r/Empaths

I have a question about emotional boundaries.

I’m a very sensitive person, and I often pick up on other people’s emotions very strongly. Sometimes, when someone reacts with negativity, tension, judgment, or discomfort, I can feel it in my body almost immediately.

The difficult part is that I don’t always know how to tell what is mine and what is not mine. I can start absorbing their emotions, and then I end up feeling hurt or even blaming myself, as if I did something wrong.

So my question is: how do you learn to separate your own emotions from other people’s emotions? And how do you build a healthy inner boundary, so you can stay open and compassionate without taking everything into yourself?

hello,

so i knew myself as an empath for years .. i absorbed peoples energy all the time, even during the times no one knew why i disliked this or that person but i had this strong fut feeling. I knew if a place is good or bad too (of course not totally but id just know there’s something wrong) .

I also went across ridicules narcissists but that was yeaaars ago and after that a lost my father and my family and I changed our home due to demolitions and gentrification basically and i had alot of financial struggles afterwards .. 5 years forward now i am this hyper vigilant defensive girl that gets triggered easily, i know and smell bullsh*t from kilometers away. and sometimes its not even that serious . I criticize alot as if i dont like anyone or anything its like i just bring out my knowledge of other peoples weaknesses all the time and its not nice.

i completely lost my empathy its scaring me. and i used to be innocent .. now I’m not i am very aware and i dont like what i do with my awareness. im scared of myself and tried to read about perfectionism to try to fix it (cause apparently some say thats the issue cause im trying to avoid vulnerability)

I’d like to get some insight on this situation.

thanks

This is what was revealed by higher self to one subject in deep trance, how she needs to be more aware what is happening with her energy and people taking it.

Have you ever been attracted to someone specifically because you could see the aura of loneliness and tragedy in their soul ?

Or is it just me it happens with most of the time I try to avoid

Because I care so deeply about people, I tend to speak out against injustice on Facebook, along with posts showing support for different groups of people. Well my speaking out against injustice got me almost fired. I was written up instead, but told I had to stop speaking out against a certain thing that did not align with their political views. How do you cope with being told you can't speak out against injustice if you want to keep your job? I feel like I failed the people I care about because my voice has been silenced.

Wondering if anyone else sometimes feels like they’re one of the only truly kind people in the world? Like not just kind of paper in duty of care positions doctors or the like, but truly kind. I struggle extremely with sudden changes of anger towards me in work, relationships, family, I am very aware of body language, tone etc and I absolutely crushes me when I’m met with sudden horrible behaviour when I am constantly trying my best to accommodate everyone around me. I feel exhausted all of the time, the world feels too cruel for me sometimes

Edit : thanks so much for commenting everyone, this is all so new to me it’s really been helpful. I am not in any way perfect or delusional in thinking this is fact, it’s more that ive come up against the time and time again throughout my life where people I’ve known and trusted for years will suddenly change attitude towards me, and it is so sporadic in nature, it really confuses me

This question has been tugging at me for a while now. And I want to understand what other empathetic people think about this.

Can empathy be mistaken for projection of our own emotions? Are we unnecessarily self-conscious? Are we thinking too much? How do we differentiate empathy from people-pleasing?

For example, despite the fact that I enjoy people in general, I am exhausted after a long period of being in the crowds or the company of others because I feel energy acutely. But now I'm wondering is this because there's something else at play here, like insecurity or self-consciousness? Maybe I'm not as tolerant of others?

Before I ask chatGTP, I wanted to hear from you all.

Thank you!

Being an empath has ruined my life. I grew up always making sure to consider everyone's feelings and always making sure that everyone feels included. But lately I have been in a dilemma in my friendships. Me being so forgiving and apologetic has not only ruined me as a person but also my mental health. I am in a trio with 2 other girls I have known from high school, but they have always been closer despite me introducing the friendship. I never confronted it to bring peace in the group, but I have noticed it since the 5 years we have been in the friendship. I always dismissed my feelings about them discussing their plans together, thinking, "Well, maybe they have a valid reason," maybe its the fact that they have more in common because they both have S/O, maybe its because they live closer to eachother that they always hangout at eachothers houses, maybe its because etc etc, im always the person to say " wait when did this happen", because im again never included I just feel like if they enjoy eachother so much why am i still in this group, i would feel much better to them admitting they dont enjoy my company then have to suffer third wheeling this friendship. I feel like my head is spinning coming up with excuses, trying to make this work, but in the end, I'm burnt out from constantly considering everyone else when no one considers me. My empathy has led me to get taken advantage of time and time again, but despite it, I show up. Sometimes it is a blessing to be an empath, but also a curse. . I just want to know: am I tweaking?has this happened to anyone else experienced this, and please give me advice.

