Any strategies for protecting yourself if you are an empath?

[Firefly45]

Im an empath and it can be exhausting. I have a tendency to feel like im responsible for fixing and helping everyone! I feel guilty if I can't.
I find a lot of friends use me as a therapist, offloading, wanting advice and pep talks. Its both flattering and exhausting.

When someone you care about tells you their problems how do you protect yourself from not carrying that with you? Or desperately trying to think of ways to help or try and fix it?

I appreciate its also an ego/self centered thing that i assume that this is what people what me to do?

I wondered if anyone has developed any useful strategies?
I work with vulnerable, traumatised people and ive managed over time to put in some professional boundaries to protect myself but its taken a long time and its still a struggle.

I dont want to tell people I care about 'i can't listen to this' because I feel that is cruel and horrible when someone is in need.

Do anyone else ever feel like this and what can you do to help yourself?

Exactly.

Agreed. I suspect you like the attention and feeling you are somehow special. You aren’t. You just allow yourself to be used and then rue the consequences, but then keep doing the same thing next time. You need to do what everyone else does, put up some boundaries, tell people you can’t help them right now. Say “no”.

You need stronger boundaries to protect your emotional energy.

Blimey, the witches were out last night!

I have realised over the last year or so that the vast majority of people are very selfish and will take as much as they can without offering much in return.

It’s really important that you give and receive to stay in balance. So, if you often lend a listening ear to a friend what’s the pay off? Do they also listen to you? Do they take you out for a coffee or buy you a little gift to say thank you? If it’s not reciprocal, you need to take a step back and a be a bit less accommodating. Seek out people who are less interested in the sound of their own voice and a bit more interested in you.

Like someone else said, you can listen but you don’t have to fix everyone’s problems. That’s their job! Be your own best friend and start putting yourself first. It’s not wrong or selfish and you’ll feel a lot happier/less taken advantage of.

OP I don't know why you've had tough replies, I don't doubt at all that you feel things very deeply and don't know why people feel threatened by you acknowledging you are an empath. I'd say the most important thing is setting boundaries so you don't get over involved . Maybe you can do this by setting a time limit eg I am happy to listen but i have only got 10 minutes. Or I find it hard to discuss this topic as am sensitive to it but maybe you could talk to ...
I think if you don't your contact could end up hard to sustain in some instances. I had to step back altogether from a friend who would ring for an hour sometimes day after day and not listen when I repeatedly said I couldn't manage such a long call as had 3 DC at home and i found it stressful as all she'd want to do was offload heavy stuff and not have a two way conversation . I didn't feel it was good for her nor me to keep doing this anyway and didn't achieve anything to hyper focus on herself, but i know it feels very hard as of course you don't want anyone to feel rejected etc. But putting in boundaries isn't a rejection, it can definitely help.

Very interested to read on this thread about the association between hypersensitivity to others' (perceived) feelings and emotional neglect in childhood. I grew up in the presence of domestic violence. Naturally that created concern for my mother as well as an absolute hypervigilance about the emotional currents between my parents. In addition, my mother was (partly understandably) lacking in boundaries about the emotional support she required from her children.

I think I am probably quite similar to the OP in that I very often find myself in conversations where I am listening to others problems, prompting them in whatever ways I imagine will make them feel better, relentlessly scanning for others' emotional cues and trying to respond in ways will soothe them or 'mend' the emotional environment.

I'm extremely conscious that while this aspect of my personality is sometimes capable of making me more empathic, it also often derails any really deep empathy. That's because my relentless scanning is essentially (and of course unintentionally) self-absorbed. It's about mending myself, soothing the tensions that are with me from the past. That leads me almost to create fake versions of the people in front of me, avatars of earlier awful conflicts. And that's about the most selfish thing you can do to the other person - replacing them with projections of your own, failing to encounter them directly.

It takes a huge amount of mindfulness to try to get past that. I'd suggest, OP, using some sort of brief grounding technique in conversations. Observe the tension that you have, observe the need that you have to jump into the convo in certain habitual ways. That might start to lessen its grip.

@PottedPurplePumpkins

If that was true, she would not keep coming around to visit me.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I have absorbed a lot of problems from 2 close friends. I have advised them again and again.

