws a punch to a calm guy. The calm guy responds by being surprised, scared, or angry. A mother finds her child skipping school and gets angry and worried. The kid then gets angry at the mother. The mother responds to the emotion by feeling shock and angrier. To an empath, this is more than obvious because empaths can feel all of the emotions and responses of both people.

Sending

Sending, or broadcasting, an emotion can be a lot harder than receiving the emotion. Whether you are online or in real life, the process for sending is about the same. The first step is the open yourself up to psi. This will require you to relax and get rid of any preexisting emotions. The second step is look at the person or screen name you are sending the emotion to. Allow your self to become familiar with the person?s presence and feel the person with psi.

Now, stop linking with the person and pick an emotion. Let’s say you picked anger and the level is fairly annoyed. Think about an actor when starting to feel this emotion. An actor can gather enough of the emotion to act off, but not truly and deeply feel the emotion. You will need to do this. So you are not truly angry, but you are going to angry enough to be able to feel like it to an empath. You will come up with a reason to feel the emotion and yet not let the emotion overwhelm you. Once you have felt the emotion, refocus on the person again. Establish the link again and send the emotion to the person. For a visual example, imagine the emotion like air molecule that you can control over. Send the air molecule to the person (visualize them if online) If you are sending to a group of people, imagine them all sitting near you and sending the emotion to the group. Now, wait for a few seconds to a minute for the receiver to tell you what they felt. If they didn?t feel anything, try sending the emotion stronger and more intense. Encourage the receiver to name any emotion they vaguely feel and to look closer at their emotions.

The last step is to relax, let go of the anger, and ground any excess energy brought on by the emotion and link. This will clean you slate, keep an overload from happening, and prepared you to send or receive.

Receiving

I like to divide receiving into two different types. They are pure receiving and non pure receiving. Pure receiving is when the psion only uses their ability to pick up the emotion being sent or being radiated. Non pure receiving is when there is something else helping, or tipping you off as to what the emotion is. A tip would be the voice of the person, the tone of their chat, the look on their face, their screen name, the words they chose, their body language, and so on. There is nothing wrong with using one or the other type of receiving. For newbies who want to learn how to receive emotions, it is best to use the pure receiving first. Learning to read body language and other signs is easier and will become more apparently with good basic empathy.

In Person

Some people will find receiving emotions from people in real life that are around you, a bit easier. This is because you can see the person, see their body language, hear their voice, their clothing, what is going around them, and study their actions. This is the time to use non pure receiving. It is harder to hide yourself looking at the person, trying to pick up their feelings, but luckily there are lots of excuses you can make up. Also, remember these people are not purposely broadcasting their emotions, so you will have look deeper and harder than online. You may risk the problem of being overloaded by the all other emotions.

Pick a person you want to know their emotions. It is better to pick someone you don’t know or know very well. It is better because that way you can try to predict what and why they are feeling that way. Look at them and notice what you first pick up from them. If you do not get anything or not very clearly, close your eyes and envision the person. Gather psi around you and send it to the person to create a link. Make the link one way so you can only pick up their emotions. Make sure you are not picking up anyone else’s emotions and that you have grounded your own emotions away.

Online

Online receiving, in my experience is always easier and much more to practice without being noticed, but I am not everyone. For those who are purposely sending and receiving, online can be harder due to the doubt factor. It is very hard to tell if you are feeling the emotion of a person you can not see, hear, or know, or is it your own feelings. Because of that factor, it is exceedingly important to get rid of all your emotions before starting this exercise for pure receiving.

Online receiving is a lot like listening for a bell you don’t know what it is going to sound like, how loud it will be, or when you will hear it. Open yourself to the energy around and in you. This will open your mind so you can be receptive to the emotions being sent. So after you have calmed and cleared your mind, you need to be on the look out for any emotion that you may suddenly feel. Most feelings, no matter how strongly sent are going to feel distance and varying vague depending on the strength of the emotion and the skill of the sender. It is always best to go on your first feeling, your gut feeling. If you get two emotions or very unclear mixed up emotion, try naming all the emotions and see which one seems the closet.

Some Examples of Empathy:

Many people wonder how you can use empathy in your daily life. There are plenty of reasons and situations to use empathy. Haven’t you ever heard of that much said phrase “You don’t know how I feel” or something to that effect. With empathy, you can answer that question with a hundred percent yes. You can use empathy to figure out why your friend is moody and know how to help them. You can help save people or animals if you don’t know where they hurt. Here is a real life example of this.

