Advice For Empathic Anxiety During Covid-19
Have you noticed an uptick in your worries. Are you feeling more afraid and unsafe over the last few months? That may be in part, due to the world wide pandemic, but it may also be because you are an empath, and you’re picking up the energy and nervousness of people around you. Emotional empaths can have too much empathy and become carried away in what is called empathic anxiety.
Empaths during this crazy time with Covid-19 are experiencing higher levels of distress. Not because you’re not coping, there’s nothing wrong with you, but because you are feeling all the heightened worries, uncertainty, and angst of those around you. As days go by, people are becoming nervous and afraid of what will happen next. Their worries are being picked up by you and adding to your feels of being afraid.
A psychic is someone who can read people’s mind. Which I am not sure is a real thing. But an emotional empath is someone who are feeling others’ emotions. This I believe is a possibility. We can and do feel each other’s feelings.
When we come into contact with someone in a bad mood we can feel it. When your child is angry, hurt, or sad you can feel it. It doesn’t matter if they try to hide their feels we still know. Parents are empaths with their child. Couples are emotionally empathic with their loves.
Feeling each other’s feelings is a part of being human. And in this time of crisis, with the worries, fears, and doubts climbing, if you can feel others’ emotions, your angst will double.
If what I have just said pretty much describes what you have been feeling, listen and learn how to deal with your emotional pain and the emotional pain of others around you.
Hi I’m Brett R. Williams. I am a licensed psychotherapist and the Chief Executive Officer of the GatheringofGoodPeople.com. We are a nonprofit dedicated to helping your personal growth and emotional healing. We provide support to anyone and everyone who needs it through our self-care groups.
We have created this new series called ANXIOUS, to address the anxieties that have been created by the coronavirus.
Sharing advice about empaths and anxiety is easy for me because I’m an emotional empath as well. As a therapist empathy is my primary tool, but it has to be managed or I will burn out. Let me start with an example of what I call empathic anxiety from a favorite author.
Have you ever read anything from Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles? The story is about people, from Earth colonizing Mars. The only trouble is that there are already people living there, Martians. His book chronicles the invasion and conquering of Mars.
It’s just like all the other colonial takeovers that we have seen all over the world, and it does not go well for the Martians.
All of Mr. Bradbury’s books are amazing so I definitely recommend them. But I want to share one part toward the end where the last Martian came out of hiding and tried to mix in with the humans.
What’s interesting about Martians, is that they are extreme empaths and shape shifters as well. They can feel what others are feeling and then they become what (who) you need them to be. They were a very compassionate race.
Well, this final Martian made his way into a crowd of people. He was trying to hold himself back, but his face was shifting. He would look at someone and he then would start to shift into the face of that person’s long lost brother.
He would see another women and he would change into her son who was still back on Earth. On and on it went he changed faces as he caught the gaze of someone in the crowd. Finally, our Martian collapsed and died. He was unable to be there for everyone he touched. He lost himself in his connecting to everyone else.
That’s a warning, not of any future Martian invasion, but that’s a warning for you. If you are an empath you are in danger of being overwhelmed and being lost in the needs and feeling of those around you.
Empathy is a beautiful thing. It is the number one skill I am teaching to couple whom are struggling in there marriage. I find the more than communication skills, or what I call speaker skills, I find that couples need to learn to listen, or listener skills.
I am a major fan of empathizing, it is what makes us human, and it is what connects us one to another. However, empathy has its limits. Particularly, if you are not strong in who you are. If you’re overly focused on loving others, and don’t know how to love yourself. Being empathic can be dangerous, or even hazardous to your mental health, by creating empathic anxiety.
In caring for others, like the Martian, you can lose yourself. Maybe you will not die like the Martian, but can forget who you are.
What worries me even more is what’s happening with the CoronaVirus and the pandemic. Some say it’s a big deal, and they have big life and death feelings about what’s happening.
While others say it’s not a problem, but instead of having no emotions around the Virus they have huge feelings. These people who don’t think it’s a non-issue, have huge feelings towards those who are anxious. They are angry with all the restrictions and any fears others may have that would impact their lives.
What that means is there is a lot of emotion going on out there. Anger and fear are flooding all of our nervous systems. And you as an empath are picking it all up and holding it in your body. Well, that’s going to be particularly bad for you. You are holding your own anxieties and the anxieties of the world.
The answer is to be pipe not a pot. Thanks for listening. I hope this helps. Again I am Brett your favorite shrink. See you next time.
What? You don’t understand the difference between a pipe and a pot? Alright, let me explain a little more.
This problem with empathy is one I have every day as a therapist. It is what causes natural therapists to burn out. Sitting 10 hours a day, with clients back to back, you can become flooded with lots of emotions. Luckily I don’t do that everyday, just a few days a week.
Being an empath and having empathy is a gift from God, but it’s also a burden if you don’t handle it right. As I hope I have described above.
The key, to empathy, and to all feelings is FLOW. Emotions are energy, energy in motion. And when our energy collapses the feels they produce are negative, like fear, hurt, and anger. The secret for healing and helping these emotions is to create flow, to get the emotional energy flowing again.
That’s why people come to therapy to talk, it helps get their emotions moving again to say what they are feeling. However, it is NOT helpful if the therapist then takes on what the client just released. If a therapist holds their client’s emotions it will collapse in the therapist, and make him or her sick.
What to remember when today as we go through the crisis, and if you are around anyone in pain, is to let the emotions come through you. When my clients leave, their feelings leave with them.
Each night, I want you to do a bit of a clearing. Maybe you can meditate or simply go on a walk, but I want you to allow your feelings to flow. Using your breath to release and relax any places in your body that may be holding on to energy.
Start with a body scan and notice inside yourself places that are tense. These are emotional dams. Focus on one spot at a time and give that area of your body your full attention. Where attention goes energy flows, is a phrase we use a lot at the Gathering.
Blocked energy is unconscious, so get aware of yourself and your body. Then begin to use your breath, particularly the exhaule to release and relax the tension, stress, or collapse in your body.
Do this kind of clearing each evening so you are going to bed clean and clear. Any time you may be watching the news, or talking with friends or family and you feel the same kind of tightness building up, clear it with your attention and your breath.
If you need more help, please come and be a part of our self-care groups. Check them out at the Gathering of Good People for more information.
Thanks again for being a part of the Gathering of Good People, I’m Brett R Williams, and I will talk with you again soon.