I just recently discovered that I am an empath. Believing is harder then I thought. (Believing I'm giftedin this way...though we are all gifted somehow, right?) So I was wondering how many others are also empaths-and how do you cope with this? Also, do you have any advice for a novice empath?

Blessings all!

Chrissy

While when giving guidance and healing being able to temporarily experience another person's emotions as if they were your own can be a blessing and can provide you and your  guide with much useful information as to how best to help the person in front of you, if you were to remain permanently open in this manner 24/7, it would be like a living hell.



It is therefore important not to develop your emotional sensitivity to others, without at the same time learning techniques in order to turn your abilities off now and then for the sake of your own sanity and well being. Constantly attempting to help another person by always sacrificing your own equally important needs could very easily make you begin to resent the very people you are most wanting to help.

It is also an essential requirement of any effective empath that he or she must maintain a sense of balance with regard to living the rest of their life as best they can, in order to produce a reasonably well balanced personality. Would you like to be given advice on how to live your life better by someone who has never truly lived his or her own?

It would be like giving being offered advice on bringing up your children by someone who themselves never had a brother or sister, and had never been a parent. Who is better qualified to help others with their problems than someone who has also learnt to better cope with their own in the schoolroom of life?

eye_of_tiger

Well said eye_of_tiger.
Wounded healer empath here.  
It's a blessing and a challenge.   With gifts from the Gods there are always Blessings and Challenges.  Both sides of the coins need to be lived with.  There is also the edge of the coin.  The place to find where you are between the two.  One can't stay in any one part of the coin.  One must be able to be in all the parts of the coin.  The same in life with a Divine Gift, or 2 or 3 or 4 or more.  Be patient and loving with yourself.  Give yourself room to learn about your gift.  Accept the challenges and don't use them to beat yourself up.  Enjoy the Blessings and share them freely.  Don't use them to over inflate yourself.  Enjoy all of the coin.

Gifts are given - we put no effort into their operation.  Talents, skills, abilities are things that are a part of us and we realize how important it is to train them to their best possible function.  That is why all psychic phenomena are talents - not gifts.

Now that you recognize you have a talent, what do you do to train and focus the function of the talent?  Finding a good teach to gain the basics and a circle to meditate and open/awaken to their potential, is as important to psychic abilities as to a concert pianist.  Even the talented need some focus.

I love what EoT said about it.  Make sure you know how to turn on/off this ability.  When I first discovered I was an empath, for awhile my motto was "Empathics suck... literally!" mainly because growing up I was drained almost every day.  I didn't know I was an empath until awhile back.  After that I quickly learned grounding and shielding.  If you're not careful, you'll quickly aquire your friends' emotions, pains, etc.  When I'm going through my own trials, I forget to keep my shield going, and end up with some friend's pains.  Since I have a pregnant friend, I'm making sure I keep myself shielded :P I don't want to experience that until I have to!  If you want someone to just chat about with that, feel free to PM me.  EoT did a wonderful job telling you what you need to know.