Same advice for 4-5-6 years. I’m sick of it.

Told one of them in exasperation (to coin a phrase my DF used) “ Take a Piss or Get off the Pot. I have no more to add other than what I’ve been telling you. I have no additional insights… now it’s over to you.

It seems to have worked!

(May I add that I can sit on a park bench, make NO eye contact, and I still have complete strangers tell me their life story 🤣).

in the past I have struggle with this- I naturally look for solutions and feel deeply when listening to others problems- and in my line of work it was emotionally draining giving up so much energy to others, and ended up having to change career. Since then have done a lot of soul searching and realise I am a complete people pleaser, and listened to a million self help books.

A key thing that stands out to me now is that people like to talk about themselves, so when they find someone who is willing to listen, they will take full advantage of that and burden you with their problems like a free therapist. You need to be able to say something like ‘you’re sorry they’re going through this right now but you have your own stuff and it isn’t a good time for you’. I did lots of work on myself to help with boundaries and have the courage to stand by them and be disliked if needs be!! they are getting your energy and attention, but what are you getting out of it? Feeling liked and popular but emotionally drained and reduced free time?? You are not a free therapist!!

secondly, although I like trying to see positive solutions, I find that friends and family usually just need a sounding board- they don’t need someone to tell them what to do, so instead of offering solutions, I just ask them what do they think they should do as deep down everyone knows what they want to do anyway, talking about it just validates what they already want to do! So you don’t need to imagine how you would handle that situation if you were them and get over invested as they will do what they want anyway- you have no control over them.

If any of that sounds familiar to your situation, then the best books that have helped me are ‘the let them theory’ by Mel Robbins and ‘please yourself’ by Emma Reed Turrell, and ‘why has no-one told me this before’ by Julie Smith.

Well some people are more empathic and better at listening than others and we all know this from our everyday lives. Women are also socially conditioned to be better at thinking about how others feel and mitigating for that. Nawalt of course.

You can listen without fixing. You need boundaries for yourself so you are clear what you can/ cannot offer others. It can feel really good to feel needed and have people rely on you and if that’s how you always are it can be worrying to consider what your relationships might be like if you change your role. However, you’re not giving yourself the chance to be your true self in your relationships if you’re always playing a role.

I'm not a empath. I do want to fix everyone's problems though.

Firstly I have come to realise not everyone would make my choices so unless people are specifically asking for advice I just listen. Trying not to give advice. Especially if we're not really close

Secondly if your objective enough does anyone take your advice? My close friends don't always seem to and take bigger risks than I would that leads to drama. They are risk takers. So I give advice gentally just once and expect those risk takers to ignore it.

People want to vent. They most often don't want any advice. If I feel the urge to give unsolicited advice I sit on my hands more often than not.

I have recently seen someone do something I wouldn't have done that's backfired. She paid someone to advise her in a subject area I'm a expert in. I tried to tell her gently a few times not to do something. Basically she is a different person to me. Pray for the best and not plan for the worst. I'm not like that. She is. So that plan went wrong. I do feel bad for her and she now asking for my advice but it's too late to fix it. I just keep telling myself it was her choice and that's OK as she isn't me so why should she have made my choice? Who says I'm always right anyway? Maybe being right was just a coincidence this time.

Ie step back and just listen. Don't try to fix people. They don't solutions, they want something else. Reassurance or just to talk it out.

I’m not an empath for the reasons given by others but I have the issues you’ve had @Firefly45

It is not true that this happens the same for everyone. I know most of my friends have said they don’t have this experience in the way they see me having it.

I agree with others that these are maladaptive coping mechanisms and framing them as such has allowed me to put boundaries up. The main beneficiaries of the trauma dumping sessions have walked away from the relationships as they were no longer getting what they wanted from me. The rest of my friendships are much more balanced now. Ultimately this has been a really good thing for me and I have focussed outwards and have been able to pull some really good new focuses from the situation.

I agree with this. I’d say your post reads more like people pleasing and not being able to draw a line between you and others.

Learn more about boundaries. Don’t jump in to help unless asked, don’t give advice unless asked, don’t offer anything unless asked. That’s not being selfish, that’s just not overstepping.