I get dopamine boosts when someone tells me they are in crisis. Like I feel the immense pain they are in and it feels so familiar that it feels like home. I don’t want them to harm themselves, I just wanna feel the emotional pain and suffering they are in because deeply felt emotions, positive or negative, don’t scare me, they feel rejuvenating. I think I’m like the exact opposite of an avoidant. Instead of running away from emotions, I run straight into them. Being in crisis is one of the most familiar things I’ve ever felt. I’m doing somewhat right now I guess. Life just feels so much more colourful when you see the things people push under the rug.

I've always known I was fairly empathetic, could read people well, & understand how they felt. And yes, I absorb some of the emotions of the people around me, even when I'm not interacting with them. I've always resisted the idea/label because of the stereotypes surrounding it.

I feel like I've been sentenced for a crime I didn't commit. I was explaining to my therapist that I recognize when my husband is stressed before he even does. It makes me anxious. I'm a people pleaser. At parties I have to get drunk to be able to enjoy myself, or else I spend the whole night catering to everyone around me. Even while blacked out & operating on auto pilot I'm helping people. Putting their wants before my own needs.

How am I supposed to regulate myself when everyone else just lets their emotions flow?

How is it that I struggle to feel & process my own emotions, yet everyone else's emotions get a free ride through my central nervous system?

How will I know which are my emotions and which are others’ influence over me?

When I'm in love with someone I don't feel butterflies in my stomach or something like that, I feel a burning in my heart like it's very nice and painful at the same time, sometimes in can reach my hands and legs when it's strong. Does anyone else feel that. I can feel my nerves

Is this a common trait amongst empaths? It doesn’t happen often (thank God), but there have been periods in my life where I have endured levels of emotional agony so immense that I literally thought it would be the end of me. On top of the emotional incapacitation, the physical symptoms tend to be akin to those that accompany a fever; sleep disruption, migraines, muscle aches and pains, chills throughout the body, general exhaustion… these episodes have struck me a handful of times over the course of my life and each one has been utterly terrifying. Have many others here experienced this?

Went out partying last night. I kept noticing that just before a man would decide to interact with me his energy would reach out and connect to mine. It was certainly unconscious behavior, but I'm on the fence about wtf this actually was.

Was I picking up on sexual attraction? Seems pretty likely to me. Did they suddenly just want access to me and my energy? Why do men do this? None of the women did.

And more importantly how tf do I get them to knock it off? One guy's energy was pretty persistent, in my mind I imagined blocking/cutting his energy off and saying No. You're gonna stop now. Which thankfully seemed to work. But like I had to make a concentrated effort and I seriously don't wanna do this with tons of people.

i'm an empath, diagnosed hsp years ago, and last year i got pulled into one of those connections everyone online wants to call a twin flame. the hardest part for me wasn't the intensity, it was that i genuinely could not tell how much of what i was feeling was the actual person and how much was just me filling in a guy i barely knew with my own stuff. these are the books that helped me start to tell the difference. not in any order, just the ones worth your time.

**The Empath's Survival Guide by Judith Orloff.** the obvious starting point and still the best on the basics. the part on emotional absorption, how we take on other people's states and mistake them for our own, was the first time i understood that some of what i thought was "our connection" was just me feeling his stuff with no boundary in between.

**The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron.** more clinical, less woo, and that's exactly why it grounded me. understanding the nervous system side of being highly sensitive made me stop framing every intense reaction as cosmically meaningful. sometimes my system was just overstimulated and i'd been calling it a soul recognition.

**The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford.** this is the projection one. ford's whole thing is that we project our disowned parts onto other people, and reading it i had to admit some of what i "saw" in him was stuff i hadn't claimed in myself yet. uncomfortable. necessary. took the magic out of it in the best way.

**If the Buddha Dated by Charlotte Kasl.** the only relationship book that didn't make me feel broken for being sensitive. honestly i skimmed parts of the middle, but the first third was worth the whole price. gentle and a bit rambly and i liked it.

**Twin Flames: The Honest Guide by Taro's Tarot.** almost skipped this one because of the title. it took the recognition seriously but still asked, plainly, how much was real and how much was my own wiring projected onto someone i barely knew, and it didn't promise a reunion. i wasn't expecting that from a book with twin flames in the name.

