Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. One of the the biggest ways I recognize my empathic abilities is to have thoughts or feelings randomly and spontaneously churning up inside me. My initial reaction to this is "where is this coming from?" I also use it as a tool in my work. When I am working with a client and I feel pain in my body, I will go to the same place on the client's body and work in this area till it eases in me.
What happens to you when you’re in a crowd? How many thought are not your own and what are your own feelings? Do you tend to be chameleon like? Or do you feel overwhelmed when you're in a crowd? Do you tend to have addictive behaviors? These are all signs you are empathic.
There are many tools to come back to yourself wholly. Here are a few ways to help:
1. Exercise
2. Go for a swim
3. Take a refreshing shower, then turn the temperature to cold just before ending.
4. Sit on the ground under a tree with your back against the trunk.
5. Leave the crowd for a short time and then return.
6. Know you are feeling everyone and know it is also a part of you.
7. Brushing your body with your hands, or feathers, or the dry brush technique (Ayurvedic technique).
For each person, empathy can show up differently or in a multitude of ways. One person can be an embodiment while another can have an understanding. We have many ways to feel someone. Here are some examples of the different ways we take in ...“ to empathize”.
1.Suddenly feel “not like yourself”. Once when I was sitting in my office with a friend and we were each doing computer and office work. All of a sudden , I became very hyped up. I was chattering on senselessly, feeling hurried and confused. I decided I need something from upstairs. Of course forgetting what I needed once I was up there, I came to realize, I was back to my calm steady paced self. I know I had embodied my friend because this is who she is. I had the honor of being her and understanding how she goes through life.
2.When we go through life’s experiences or even the feeling of when someone massages a muscle and it feels so good and so relieving, It is the experience and the memory of the experience we bounce back into. The memory becomes alive, the thoughts and feelings awaken in the cells. This the time when you can say “ I truly understand”.
3.Taking on someones pain karmically. Say for example your friend was in pain from an abusive relationship. You both just finished dinner and she was going home and you were headed toward your car. Then you open your car door and you bash your knee. You just made her life a little bit easier. I’m not saying every time you bang your knee it means your helping someone. In this particular case, it is so.
4.Consider mob mentality as empathic ability for a cross section of the group to feel and think the same way.
5.I have a friend who gets migraines and every time he has one, he smells and feels death and violence. I feels the abuse of women and children in the world. Yes, emotions have smells.
6.On the lighter side and could be considered a cheap date, I’ve been in a bar situation and not drank anything and felt totally drunk, so loopy I could barely stand up. As the crowd grew it became more intense. Talk about being an easy party girl. But, as soon as I stepped outside it cleared.
Seeing, feeling and observing yourself are keys to unraveling the mysteries of your empathic abilities.