I’m an Empath

328 replies

ArtfulRubyKoala · 02/05/2026 12:39

AIBU to think that people who use the word ‘empath’ to describe themself actually tend to be incredibly self absorbed?
I have only met 2 people who have used this word to describe themselves and it was noticeable with both how much time they spent talking about themselves during the time I was with them. I also found it odd that both told me they were empaths the first time I met them.

Obviously my sample size of 2 makes this fact(!) but am interested to hear other people’s experiences.

OP posts:

CraftandGlamour · 04/05/2026 13:50

Uricon2 · 03/05/2026 22:21

There is no such thing as 'an empath'. There are people made hypervigilant due to (usually childhood) experiences and there are the other group, the egocentric attention vultures who declare their utterly cringeworthy 'status' as one, when they are about as sympathetic or empathetic as a brick.

And also, how do the self declared 'empaths' really know how anyone else thinks or feels? Answer, they don't. They can't.

Edited

Absolutely this!

TheNinkyNonkyIsATardis · 04/05/2026 15:25

ImImmortalNowBabyDoll · 04/05/2026 11:35

Re the child's alcoholic Mum, I'm still leaning towards my earlier guess that the PP makes a lot of quite outlandish assertions and occasionally when they turn out to be correct it seems like magic.

My own Mum does this too, she makes lots of wild predictions about people getting married, people getting serious illnesses, winning awards, changing career or even dying by suicide. She considers herself highly intuitive. 99% of the time it's bollocks, and also, as a lot of these things are long term predictions, acquaintances drift out of our lives as people do, and we never know what happens to them next. However, in a very few cases, what she's said does happen and then she says, "Didn't I say that this was going to happen! I just knew!" by which point most people have forgotten all about the million other incorrect things she predicted.

That, and the fact that if you poke and prod someone enough, you probably will uncover a problem of some sort. No-one's life is perfect but maybe you're having a good day until someone seems very invested in you not being OK and suddenly feel pressured to tell them all about your elderly relative in a care home struggling to recognise you last week and your friend leaning on you a lot through their traumatic divorce and start thinking, "Shit, Sheila from accounts seems really very sure that I'm not alright, I thought I was, but maybe I really am disguising a mental breakdown!"

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I've always been very good at knowing which couples will break up soon, but that's when there's been bloody obvious bad behaviour that my husband has seemed oblivious to!

E.g. a friend's fiancé being tight, rude and leery all in the same evening I met him - well, people don't like people who are tight, rude and leery. It was the leery thing that caught up with him - she found out he'd been texting a colleague (entirely one sided, it was gross).

It wasn't a Spidey sense, it was "see bad behaviour, realise it won't last".

Andthatmyfriendisthat · 10/05/2026 06:24

Spot on. There is no such thing as an empath, Deanna Troy was a fictional character. There are however billions of humans who experience empathy as that is a normal human trait, along a spectrum.

Anyone claiming they are an "empath" is a sad little fucker with low empathy and high self absorption who causes a lot of damage by delusionally imagining they understand how other people feel, when in fact they are projecting and mind reading.

People who make this nonsensical claim tend to have low emotional intelligence and low empathy.

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