**How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh.** tiny book, you can read it in an hour, and it kept correcting me. his line that understanding is the other name for love made me see how much of my "love" had been a story about someone i didn't actually know yet.

**True Refuge by Tara Brach.** for when the longing got unbearable. her RAIN approach gave me somewhere to put the feeling other than back onto him. this is the one i still use.

things i bounced off, mostly the empath-meets-narcissist genre that turns every difficult person into a predator and every sensitive person into a flawless victim. real life had more grey in it than that.

what i'd love help with. is there anything good specifically on the line between empathy and enmeshment, where caring stops and self-erasure starts. that's the line i keep tripping over and no book has nailed it for me yet. and what actually helped other empaths tell a projection from the real thing? Thank you if u read this far!!

Have you ever been in conversation with someone and as you're looking in their eyes you start to feel past the words for a moment and you can sense their meaning, then it's suddenly like you can really hear all the thoughts inside the words?

My partner says I can see in people's souls, and there's been a couple times that a friend has hurriedly left the interaction only to come back in the following weeks to say it was like I pulled out their soul and showed it to them with a simple sentence. I've never had anyone enjoy the experience, but many who thanked me for it later.

The weird thing is I don't mean to do it, but I love to understand how we think, and feel and the interplay of that is amazing to me. So, when anyone is willing to really engage in a deep dialogue with me where I can ask them, "did you decide that because of this?" or, "did you enjoy how that thought made you feel or what did it make you feel?" I get focused in and then BAM! I start to get it and see the patterns and I hear the aspirations around the words.

Then maybe because I'm outside looking in I can notice the parts they're blind to and sometimes I can feel a need that is so crystal clear to me. Some tiny clue they are unable or afraid to investigate, which makes me sad so I look in their eyes and it happens, I feel what they do, I get a good sense of what they want for the them they hope to be, and suddenly it's like a giant neon sign appears with the exact words to show them without attacking their own beliefs.

I don't know if it's just autism and the over developed empathy of a trauma survivor with DID, or just maybe something more. I know I wish I knew how to use it better, or to help more people, but I'm pretty scared of people. So, yeah, anyone else have something like that?

What is it called when you go in the day and expect to have a good day, Then a person you don't even know ruins the day for you. Now you have to carefully monitor your actions words, But I usually just end up shutting down completely and not talking anymore.

Even now the next day I'm still feeling terrible because when I meet a new person I usually give them no expectations. Now they gave me negative energy and I just feel so awful.

How do I fix that?

All my life I’ve been really empathetic of a lot of things. I have this blessing (or curse) where I actually feel the pain of others and it mentally and physically affects me.

Lately, I have been feeling overwhelmed with trying to save dogs and cats from the euthanasia list at my local shelter and it all started when I found out that the homeless man that took care of two dogs for years had to surrender them to a high kill shelter. One of the dogs was placed on the euthanasia list earlier this week and I spent the whole day sharing and sharing to every page I found looking for a foster and emailing any rescuer I could find. He ended up being saved by a rescue and is currently with a foster. The other dog is still up for adoption at the shelter and I have been making non stop posts trying to get her adopted or fostered. I did run into this problem where I contacted this rescue and when I began searching them up, I saw a post someone made last year about how they’re a scam and all that and now I’m freaking out that the rescue is actually a scam and will pick the dog up and will abuse her or something (so far they have not replied to my message, only read it).

I just feel so exhausted. I hate how I get so attached to homeless peoples dogs and hate that I can’t take them in or save them. For example, there’s a dog that another homeless man has near my apartment and he carries her in a stroller and takes good care of her. Today, I saw that he hides her behind bush while she sleeps in her stroller and I haven’t stopped crying since. I just have this responsibility of wanting to protect them no matter what, and then I get so attached (just like in the case with the two dogs).

Idk if I’m even making sense. I just wish I could stop or reduce my ability of becoming too attached. Idk.

i keep seeing this in soul journeys, and also in normal life.

ppl say they want guidance. Signs. clear answer. But when it comes, they often ignore it, or hear only the part they like.

For me intuition / Higher Self is not just “getting message.” It is skill. You have to hear it without mind jumping in and repainting everything.

I learned this through thousands of soul journeys. Many times Higher Self says some version of: “we guided her, but she didn’t listen.” Not with anger. More like calm smile. Like ok, this became lesson too.

