Are You an Empath? 8 Tell Tale Signs You are an Empath

 

Hello Moodlings, my name is Dr. Nicole Lunan, a ten-year energy healer and emotional intelligence specialist, as well as the CEO and Co-Founder of MoodMe, a new app that allows you to share over 400+ moods, emotions, and desires with your lover, thus making communication, simple fun, and super easy. 

 

MoodMe pulls from the concept of the Mood Ring, but instead of a ring telling you what mood you are in, you get to choose from 400 pre-written and researched moods, thus boosting your emotional intelligence and awareness and taking it one step closer to building a deeper a relationship with the person that you care about. With MoodMe, you will be able to know two essential factors: 1. How your partner is feeling 2. What your partner desires. The answer to these two questions will help eliminate silly arguments and stay connected with your lover.  Don’t leave your relationship in the dark. Bring light into your connection with MoodMe. 

 

Being an empath is a tricky and sensitive thing to navigate! Our intention with this class is to bring clarity, tips, and overall knowledge of what it means to be an empath and how to use it as a superpower!

 

Before we dive into the tell-tale signs of being an empath

 

Alright, I’m going to tell you two different takes on the same situation, and I want you to think about the differences and if you align with either of them: 

 

You’re speaking with a heartbroken friend, and suddenly you feel it. An overwhelming feeling of pain in your heart that wasn’t with you before speaking to your friend, but once you locked in and connected, you can instantly take on this particular emotion, almost as if it’s happening in your own life or body. You want to do whatever you can to help your friend, to help this pain go away. The emotional boundaries between you and your friend are weakened as you experience life through another person. And while it’s not possible to truly experience what another is going through. You see the pain, understand it, and connect other situations you have experienced before to it. But wait, why am I feeling this pain so intensely? You ask.  It didn’t directly happen to me, so why do I feel responsible for helping and possibly stopping it? After you leave your friend, the feeling of heartbreak doesn’t fade quickly. You think about it, mull it over in your mind. You begin to place yourself in your friends’ shoes as an attachment to helping this person overrides your logical sense of separating your life from theirs. You may feel drained and tired. As if your heart was too open, it sponged in what it could in its attempt to heal your friend. 

 

You’re speaking to a heartbroken friend and have prepared yourself for this. You put your empathy hat on and allow your friend to express their emotions, almost like you are creating a safe container for them told hold space for their pain. You listen, and you ask engaging questions to help further their exploration. It is tempting for you to internalize this pain and allow it to bring you into your own experiences; you stay very present. You allow your friend to feel seen and heard. You feel the physical pain of your friend radiating from their chest, so you decide to embrace this person with a warm embrace. You place yourself in their shoes, but you don’t go overboard and take their pain on. After you leave your friend, you close the container and let go of it, sending it off with love. Yes, you process what has been said but do not attach to it and internalize it. You understand that it is not your responsibility to save your friend from heartbreak. You know that you have done all you can; although heartbreak is brutal, there are valuable lessons for your friend, and you give space for that. However, the information gathered has furthered your view of humanity and the depths of emotion itself. 

 

Did either one of these stories resonate with you? If so, which of these stories resonated with you the most? 

 

To me, the differences between these stories are an empath who is very spongy and takes on the world's emotions and an empath who has unleashed their superpower and has honed in on their abilities to feel, understand, and yet still maintain healthy boundaries. 

 

Does any of the above stories sound familiar to you? Are you questioning whether you are an empath? Maybe you’ve overheard the term “empath,” which sparked your intuition and curiosity. You have been brought to this course for some rhyme or reason and divine timing because it is time to learn about your gift and natural abilities. Being an empath means you are biologically hard-wired to feel, possibly more than the average human. 

 

What is empathy?

 

Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person, animal, or fictional character. Side note - The fictional character thing has thrown me for a loop in the past because I often get immersed in the lives of movie characters; therefore, I have to be really specific about which movies and shows I watch. Does this happen to anyone else?

 

Anyways, developing empathy is vital for building relationships and behaving compassionately. It involves experiencing another person’s point of view, rather than just one’s own, and enables prosocial or helping behaviors that come from within rather than being forced. When we can see someone’s side of the story or experience, it is consequential that the person feels connected to us, and we feel connected to them, both emotionally and intellectually.

 

If you’re an empath, you already know that you uniquely experience the world. Empaths have the innate ability to feel other people's emotions as if they were their own. This allows them to understand people in profound and intimate ways and heal emotional pain.

 

Empathy, like many things, exists along a spectrum. Our ability to understand and feel another, ranges from 

 

Fun Fact: 

 

If you are high on empathy, more than likely, you are also high on emotional intelligence. Because empathy is an essential factor of emotional intelligence. As I mentioned, empathy is understanding another person’s experience by using your empathy muscle, stepping into their shoes, and viewing life from another’s lens. Emotional intelligence breaks down into four factors: self-awareness, social awareness, self-actualization, and transcendence, and empathy can be found in all those things. 

 

Ok, now that we know what empathy is, what are some signs that you are an empath, meaning your feelings antennae are super aware and out and about picking up feelings, emotions, and information from the world around you? 

 

Today, we are going to go over eight tell-tale signs that you are, in fact, an empath.  

 

1. You have a deep sense of “Knowing.” 

   • Empaths have a deep sense of knowing that’s pinpoint accurate in its description. This skill either wow’s other people or triggers them. Sometimes it’s hard to trust this feeling of “knowing” because you may not get validation from others that you are right. However, after your predictions become actual time and time again, you will learn to respect and trust the downloads of information you are getting about others. You can pick up on the intentions of another person, what their feeling, or things about their past. You can describe what’s going on underneath the surface.  