Here’s the first entry in my diary of empathy:

The third thing that happened today was I felt this kid’s emotions in Spanish class. What happen was I went to the class and because we had a sub for our teacher we got to sit where we want. So I sat next this senior named Jason. He never talks and I think English is his second language. For some reason Jason was really anxious. It felt like he badly wanted to get out the class to do something. What made it worse was he didn’t do anything in class and kept taping his pencil on the desk. It was driving me nuts. I felt really anxious too, for no other reason than I was sensing his emotions. I couldn’t turn it off. I stopped working one time, put my head on the desk and tried to relax. It wouldn’t happen. I even nearly asked him to calm down, but I stopped myself in time. I can’t let people know who or what I am. It’s hard enough with out people being freaked out about what you can do. Twelfth graders get out five minutes early from class. He nearly ran for the door. After five minutes I noticed that I had calm down. It was so weird. I’m starting to notice a pattern. When I near someone whose emotions are strong I end up feeling the same thing. Here are a few examples.

“Nik (my ex boyfriend) this year has been depressed several times. When I’m around him sometimes I can feel it. A girl also in my Spanish class was really scared and or nervous about tryouts for a soccer team. I ended up feeling the same thing. It felt like when I have to give a report in front of the class. I hate having to get in front of a whole bunch of people and have to talk. I can’t stand how they all look at you! I get so nervous I want to die. So, that’s all for now. It’s reinsuring to know these powers are still here and all. I know they won’t do away, but I get uneasy when nothing happens for awhile.”

Here is another personal experience:

“My friend, Amy, and I were going to drop off some books when we came across this hurt bird. We thought the bird’s wing was hurt, but the truth is we never found out what was wrong with it except the bird wasn’t flying right. We tried to get it into a tree, but it kept fall/flying to the ground. So I got to hold it while Amy went to get a bucket to keep it in. I could sense its fear and instinct was screaming at it to get out of my hands right now. I swamped the bird’s brain with pure calm. I peeked at the bird and saw it was nearly asleep if not totally. Once it was in the bucket the bird woke up again and was trying to get out with no success. About an hour later we came back to find the bird had died. Sad, but at lease I didn’t let it be in pain in my hands. I later tried this on my cat and the cat nearly fell asleep.”

The Traits of an Empath

While not all empaths are the same, there does seem to be some common signs you can find. Empaths can be rash, moody, and artsy. They have trouble with logic, problem solving and math. They succeed in sports and the arts. They may take anything worse than most people, like death or losing their job. Empaths can be easily excited. They are generally quiet and withdrawn a lot due to the overload factor. They attract a lot of talkers because they can listen. They also attract a lot of people seeking advice because empaths, by nature, have a good understand of emotions of different people and how to help people with their emotions.

Warning About Empathy

Crowds like school dances or concerts, are somewhat dangerous for practicing empathy. There are so many people with so many emotions, which will build up on each other. This causes empaths to become overloaded with emotions. If you may happen to feel overloaded by the crowd and you can’t leave the crowd, you should create a shield, ground the emotions, and to try to put distance between you and the crowd. If you can’t think of a good way to get out, try using the excuse for the bathroom. I have found that even five minutes of peace and being alone will do wonders to curing my overload. I can ground away the unwanted emotions, and then come back to the crowd, ready to face the emotions.

If you want to help an empath who is getting overload, you can do this. Get them out of the house. Get them away from the city, the noise, and energy. Take them into a park, a forest, the beach. Nature is quiet. Animals have simple emotions and thoughts. Plants produce a feeling of calm and a healing silence. Stay apart from the empath. Put a yard (meter) of distance between you two. This will create a sense of privacy. Lie down on the grass or sit under a tree. Peace can make a person quiet, tired, and sleepy. Let them take a nap. This is healing for them. If the person liked this peace and rest, make sure to do it again during another stressful time.

Another form of healing for empaths is to let them talk about their emotions. This may come off as being boring to you, but it is highly important for a natural empath. Empaths are always attracting people that want to talk about their emotions, but no one wants to hear an empath’s feelings and thoughts. So, endure one hour of listening to the empath and you will see a great change in them as they are lift from their barren. You, being a non natural, may not truly understand empathy, but at least you now have an idea of why this ability can be seen as a gift or curse.

Written By: JediKaren (2009)
© 2012 Psionics Institute