One woman, let’s call her Lily, lived in Austria.

On paper she was fine. Job, stability, normal life. But inside she felt empty there. Like her light got dimmer every month.

In session, her Higher Self said Austria was not really her place. Too cold, too dark, too heavy for her system. Warmer south Europe would fit her better. Spain, France, Italy, more sun, more softness, more life in body.

But there was one detail.

“Prepare slowly. Don’t rush. Wait for divine timing.”

After session Lily heard only “go south” and somehow deleted “don’t rush” lol. Her mind was desperate to escape, so it grabbed the nice part of guidance and ran.

Then everything became messy. No good flat. Unstable job situation. Wrong people. Wrong timing. Stress. Like trying to force open door that was only half open.

In next session, Higher Self came again, smiling, no judgment. They basically said: you need to listen to all details, not only part your desperate mind likes.

That stayed with me.

Because intuition can say: yes, this direction is right, but wait.

Mind says: NOW, because I can’t stand this discomfort anymore.

Another woman, let’s call her Mary, had different lesson.

When she was dating her now ex-husband, she had this strange feeling about him. Not dramatic. No thunder in sky. Just quiet feeling: something is off.

But surface looked good. Same hobbies. Funny. Charming. He knew what to say. Her mind built whole defence case for him.

“Maybe I’m scared.”

“Maybe I overthink.”

“Maybe I’m sabotaging something good.”

So she brushed it away.

Later she married him, had child with him, and only with time saw what was happening. He had very manipulative, narcissistic patterns. A lot was performance. Nice when it served him, cruel when control was needed, twisting reality until she doubted herself.

Eventually she divorced him because he was destroying her emotionally, mentally, energetically.

Looking back, she understood the first strange feeling was not random. It was warning before mind had proof.

And this is the annoying thing with intuition.

Mind wants evidence first. Intuition often comes before evidence.

Mind says: “but he likes same things.”

Intuition says: “something is off.”

Mind says: “but this country/job looks stable.”

Intuition says: “your life force is shrinking.”

Mind says: “but everyone says this is good.”

Intuition says: “not for you, or not now.”

Of course, not every fear is intuition. Trauma can shout too. Anxiety can make false alarms. This is why discernment is skill.

But real intuition usually feels different.

Quiet. Clean. Simple.

Fear feels rushed.

Desire feels gripping.

Loneliness feels hungry.

Society feels like pressure.

Real guidance has space around it.

Lily’s lesson was timing: yes, but not yet.

Mary’s lesson was discernment: no, even if it looks good.

Both ignored the signal because mind had louder story.

I think higher timeline is not luxury life with no problems. It is more like cooperating with deeper intelligence that sees more than human mind sees. Less unnecessary suffering. Less wrong doors. Less “I knew but ignored it.”

We are trained from childhood to override ourselves.

Be practical. Don’t be weird. Ignore body. Ignore gut. Do what looks good on paper.

Then years later ppl ask, “how did I end up here?”

Often there was whisper long before.

So maybe ask:

where in my life do I already know truth, but I keep negotiating with it?

And am I hearing whole guidance, or only the part my mind likes?

I have Higher Self Communion meditation in my profile for practicing this. But honestly even 5 quiet seconds before a decision can show a lot. Ask, feel the first calm answer, and don’t rush.

Whenever someone does me wrong my brain always just instantly starts making excuses for why they're acting that way. I can never stay mad at somebody because in my mind, "I don't know what they're going through" or they certainly have a reason to do that to me.

I feel like I will just let people disrespect me over and over again because my own mind will try to justify it in favor of them because I think it's unfair of me to be mad

I don't know what to do any more

like i feel sad for humanity

to those who existed, existing and will exist.

i cry for them and idk why. it just makes me feel so deeply

i cry for my mom for the life she had and my father and my sister and someone random

a tree even

i just cant stand the uncertainty and the reality of human life. and its getting to me too much.

we are pushed to move on coz what else can we do.

its just this night, i feel heavily for all of us, for everything that is happening, happened and yet to happen.

i am glad on one part that atleast we are in this together.

we all could either meet somewhere else or just this life is the glimpse of us.

im feeling existence rn. like its like a revelation as if im witnessing it today.

i may forget this feeling until next time

but i miss the way i wasnt aware of things

i wanna caress the heads of everyone thats sleeping and hug them once for their existence.

if theres nothing after this, cheers to living in the same life time as you all.

Thanks