Letting Go Of The 'Empath' Identity

First published on Medium for the 3 Principles Magazine 'Less Stress, More Success'.

This article is a reflection on the limitations of labeling and categorising ourselves, beginning with the popularized label of the ‘empath’. That said, this inquiry is applicable to any single label you might identify with, e.g. introvert, extrovert, neuro-diverse etc. As such, it might be triggering to some people who feel attached to being whatever the label represents. So if you detect some self-righteous rebuttal in yourself while reading this - it might just be a clue that the ego wants to defend against a challenge to a strongly identified label, and a signpost to look a little deeper.

Empaths are commonly defined as “those that have a higher sensitivity to outside stimuli such as sounds, big personalities, hectic environments and energies. It’s said they bring a lot of heart and care to the world and feel things very deeply. They supposedly lack the filters most people use to protect themselves from excessive stimulation and can’t help but take in surrounding emotions and energies, whether they’re good, bad, or something in between.” Sometimes there are claims of telepathic abilities, or increased vulnerability to ‘psychic attack’.

"When we’re sensitive, we are completely open to attack" - Aletheia Luna, "Awakened Empath"

There are now a glut of books written about empaths; whole websites dedicated to the empath’s traits, lists of things the empath should be wary of or avoid, empath prayers, empath survival guides and even warnings of danger to the empath’s very existence.

And for the longest time, I identified as one of these ‘special’ people who possess a special, superior mode of apprehension that other mere mortals lack. Something which the ego goes to town with, since it loves any intimation of specialness. (Forgive the mildly sarcastic tone of this post, but my aim is to gently occupy the role of tail-puller.)

With this identification came a rather high level of self-absorption - something which I’ve observed in many other self-identified ‘empaths’ - along with a tendency of discussing ‘other’ people’s vibrations that the empath’s superpowers are attuned to. Often leading to criticisms or judgements about other people, and a rather worrying and dehumanising trend of quickly diagnosing narcissism in people who appear to have opposite traits or characteristics to the empath.

When I think I’m an empath, when I believe that fabricated label is ‘me’, I’m hypervigilant towards people who can harm the belief I hold of my inherent, heightened sensitivity, and naturally I take steps to boundary myself. I believe I have to protect my energies and apply all sorts of other strategies to defend against what is just an idea. I bewail the empath’s trait of feeling other people’s pain and I feel helpless in the face of the world’s suffering. It drives me crazy.

And it’s a classic example of being deceived by my senses and my mind’s conditioning. It reinforces the illusion that I am separate from what I observe ‘out there’.

So is it any wonder that empaths experience so many stress related illnesses with all those beliefs circling the body-mind? It takes a lot of energy and attention to drive myself crazy. If I believe the thought that I’m helpless, I'm going to feel sad and discouraged and the world feels like a dangerous place. That just shows that I work perfectly. It doesn’t mean the assessment of ‘helpless’ is part of my being. The ‘true’ thought is, “If and when I believe I’m helpless . . . I feel sad and discouraged.”

And guess what? I don’t have to believe the thought "I’m helpless".

I can be hyper sensitive to loud noises like dogs barking or lawn strimmers, and yet I have also been known to fall asleep at parties with very loud techno music blaring (you might have noticed that young children do this all the time, fall asleep in the midst of chaos!) So how can it be that sensitivity to noise is part of my identity? All experience changes with the variable nature of thought, so I am never stuck as one permanent thing.

We are all born with natural gifts and sensitivities. There is a vast array of sensory data and perception available to us, and yet we pick up a tiny fraction of it. Bats can sniff out veins in their prey by the temperature of the blood, vipers have infrared night vision, and elephant trunks are sensitive enough to pick up vibrations created by elephants as far as 10 miles away. Since I was a child, I was able to attune to other people’s energy strongly and feel what was going on inside them.

Is any of this a problem? Or are these the unique superpowers of every species?

My heightened powers of sensitivity seemed like a problem to me when I felt responsible for how others were feeling. Or even worse, when I believed that I couldn't be OK if other people or the world wasn't OK. When I saw through that and realised - at the deepest level - everyone is OK, including myself, it suddenly looked to me like a great gift that could be wielded in service to humanity, and enable me to show up fully to whatever is needed in the moment.

When I don't believe I'm an empath, all possibilities are available to me. I get to show up in the world unconstrained by the made-up characteristics of the empath label. I can work in therapeutic relationship with others without the story that I’m feeling their pain (which is simply not possible, I can only ever feel my thinking about their pain) and usually, far more effectively. I don't make myself ill by believing stressful thoughts of needing to protect myself, or perform clearing spells every 5 minutes, or sage my entire house each time someone leaves.

The sense of separation is seen for the illusion that it is.