If someone reaches out for help, stop and ask what you can give before you respond, and stick to it.

They sound like psychopaths!🤣

Absolutely agree with this.

I’m not sure the empath concept is helping you. Feeling empathy is the human condition- deciding you’re somehow different from other people and therefore extra affected can be a block to making improvements.

As pp said, your work should be providing you with support. Have you looked into this? I would suggest that you raise it with your manager.

With your friends, it’s a question of boundaries. The book Please Yourself by Emma Reed Turrell is very good.

Interesting thread. Two questions. Might you be trying to create a role for yourself as central, needed and emotionally close to people, that you lacked in childhood? And, do you find the people you listen to come to regard you as ‘only their listener / emotional support person’ and forget to involve you in the fun stuff too? So you have limited, unbalanced friendships?

I have a whole heap problems in my life. Fortunately, I have the intelligence to research and weigh up options for 'solving' them without non-professional help (some are insoluble).

I do need my wonderful friends, though. For distraction, for laughs, for amusement, for walks and swims and lunches and most of all for talking about anything other than the crap I'm going through.

If a friend started offering me advice, I'd drop them like a hot brick.

Hi OP. I thought I was highly sensitive. Turns out I’m ND with a side order of trauma-related people pleasing. Exhausting.

Like you, I had a job working with vulnerable people. I wasn’t actually helping - they needed someone to listen and empower not jump in and try and ‘fix’ everything. Your reflection that there is ego there was true for me too. It made me feel special. But I was unconsciously keeping them in ‘victim’ mode and me in ‘rescuer’ mode. If you can have reflective supervision at work it’s really helpful.

With friends and family, a wise person once said to me that it wasn’t my job to keep everyone happy. It was honestly a revelation. Because of my childhood I thought that was what I needed to do. Complete doormat. So now if it’s too much I just ask if we can talk another time. Set some boundaries around time and, more importantly, energy. It helps to put in a small pause before you jump in and say yes. ‘Let me check my diary and get back to you’. ‘I can’t talk now but let’s catch up soon’. Guess what? No-one minds! (Except the DCs but that’s a whole different story.)

I’m also much more aware of my impact on others and try not to dump stuff on them. Last thing that works for me is to limit the amount of traumatic content I consume on TV, films, social media etc because I get caught up in very negative spirals and that’s not helpful for me or anyone around me. Good luck.

You have to learn to not fix
Have you looked at the drama triangle? You may be falling into the rescuer role. Try and rebalance with your friends: no long pep talks, neutral statements, keep rebutting it to them
'Oh that's hard. What do you think you're going to do?'
'That sounds difficult, I'm sorry. Sending hugs x' And don't fill in the gap with fixing or thinking!! This is actually a better way of being a friend imo - active listening

Thank you everyone. Some harsh replies but still useful and some interesting things to think about.

I only learnt the word empath from mumsnet, seeing other people use it. I suppose im often told im overly sensitive and take on other people's problems too much so I thought empath was a good way to describe this. I accept its twatty and I wont use it again.

Genuinely though, thank you for the replies. Definitely done some reflecting on my own behaviour.

Get therapy.

Are you the child of an addict? Are you hyper vigilant, learned skills to manage the addict? Are you co dependent?

Therapy and AA for friends and families of alcoholics.

The word empath is from Star Trek. It’s a fictional alien. The human version is empathetic person. I’m afraid I’ve only seen ‘empath’ used by people to convey (intentionally or not) a degree of cringe-worthy self-important twattery.

What I’ve come to recognise in myself is that there’s a fine line between empathy and emotional incontinence. There’s a difference between feeling for other people and allowing their experiences to open up an uncontrolled flow of your own emotions.

Might be worth looking up the differences between empathy and compassion.

Yes, good post.

And I’ve heard Marina Sirtis is/was quite scathing and funny about Deanna Troi’s half-Betazoid psychic abilities at fan conventions. Especially as DT was given to clutching her head on the bridge of the Enterprise and saying ‘I sense great anger!’ just after the Borg or whoever had just shot at them.

Op i think you find it hard to regulate your emotions that doesn't make you an "empath" it does sound exhausting though.