Can there ever be too much empathy?

[Mewwy]

Under the help of a capable psychic medium, I discovered I have the natural tendency to pick up a lot of emotions from others. Eventually, bearing all the emotions are excessive and I confuse them as mine.

Empathy is regarded as positive by many, and I also value it as a wonderful life skill. I am also assuming empathy mostly translates into emotions, strong enough that we are noticing it's kicking in.

However, for me, feeling too excited or crying too excessively for any cause result in headaches, loss of sleep, and sometimes loss of appetite. The current method I use to remove excess emotions is praying. Can empath ever be too much for a person spiritually? Can this tendency be positively utilized in other ways?

[coLLege kid07]

Originally Posted by Mewwy

Under the help of a capable psychic medium, I discovered I have the natural tendency to pick up a lot of emotions from others. Eventually, bearing all the emotions are excessive and I confuse them as mine.

Empathy is regarded as positive by many, and I also value it as a wonderful life skill. I am also assuming empathy mostly translates into emotions, strong enough that we are noticing it's kicking in.

However, for me, feeling too excited or crying too excessively for any cause result in headaches, loss of sleep, and sometimes loss of appetite. The current method I use to remove excess emotions is praying. Can empath ever be too much for a person spiritually? Can this tendency be positively utilized in other ways?

hmm I believe that you can use empathy in many different ways. For the time being right now... I tend to close myself off to people with alot of emotion or are very identified with the ego. I'm sure you can utilize empathy in tons of other ways...usually I call it having a good connection not really empathy. When I deal with strong emotion ect. I usually either watch it...or go do an excrusiating exercise (running ect.). As for utilizing it in other ways I'm not quite sure I can help you there. Good luck.

[Kaspian]

Empathy is useful when you want to connect with and understand the person you are talking to more easily. Most of the time, though, I find I do better if I keep it off or low. Absorbing too much of other people's emotion and energy was bad for me, and if you're not careful, it can make you sick (as you are already discovering with the headaches, etc). For me, using empathy in a safe and healthy way is about making a choice—not a head choice, "I think I want to turn my empathy off 'cause someone said it is a good idea," but a heart/spirit/energy choice: "Taking care of myself and my energy is important to me, so I will turn my empathy off."

When I say that I turn it off I don't mean that I become unfeeling or cold-hearted; instead I am able to interact with people without taking on their "stuff." And as I said above, I choose to tune into people occasionally when I feel I can do so safely.

[Mewwy]

Thank you, I will try to learn to close off empathy. What methods do you use to close it?

I also don't think I can live by only ego's judgments while empathy is off.

How do people with maturely developed empath (eg. clairsentience?) feel the emotions coming? Goosebumps out of no where? Tears out of no where? Head exploding with pain? Wanting to dance suddenly? How to avoid energy draining response?

[Erin Pavlina]

Draw your chakras in close to your body when you are confronted by strong emotions you don't wish to be overwhelmed by.

How do you open and close chakras?