Acceptance

A Survival Guide for Highly Empathic People

July 16, 2017 by lyra777 1 Comment

I’m a highly empathic person. I not only pick up on other people’s emotions easily, but I also feel them strongly. If you are mad, I can rage with you. If you are happy, I can giggle with you. If you are sad, I will cry with you.

Being high in empathy can be both a blessing and a curse depending on how you manage it. Much like a knife. The knife itself is harmless. Use it well and it’s a tool for chopping up food or even carving art, but if you’re not careful it can leave you with a deep wound. Empathy is the same – it can be fantastic tool to help understand and connect to others, but if used carelessly it will product a lot of misery, both to yourself and to people close to you.

If I were to give advice to other people who are high in empathy, I would say these three things:

Learn the difference between unconscious and conscious empathy
Become comfortable with emotional pain
Compassion is the only thing that heals, not sympathy or empathy

1) Learn the difference between unconscious and conscious empathy

Even though empathy is bundled into one thing, I have come to learn that there is a difference between unconscious and conscious empathy.

In a nutshell:

Unconscious empathy — when you feel another person’s emotions and get lost in them (or use Buddhist speak, “identify with them”). “Your pain is my pain and it is beyond my control”.

Conscious empathy — when you feel another person’s emotions, while still being fully grounded in your own being. You observe their feelings with nonattachment. There is space between their pain and your sense of self. “I feel your pain, but I know this is not my pain and I will lovingly accept them and let them go”.

Conscious empathy can help heal, whilst unconscious empathy can cause harm.

How can unconscious empathy hurt people?

The problem of unconscious empathy can be seen best when two people high in empathy get together. Imagine an empath lives with another empath. Let me call them Empath A and Empath B.

Both of them feel emotions strongly, and they can pick up on what the other person is feeling without even having to explain things to each other. This can be great, because so much of living together can be effortless. If something bad happens, without having to say a word the other person will know and will rush to the rescue.

Imagine however, that instead of having a one-off drop in mood, Empath A has something more chronic, such as depression, bereavement or a prolonged tough period at work. Empath A is just about navigating the maelstrom of emotions that are coursing through their being. Meanwhile, because Empath B is using unconscious empathy to relate, they are also going along the roller coaster ride. So long as Empath A is down, Empath B is down. This is the danger of unconscious empathy.

Things aren’t easier for Empath B either, because they don’t want to come home to someone so miserable all the time. Empath B starts to get bitter and angry at Empath A for “causing” their discomfort, and starts to complain to their friends about how frustrated they are that Empath A is “not getting it together”. Empath A picks up on all this and feels angry that Empath B cannot be more understanding of their hardship. As they both descend deep into the toxic spiral of unconscious empathy, none of them are getting better. This can eventually lead to a friendship breaking apart.

The bottom line with unconscious empathy is this: If you practice unconscious empathy, you will be at the mercy of other people’s emotions.

Other people’s emotions will control you, rather than the other way around. You getting lost in another person’s sadness or anger will not help either of you. All you are doing is adding fuel to fire, a phenomenon which I’ve dubbed, “bringing in the clouds of doom”. Yes, the person talking to you may feel slightly better from being listened to, and you may feel content from having shown so much empathy to their problems (in a martyr-type way – “I am such a good friend I will be just as miserable as you”), but believe me, you becoming just as sad as the other person has done nothing to help alleviate their pain.

2) Become comfortable with emotional pain

People who are high in empathy seem to have a huge aversion towards emotional pain, perhaps because so many of us are also highly sensitive people (HSPs). Any emotional blow that happens inside is like trying to manage an atomic bomb going off within. So most empaths will do whatever they can to avoid feeling these darker emotions not only in themselves, but in others too.

On the surface, this can make the empath seem like a very caring person, always coming to the rescue to help everyone around them be happy. The reality however, is that most of the techniques empaths use to do this is to escape pain themselves. These include: quickly changing the subject to try to cheer the other person up, throwing “happy bombs” or using default vacuous sympathy statements (“I’m so sorry to hear you’re not well”).

Another more subtle way that empaths demonstrate this tendency to want to escape pain is by rejoicing more than anyone when a person previously in pain becomes better again:

This may seem to others like this person truly “cares”, but what actually lies behind their reaction is something much more selfish — they are simply expressing joy from being released from agony. Ironically, it is the very suffering the other empath has inflicted on themself because of unconscious empathy.

This can be saddening to the person in pain, because the bottom-line message that the other person is giving is: “I didn’t like it when you were sad (because I’m sad)”, “I don’t want you to be upset (because I’m upset)” or “I don’t want to accept you when you are down (because I don’t accept myself when I’m down)”. Part of Empath A now feels ashamed and invalidated. This does not help with healing.

