On suffering, trauma and the ‘gift’ of being an empath!

I saw the above quote at the beginning of a movie I was watching last night and it go to me to thinking about those of us who just think or feel more about the complexities of life, who may end up being labelled with a psychiatric diagnosis and the fact of being an empath or someone with a stronger attuned antennae for pain or suffering. Sometimes is it just so true, with increased wisdom or knowledge comes increased suffering. Sometimes with increased feeling comes suffering and sometimes with keeping our focus on pain instead of looking for things that bring us joy can also bring us more suffering, for it is also said that pain does not have to become suffering if we don’t focus on it too much and make it more amplified with our thoughts. (I believe the pain is still there and never goes away it just doesn’t immobilise us as much!!)

We are also all prone to negative thoughts. I posted a post a while back taken from Russ Harris’s book The Confidence Gap which said that rather than judge ourselves or think there is something wrong with us for having negative thoughts, if we can just be aware they are there, touch them lightly with mindfulness we have a better time than if we try to battle them all of the time. I know for myself too, focusing on how someone I love may be in pain may mean I suffer more thinking I need to do x y or z to help them and yes, I am happy to help sometimes but in my past I put a lot of my focus on those in my family who were in pain and tended to get a bit in undated by that focus. And then I would get exhausted by running around trying to help them. Helping others too, who have not found their own power can, at times be counterproductive for them and expectations of others support or help can lead to resentment if such expectations are disappointed.

Such it was at Christmas, certain members of my family really wanted me to have it with them, others did not, but there was a point at which I was focusing on the ones who didn’t want me to be there rather than the love of the ones who did and I was able to realise I could be happier about it if I did change my focus. I just sadly wasn’t up to travelling all the way north this year and my debit card was cancelled before Christmas due to helping someone else which means it would have been problematic booking and paying for a fare and managing expenses anyway.

Anyway back to the empath issue. Judith Orloff claims in her book The Empath’s Survival Guidethat as empaths we are here to raise the consciousness of the planet. Because we feel deeply and are sensitive and pick up things others cannot we have deeper view. For example the other day a family member sent me a photo and I could see the real sadness in the eyes of one of the children in the photo, I perhaps could recognise that sadness due to my own past experiences. What I can do with the seeing is not always clear, sometimes its not up to me to change anything and this is something Judith says in her book in the chapter on the gift of being an empath. In that chapter she says as empaths we are here to hold up the light, we are here to bear witness, sometimes in our family our witnessing wont be looked on favourably, narcissists don’t like mirrors being help up to them and I remember watching a video last year about this. Narcissists may try to shut empaths down or try to lead us to believe we are crazy for seeing things they would not like us to see. We may be exiled from certain groups. I know for one this has happened to me in groups and families more times than I could name.

The other thing Judith says about empaths is that often we are here to be circuit breakers in our family of origin. We may be the ones who bring sexual abuse to light, we may be the only poet or artist in a family of business heads or academics, we may be carrying the rejection or attachment trauma of a family member that lays hidden or shrouded in secrecy in the past, something Christian Northrup also talks about in her book on Dodging Energy Vampires.

Our feeling sensitivity is a gift, the pain we are carrying is also a gift but it may be one that we need to break free of or give back to the original giftee, something multigenerational trauma expert Mark Wolynn deals with in his book on carried trauma It Didn’t Start With You. We can as empaths learn to become witnesses of the pain rather than just its carriers or the dumpee in any group or setting. But we may have a long journey to get to this place so that we can alter a dysfunctional relationship with pain, suffering or trauma that we have mistakenly come to believe we must carry on.