And with that comes a great freedom to live unleashed from mind-created constraints, instead of pouring out my life in the service of a myth. We innocently, yet diligently spend our lives gathering titles, labels and identifications with this, or that. And the irony is, we soon become trapped in a made up facade.

What if our wild souls have always been free, open, adaptable and resilient?

The truth is, all human beings have abilities and potential that far exceed the narrow range in which they usually operate. But we live in a time of so much external and internal 'noise' that it's become near impossible to access those 'special' abilities which are in fact, innate.

Indigenous and tribal cultures view as completely normal, abilities such as; telepathy, communing with animals, precognition of events or changes in the weather, communing with spirit / ancestral guides, receiving wisdom messages from plants. But for those of us raised in the West, our senses have become blunt and dull.

What, if anything, is really real?

No person on the planet possesses the tools to see anything other than a subjective frame of reference at all times. All sense-faculty science (the faculty through which the external world is apprehended) supports this notion that life has no actual fixed ‘realness’ besides agreed upon fabrications (see the work of Prof. Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup). Yet this fabrication is the reality we think is real and then cling to as being full of suffering.

The mind perceives its reality according to its state of realization, and the good news is that if you wish to see differently, you are only ever one thought away from a completely different reality. But most would rather maintain the comfort of their current view of the world, self and other. In that instance, there’s really nothing more to say. It’s almost impossible to help someone who is certain that their view is correct to see something new.

From the innocent misunderstanding that our experiences are caused by things happening outside of us, there is a tendency towards escapism and addiction. Mental health issues are pervasive and overall suffering dominates. People tend to abdicate responsibility for their emotions and projections and believe that others are responsible for how they feel, leading to dualistic relationships filled with blame, demands and control tactics.

So I would invite you to consider - if your world is filled with suffering, isn’t it worth opening the mind to other ways of seeing? Even as a temporary game, or as an experiment?

I want to be clear that this is not a denial of the lived reality of suffering people all over the world. Their experience of suffering is real, deserves the utmost compassion, and efforts must be made towards creating a just and equitable world for all. But with an understanding of the transient nature of thought and the role that consciousness plays in bringing our thoughts to life as a lived experience, greater relief from suffering is available to all beings.

How do I know this?

Because I experienced it myself after awakening from the dream (or nightmare) that I was a victim of life's circumstances. 20+ years of serious depression, anxiety and a chronic pain condition miraculously dropped away. I now work with people from all walks of life, in various degrees of suffering, witnessing their profound transformations when fresh realisations are arrived at.

So why do we avoid a movement toward conscious realization?

I think there are several factors:

• It's not a peaceful process, it's a burning away of all that is false, and burning hurts.

• Language is the predominant tool we have to make sense of things and the mind loves to categorise, label, compare and evaluate.

• We constantly strive to build ourselves an identity; from profession, social position, race, nationality, financial status, gender proclivity, mental health diagnoses, the list is endless.

All in an innocently misguided attempt to protect ourselves against the no-thing-ness that lies beneath and before the thought-constructed layers of identity.

Those that are drawn towards awakening might begin by becoming aware of the transient, momentary, will-o’-the-wisp nature of thoughts that arise due to constantly changing conditions. And a ‘label’ is just a thought.

Later, we might realise that the ‘self’ and all of its sub-personalities (such as the empath) were never alive, but more like play things, or dolls that have outlived their usefulness. And if this is true for us, might it not also be true for the one we labelled ‘narcissist’?

When we choose to identify with any kind of label, we pathologize an aspect of ordinary humanness and deny ourselves the privilege to change and shift in a different direction, to evolve and adapt. So if labels (diagnostic or self-appointed) hurt people, why do we cling to them?

I suspect it’s because humans seem to fear no-thing-ness, or the void, above all else.

My experience of having faced this void head on through various means; deep meditation practice, self-inquiry tools, breathwork and the ceremonial use of psychoactive plant medicines to name a few, showed me that there is nothing to fear - in fact the opposite.

As has been written before, the void is, in fact, fertile. Out of the formless void, everything was birthed. The no-thing-ness is radiantly alive and pregnant with limitless possibility, it is pure creativity, expansion and paradoxically, death. But not the final death as we commonly view it, more precisely the changing of one form into another. And from this placeless place we can be an expression of limitless potential.

So I invite you to reflect upon the labels you’ve been given or gave yourself, and notice all the ways that they constrain you from being the limitless potential that you really are. The label is made up in thought. The only real constant is the awareness that is experiencing. When I rest in that still, quiet, open space - the natural gifts and talents of this unique being are more available to me.

If you’d like some help to uncover your true nature, feel free to drop me a message and book a free, powerful 30 minute taster coaching conversation.

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