Until we are comfortable with our own pain, we cannot accept others’ pain. Until we can accept others’ pain we cannot help them heal.

We must sink into our own discomfort, melt into it as if that’s exactly what life is about, as if we chose this pain for ourselves. Only then will compassion towards others naturally flow out.

3) Compassion is the only thing that heals, not sympathy or empathy

Because of the issues created by unconscious empathy, during times of chronic depression I found my anguish being relieved more hanging out with less empathic people. This was because they seemed completely unaffected by my condition. It had no emotional impact on them, because they couldn’t feel my pain. This also meant that they had no desires regarding how they wanted me to be, unlike my empathic friends who clearly wanted me to be happy again ASAP. They were more likely to just accept me how I was. That, I noticed, was far more important when it came to healing.

Ultimately the only thing that heals is compassion. To share your light with the other person and to show that you accept them how they are, sadness and all.

So is empathy a hindrance to helping people? I really don’t think so. I actually think empathy and compassion can be the ultimate healing combination so long as the former is used consciously. I mentioned earlier about people with less empathy making me feel lighter during times of depression. While I was happier after seeing them, it did always feel like a bit of a Band-Aid. As they didn’t understand my pain, they didn’t know how to talk about it. So we usually ended up talking about something else. It was an effective distraction. At the end of the day though, you still want someone to understand what you are going through so healing can take place.

This is where conscious empathy comes in. The method is identical to meditative practice. You feel the other person’s emotions, but you don’t attach yourself to them. You let them fizzle out naturally. You don’t make any judgements about them either, as any resistance to the emotion will only lead to a feeling that wasn’t yours being stuck in your body.

If you can find a way to use your empathy to simply understand what the person is going through, without getting lost or attached to the emotions, then this can lead to conversations where you can delve deeper into the other person’s wound. You accepting their emotions will help them accept theirs, which will in turn lead to healing. If used correctly, you may also find you notice emotions that the other person didn’t even know they had. You’d be surprised by how much emotion we hide from ourselves. Compassion can then follow and let the healing happen.

Final comment

To close, I have to mention the ultimately challenging part of being an empath. Even though I have written a whole blog post on the damage unconscious empathy can do, it doesn’t mean that now you should try to change yourself. If you are an empath and you find yourself wanting someone in darkness to get better because you want to escape from their pain, that is fine. Remember that this is your natural reaction to the situation, and as such it should be honoured and embraced. Any attempt to suppress your emotions will leave you with more problems later (trust me).

All you have to do is consciously notice, observe and savour your responses with other people. Do you find yourself bringing out the clouds of doom with others? Do you want to avoid pain when you feel it in others? Do you celebrate almost exaggeratedly when we hear other people are better? That’s ok. Just notice. Know that shedding your awareness onto your responses will lead to natural transformations, an alchemic reaction, without you trying to do anything about it. There is no need to try to get to the state of total acceptance. It will naturally happen simply with conscious awareness.

“I Do Not Need You To Protect Me” – A Sequel to the Love Letter

May 20, 2017 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

To my dearest beloved

I wanted you to know

That I do not need you

To protect me

I do not need you

To protect me from your sadness

Because your grief lets me know

You’re a beautiful human too

I do not need you

To protect me from your turmoil

As a woman, turmoil is something that I AM

So let me embrace it all

I do not need you

To protect me from your anger

It’s only a burst of energy

I’ll help you scream it out

I do not need you

To protect me from your fear

Because seeing you be present with it

Actually gives me strength

I do not need you

To protect me from your vulnerability

You are never weak in my eyes

You are the strongest man to me

I do not need you

To protect me from your mortality

Because our love surpasses time and space

Our connection lasts eternity

So let me not need your protection

As it will set you free

You may be surprised at the results

If you just let emotions be

Afterword

This is a sequel to a poem I wrote on Valentine’s Day called “I Don’t Need You”.

Men have so much pressure to be “strong”. When boys are taught to “man-up”, “not be a sissy” or “not be a girl”, this can have seriously damaging effects on their emotional well-being. The biggest shame is that vulnerability is man’s greatest strength.

A lot of men feel emotions just as strongly as women do. Yet they feel like they shouldn’t have them, let alone express them. There are also men who pressure themselves to be the “tough” one in the relationship, to be the protector of the two. This may lead them to hide their emotions from their partners because they feel they must shield them from pain. This can make them hold in much anguish. The emotions are there, and they need to be let out. I tried to convey in my letter that my loved ones’ vulnerability only serves to make us both become stronger, deepening our love.

