The challenges of high level empathy associated with inner child abandonment

Having early childhood trauma may make us higher in empathy in some cases, in others we may have been born with high level sensitivity but it may not turn into co-dependency which is an inappropriate desire to help others which turns detriemental to our own self.

I had the realisation in therapy on Monday that as a child I naturally wanted to help my parents and my siblings, especially the sister who is now struggling so much, the problem being as Lisa Romano notes in the talk below being that for those of us with significant childhood trauma or abandonment issues it is not my responsibility to fix or save others. Wanting to do so may come out of both projection of wounding and a poor state of realism around my true abilities and capabilities. In addition there are times I may be able to help if someone asks for that help, but I cannot do the emotional work for someone who is not willing or able to do it.

Having a year break from my sister and reconnecting over past weeks has shown me life was easier and better without the contact.. It is hard to say this as I do love my sister and I enjoy seeing her but at the moment I have realized I cannot always see her and not take on her feelings and empaths picking up the feelings of those around us is just naturally something that happens, the problem comes when we start to attach and get pulled in, when we become the absorber rather than the observer. I find that when this happens when I come away from the interaction I so often experience huge inward spins and tears in my energy field.

Thie instinctive need of me both to help and to feel what others may not be consciously feeling has often made me then start to take it all on board, Its taking me years to see how detrimental this is to me at times.. That said to be able to share some relaxed high quality connecting time with my sister, to hear her, to touch her softly is so important and is something I feel she is hungering for.. It is just very hard to her to find ways to express that need and get it met.

I have a bit of an energy hang over today as I really struggled yesterday as her son contacted me on Tuesday to say the people at aged care believed she was regressing so they wanted her to have an earlier session of Electro Convulsive Therapyand would I pick her up to get her to the hospital by 8.30 am and then collect her. two hours later. I had been strugging a lot since the last outing after which I cut my finger due to the build up of past feelings and tensions in both of us so it was hard to say no to the 8.3o am start but I managed it, even in the midst of long silences that felt a lot like disapproval but could have also been down to my own anxiety at being asked and feeling in many ways it was too much. My love for and concern about my sister needing connection made it impossible not to refuse to the part that felt more manageable for me even if I knew it was going to be a push, i.e, collecting her afterwards,, so I agreed to that and even managed to find my way there after a quick and somewhat frazzled walk in the park with Jasper..

Entering the Mental Health Unit was triggering to me it’s so sparse and cold and I was shown to a small waiting room and did not have to wait for long until a lovely nurse guided my sister out.. She looked terrible and is beginning to resemble my older sister whose body blew out in later years from far too much pharmaceautical medicine. I guided her to the car and she expressed distress that my nephew had asked the help from me, but I feel he struggles so much and has so much on his plate it would have been uncaring not to help and even if I think everything about the ECT is not helping I am also at the point where I will honor other’s choices and paths.

It was sad to drop my sister back to aged care even if it seems a lovely place and I was glad I had Jasper there to give her some love as she really did respond to him and that was the only moment in which I actually felt her fully engage. My sis loves Jasper a lot (even if she did criticize his weight) and was the one who chose him out of a litter on the day we went to select him, due to the fact he was a bit cheeky.

I cried a lot after dropping her off and then put a call through to a family friend but what I realised then was that I had had trouble holding the feelings inside. This grand daughter of my Nana’s brother had a similar diagnosis to my sister many years ago (bi-polar) and got ruined by medication to the point that she eventually got herself off everything by doing a lot of research on the DNA aspects of our multigenerational addiction trauma history in terms of cell methlylation. Over a long period she has managed to stablise herself and it is always good to share with her as we both went through similar abandonments at the hands of our parents who were emotionally absent. I tried to tell my sister about this so many times but she just seems to lack the ability to seek any kind of alternative outside of the medical model.

Today I listened to these two videos my Lisa Romano and they really spoke to me about how much my inner child wanted to heal others out of her own deep wounding (Mars and the Sun now triggering my Chiron Pluto opposition across the signs of Pisces and Virgo respectively.) As A Sun sign Pisces Lisa knows well how as an empath with poor and neglectful parenting we can become drawn into toxic helper roles. I found both of these so helpful to me today..

Spending this time with my sister again and seeing how emotional it makes me, I am trying to learn when I may be taking on the emotions of others. I also have to watch when my own wounds pull me in to help in a way that may leave me feeling jaded or drained. I get so confusesd around so much of this, In a way it felt good to be asked by my nephew, he really does need the help I just wish there were isnights he had outside of the medical model alone. All I can do is front up at this point and stand in my truth without trying to foist in on anyone else, which was how things came unstuck around this time last year. I am still learning so much on my own journey about what it means to be an empath and how to face those challenges of over sensitivity and an inappropriate desire to ‘heal’ others which may often become a form of righteousness or hubris.