   • I have suggestions for empaths on learning how to communicate this “knowing” feeling. Sometimes people don’t want to hear the honest truth or if they do: try to wait for the right time when they’ll be open to hearing you or wait until they ask you. You’re probably excited to get all this information and downloads about another person. You can always diary and journal out your discoveries, keep things to yourself and watch as your predictions of another person become true. 

2. You have the ability to feel others' physical pain.

   • Empaths have an uncanny ability to feel another’s physical pain. And I mean really feel it. Like you can pinpoint exactly where it is coming from. You may know exactly where to massage your partner because you can feel the pain radiating in a particular position. Or you may know what remedies to give your friend to get over a cold.  As a healer, I experience this sensation a lot when working with clients; for me, it’s very visual. Like I can see a dark cloud hovering over the spots that need to be healed. I can also see where the pain is trailing to and originating from. I believe that empaths are gifted with the ability to feel others’ physical pains because empaths are born healers. Let me repeat that. Empaths are natural-born healers.  Many empaths find jobs as doctors, nurses, therapists, coaches, etc. Anything that will help lift the pain off the world and connect deeply with others. 

3. You are conflict avoidant and ruminate on the conflicts you experience. 

   • Conflict as an empath suck. Conflict weighs heavily on an empath. We do not like causing other people pain and discomfort. Even if you stand behind your decision in the conflict, you may often get anxious because you have caused another distress, and then the rumination begins. You may pick apart the argument, think about how you could have done better, or feel anxious about what the other person is thinking or feeling. Think about the cringeworthy things that were said about you and the direct yet accurate stuff you said about another person. Become scared that the other person could retaliate in some awful way. We also tend to think the other person cares just as much as we do, which isn’t always the case. They could be off and going about their life, not thinking about it at all. Remember, empaths are good at seeing another’s point of view, but when it comes to conflict, remember to hold your own point of view to importance as well.

4. You tend to people please and are overly agreeable.  

   • Because empaths don’t like conflict, we often choose to people please. People pleasing is putting others' needs before our own and possibly leaving out what we would actually want to do. We do this to make others happy; we care about what others think and feel about us because we don’t want to feel vulnerable. If we say what we want, the other person may not like it, and the weight of the disagreement is heavy on an empath. For an empath, it’s easier and less pressure to agree rather than disagree. This can get empaths in trouble because they may lose themselves to another person’s needs and desires. That is why many empaths like spending time alone to recharge and focus on themselves and what they want to do. This is also why empaths are prone to co-dependency. We end up losing our identity to another person because we are terrified of saying what we actually desire. 

5. Large crowds throw you off. 

   • For an introvert empath, crowds and large gatherings outside of trusted people are exhausting and emotionally draining. For extrovert empaths, we tend to like going out and mingling but the larger and wilder the crowd gets, the more we get anxious. An empath standing in the middle of a large group can feel like the walls of energy or closing in on you, and it’s hard to maintain your energetic space. This is where empaths turn to alcohol or anything that will numb this feeling of being swallowed up by other people’s energy.  I’ve noticed that standing by a wall or at the back helps a lot and provides an easy exit when you may need to regroup and recharge. 

6. People tend to confide in you and tell you their deepest secrets. 

   • Empaths have this very nurturing and safe energy that attracts everyone to them and allows them to feel safe to confide in them or tell them their deepest and darkest truths and secrets. Empaths also have a knack for asking the right questions, as we are also truth seekers. We tend to dig until we hit the core of a concern or question. 

7. You have a hard time separating your emotions from others. 

   • The boundaries between an empath's emotion and another’s emotion are at times non-existent or confusing to maintain and understand; this is why it can feel like we are an emotional sponge, sponging up and soaking in all of the emotions of others.  If an empath hasn’t spent enough time learning their voice and exploring their own energy, others’ energy or emotions get mixed up. We are constantly picking up on information about other people, and it’s challenging to discern what we initially think or feel without that outer influence. Because empaths are prone to healing, we also take on responsibility for others’ emotions, which can leave us feeling super heavy. One thing I like to do is check my energy before I hang out with someone and after. If I wasn’t feeling a particular emotion before the meeting, and afterward I am ruminating on it, I think I may have picked something off of another and then choose to let it go. 

8. You care about People A LOT and have difficulty turning this off.

   • Empaths genuinely care about other people’s feelings. We don’t want others to be upset because it also feels heavy on us. We have a hard time separating our emotions from other people, so when someone close to us is upset, it feels like a heavy burden on us as well. Even if the conflicting situation isn’t directly related to us, we struggle to turn our minds off or disconnect from the pain. In an empath’s ideal world, everyone would be healed and happy. But that’s not the case, especially in today’s world. So, if you’re an empath struggling because the world’s events send ripple effects of unhappiness, you are not alone. I feel it too, and it’s hard to disconnect, but it’s so important from time to time. We cannot carry the weight of the world on our shoulders all the time. 

 

Alright, alright, that’s eight tell-tale signs that you are, in fact, an empath. Did any of these signs hit home for you? Let us know in the comment section below! Stay tuned for more videos on how to turn empathy into a superpower as we dive deep into surviving and thriving as an empath. Subscribe, share, and like, and see you later, Moodlings.