Disliking People Who Are Like Us: On a Japanese Four-Character Idiom That Teaches You A Lot About People

February 9, 2017 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

In Japan we have a great thing called yo-ji-jyuku-go (四字熟語). These are idiomatic phrases made out of four kanji characters. For those who aren’t familiar with the Japanese language, kanji characters are logographic characters. Instead of each character having just a sound, it also has a specific meaning. Throughout the ages Japanese scholars have put together four different kanji characters to express profound life truths. A great one I came across recently was dou-zoku-ken-o（同族嫌悪). Literally translated this idiom consists of the characters, “same”, “family”, “hate”, and “bad”. It means that we dislike people who are like us.

This may sound strange, because your first instinct may be to think that conversely we are drawn to people who are like us. This is still true. When we encounter people who are like us we feel strong love and affection. On the other hand, if these people do not resemble us at all, we feel indifference. But what if these people are just like us, but resemble aspects of ourselves that we don’t like? That’s when hate rumbles from within. We really don’t like it when other people mirror aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to accept.

A frequently portrayed example of this is the school bully who beats up homosexuals, only to discover later that he is gay himself. Him beating up other poor boys is an outer manifestation of what he does internally to himself daily. We resent people for bringing up feelings that we try so hard to suppress and push down. We hate them because we are just like them. This is what this idiom succinctly teaches.

We only accept in others what we accept within ourselves. The school bully who finally embraces his sexuality will stop hurting his colleagues. This is why people who piss us off are actually our greatest teachers. The anger that wells us from inside tells us that there are parts of ourselves we haven’t accepted and integrated into our being.

Now, you may be thinking that perhaps we suppress things for good reasons. You don’t like Trump for example, because you don’t like how misogynistic he is. And sure, according to what I’ve been saying this would mean that you don’t accept misogynistic thoughts within yourself, but isn’t this a good thing? If you accepted misogyny you would think it’s ok to be horrible to women.

Well no. If you thought this then you have fallen into one of the big misunderstandings about acceptance. Acceptance of thoughts does not equate directly to any form of action (or non-action for that matter). Put it this way, if everyone who accepted their misogynistic thoughts were a misogynist, by the same logic all crime writers would be serial killers. They spend their days unapologetically exploring some of the darkest of ideas, but they are very much normal citizens of society.

To accept is to simply confront and observe various thoughts and emotions as they arise, without judgment. If a misogynistic thought arises, for example, you can simply look at it. You don’t have to act on it. All you have to do is let it bubble up inside yourself and let it go. In fact, the only way such thoughts are released is through acceptance. However, most of us are afraid to peek at the darker ideas that come out of ourselves. We push the thoughts down, build strong walls around them hoping they will never crop up again. That is, until we bump into someone who embodies the very thoughts and emotions we’ve been suppressing. Then suddenly the barriers we tried so hard to build come crashing down, and we hate it. The irony is, you never would have had your walls fall down if you hadn’t built them in the first place.

When you don’t like someone, it’s an invitation to look within to see what exactly it is that you don’t like about them, and then in turn understand what it is you don’t like about yourself. It’s a golden opportunity to shine the light of acceptance on this trait that exists within you. You hate it when people are childish? That’s because you don’t accept the child within you. But ask yourself — what is really “wrong” with being childish?

This even applies to so-called negative traits. If you don’t like someone because they are rude, that’s because you don’t accept the rude person within you. But if you can learn to accept this aspect of yourself, you can then approach this person with calm and love, rather than hate. This isn’t to say you let them get away with their rudeness. You can still say softly to this person that being rude does not help solve the situation. If anything, your calm and composed energy is likely to deflate any tension there was in the first place.

Hate yourself, hate others. Love yourself, love others.

Don’t Let ‘Self-Improvement’ Drag You Away From Self-Acceptance

February 7, 2017 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

If, like me, you’re the type of person who reads a lot of self-help literature, inevitably you will come across a lot of articles that tell you how to be your ‘better’ self. Now, if you have used some of the techniques bouncing around and find yourself a happier person — great! I sincerely mean that. However, there are a few thoughts I’ve had about the self-improvement movement that I would like to share:

1) Self-improvement can move away from self-acceptance

The term ‘improvement’ suggests that how we are in this moment is not good enough. I know that for some people, myself included, this kind of thinking can be the fire that motivates them to take action. The only issue is I highly doubt that this beat-yourself-up approach has a long-term positive effect on your emotional wellbeing. After all, you are being driven because you cannot accept yourself. I feel like that is moving away from self-love and peace. Yes, you may have a string of achievements to show at the end of it, but at what cost to your heart?

2) A linear kind of life may not be for all

Be consistent. Be obsessive. Be hungry. These are the overall themes I started to see reading autobiographies of so-called successful people. I also noticed though that a large majority of the people insisting on this kind of attitude were mostly men. In the last few months I have come to slowly accept and even embrace the fact that my inner nature is inherently chaotic. Everything from my moods, to my physical energy levels, to my cognitive functioning seems to be both cyclical and difficult to predict.

Our current patriarchal society still perceives these kinds of traits negatively, valuing instead calm, consistent linear living (A woman’s mood swings = “She’s crazy!”). However, a lot of ancient Eastern philosophies acknowledge and revere this beautifully chaotic aspect of human nature, labeling it as the ‘feminine’ side of existence. It is inherent in all of us regardless of gender, but as a woman I feel this aspect is magnified.

I see chaos a bit like a typhoon. It can come forth violently and destroy everything in its path, but from this destruction can also come brilliant creation. Although chaos may be impossible to mentally grasp, it also has magnificent depth. This is not to devalue linear living in the slightest — it has its own splendor and beauty. But it would be a shame to stamp out this other side of human existence through only valuing one side of human existence, a side that I often see the self-improvement movement championing as the only life worth living.

3) Self-improvement can be at the detriment of your inner voice

I’ve heard several people say that the key to self-improvement is to relentlessly stick at something, even if your whole being is resisting against it. This is one way to live your life, and I’m sure you will improve wonderfully at any skill you desire to cultivate. My personal conclusion regarding this kind of living is this: sure, you will externally achieve something, but it’s at the cost of ignoring your inner being. The physical sensation I get when I am in this kind of mode is a very heavy head and exhausted body. My attention, instead of feeling expansive, starts to feel very narrow. My head doesn’t seem to stop working and often I get insomnia. It’s only when I distance myself from whatever I’m doing, like in the form of a holiday, that suddenly I feel how detrimental this kind of living is for me personally.

If I’ve not snapped out of this through a break then usually my tumultuous moods will halt my productivity to a stop anyways. The painful thing about this is that despite my inner-self telling me that work isn’t possible, I start to berate myself for not being consistent. This is a negative spiral that doesn’t help. Recognising and accepting that my inner being actually is cyclical has changed things for the better. I may not be super consistent, I may often stop and start things, but I feel much more aligned with who I am. This in turns brings a sense of peace, one that I don’t feel if I’m forcing myself to do things repetitively.

4) You don’t create who you are, you unfold into who you are

I think that often we first try to craft the person we think we want to be. Only to find out that this is a vacuous endeavor that slowly drains our souls. No matter how much we mold our lives in ways that we think will bring us happiness there will be something missing. This can also lead to us clinging desperately to our achievements because we feel they’re the only things that make us “someone”.

But what if one day you lose everything? Your money, your academic degrees, your medals or even your memory. Who are you then? We then realise that actually we don’t need to create who we are, because we are “there” already. All we need is to gently unfold into it by surrendering and letting go. Listen to that inner voice. Relax and float on top of the waves of life instead of swimming against them. Be still and make space inside yourself so the song of your heart can soar through.

A Few Thoughts on Loneliness

January 13, 2017 by lyra777 Leave a Comment

Loneliness is not caused by the absence of people who love you

It is caused by you not being able to love the people around you

So is the solution to train yourself to love others?

Not necessarily

Remember that loving others is directly related

To the degree to which you love yourself

They are one and the same

Therefore an excellent place to start

Is within

So is the solution to train yourself to love yourself?

Not necessarily

Love is a state of being

And this state of being is your most natural, authentic self

If you peer deep inside

You will find that there actually is no ‘I’ that loves ‘yourself’

Instead, you are love

Therefore to love

Is simply to be

That deep pang of loneliness you may feel

Is actually the tugging of your own heart begging you

To drop all pretences

To drop all self-loathing

To drop all self-criticism

And to accept yourself just as you are

The more you accept yourself

The more you accept others

The more you love others

The less lonely you will feel

Afterword

I have been struggling with loneliness for a few years now. I have no doubts that it is strongly linked to my depression. I would tell people, “There is nobody that loves me here”. Despite strongly feeling this way, my rational brain would tell me that there were people around me that cared about me. So why did I feel this way anyways?

It very recently dawned on me — it wasn’t that the people around me did not care about me. Instead, I myself was in a state of indifference towards others. A friend of mine gave an excellent analogy – a garage door. The more you open it, the more love that can both come in and out. If we shut it, then we shut love out both from ourselves, and from others. When I’m depressed, my door is shut. So I find it hard to care in general. We only accept as much love as we think we deserve.

Perhaps it is this dark void of indifference that we call ‘loneliness’.

I still haven’t fully worked out what it is. I could go on about the illusion of separation and what not, but that’s for another entry. What I’ve written here is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding no doubt. But I’m sure each day and each moment that is spent being present, just being, is one step closer to embracing the light.