Empath Or Over-Aware? From Hyper-Vigilance To Safe Empathy

Many people who identify as “empaths” are actually living in a state of nervous system hyper vigilance — constantly reading moods, scanning for tension, and monitoring others to feel safe. In this talk, we explore the important difference between true empathy and survival-based over-awareness, and why sensitive people so often become exhausted, overwhelmed, or disconnected from themselves. Learn how to move from anxious monitoring into healthier empathy: grounded, connected, compassionate, and still deeply caring — without losing yourself in the process.

Transcript

Hello, I'm Alison and in this audio I want to unpack something that's really important for us to understand and that is the difference between empathy and hypervigilance. So a lot of people will say to me that they soak up everyone else's energy, That they feel things very strongly, Especially things that are a source of stress, Fear, Anxiety, Woundedness or pain like sadness and they find it hard to ground emotionally because they're overwhelmed by other people's feelings and they couch this in terms of being an empath. It might very well be that these people are empaths but the things they're describing are not the characteristics of empathy so much as the characteristics of hypervigilance. It means being hypersensitive to other people's moods and that is something different and why it helps us to make the distinction is that we want to be able to have the strengths of empathy with the protection that can come with that. We want to be able to use one of the key strengths of empathy which is self-empathy to create a boundary between us and the feelings of other people because otherwise we can become so sensitive and so overwhelmed that we just collapse and our empathy isn't really useful in the way that empathy is meant to be which means that we'll be able to show up for others with thoughts and feelings of compassion and actions of care, Including ourselves, Show up for ourselves the same way. It also means that we're not healing that anxiety, That stress response that's very alive in us that makes us feel so under the influence and sometimes under the attack of other people's feelings and emotions and experiences. So settle in and I'm going to begin to unpack this and also offer some help for not only being aware of when you're in hypervigilance rather than empathy but how to strengthen your own empathic self and enjoy it. So the core distinction is that true empathy is a capacity, It's something we are capable of, Something that we can offer, Something that is a strength we have, Whereas hypervigilance is a protection strategy. And hypervigilance is something that almost always develops in our early life in our childhood and that's because as children we are wired in our developing nervous systems to track safety through other people's responses, To know that we are safe through things like other people's tone of voice, Their facial expression, Their mood, Their energy. If we are in an environment that feels unstable, Chaotic or unpredictable, It might feel critical or emotionally inconsistent or even unsafe, Our developing young nervous system learns I need to monitor closely to stay okay and we become highly attuned to things like micro expressions on people's faces, The tiniest shifts in tone and invisible emotional undercurrents. So this isn't a gift, It's an adaptation, It's adapting to an environment and a situation, It's a safety adaptation because if we can keep alert and aware of these things there's a sense which is a kind of misunderstanding but an automatic sense of that we'll stay safe. It might be that there's a voice in your head that's telling you yes this was me, I learned to read the room before I learned to read myself. What that turns into later is that when we become adults we might say I'm an empath, I read things, I feel everything but underneath there's often a scanning for threat, An anticipation of a reaction and a conscious trying to prevent any discomfort. Or any conflict, Any adverse reaction, So our whole energy is being managed by what happened to us as children, That experience and by trying to stay safe and you'll notice from all of these things that where our attention is is outward, Our attention is outward focused, It's not rooted in self. And this is an important distinction, It feels like sensitivity but it's actually nervous system vigilance. And here are some signs that what we're experiencing is hyper-vigilance, Not empathy. See which one of these you identify with or sounds true to you. You feel responsible for other people's emotions. You struggle to relax around others. You sometimes or often override your own needs to manage the environment. You feel drained rather than enriched by connection. You find yourself absorbing emotions without choice or any sense of control over that or boundary. So empathy is a sense of feeling with others but this hyper-vigilance isn't feeling with others, It's actually trying to stay safe around them. What true empathy actually is, Is the ability to sense another person's experience without losing connection to yourself. So it includes boundaries, Choice and regulation in your system. It's relational rather than survival-based. And it has these core qualities, A sense of I can feel you and I can feel me. There's a space there. There's a space for self-care rather than overwhelm and there is definitely care but there's not urgency. That urgency can sometimes exhibit itself in a rush to fix or heal for instance. There's a missing piece when we're hyper-vigilant and that is self-connection. Hyper-vigilance disconnects us from our body, It disconnects us from our own needs and it disconnects us from our internal signals, The guidance from within our bodies. True empathy really requires that we're in touch with our body, Our needs and our internal signals because true empathy requires us being anchored in our own experience first. Otherwise we lose ourselves in someone else's, Otherwise we step out of our own body. Empathy begins at home in your own body. So how do we develop our empathy in a way that's safe and authentic? Let's talk about developing safe true empathy. The number one thing is come back to yourself first. Before reading others, Ask yourself what am I feeling right now? Build familiarity with your own internal world. When you wake up in the morning, First thing, Place your hand on your heart, Give yourself a hug. Breathe your own breath in your own body, Breathe into you, Feel the spaces and the edges of your body as a boundary between you and things that are other, Not one that disconnects you, A soft sensitive energy boundary. Ask yourself, How am I? Just say how are you to yourself? Have a sense of where your energy is. Have a sense of what the parts of you are feeling and let them feel and say to yourself, I'm with you today, I'm on your side. That's coming back to yourself, That's an example of a practice you can do at any time. Secondly, Regulate before you relate. If your nervous system is activated, You're not empathizing, You're reacting. This is where we use these simple body anchors, Our feet on the ground, Our hand on our heart, A longer, Slower exhalation. These grounding practices in our own body that give us a felt sense of being here, Now, Standing our own ground, In our own body, In a space that is an energy space we hold and hold sovereignty of in our environment. Thirdly, Make a shift from scanning to sensing. So scanning is when things seem to be going very fast in our minds, Our eyes may actually be literally looking around, Our body might be fidgety, Scanning feels fast, We're hyper alert, We're very focused on the future, What's going to happen, What do I need to make happen, What do I need to get done? Sensing is something slower, More present, More grounding. Sometimes it's good to take a moment and gently notice what's still in the air, What's landed, And what's still in the air, What's still in the air, What thoughts haven't been completed and satisfied, What feels unresolved, What feels like it's coming through from others. Gently noticing what you're picking up without needing to act on it. That level of attention is very grounding. Fourthly, Introduce choice. You don't have to engage with everything. True empathy includes, Do I want to engage with this? Do I need to? You're allowed to step back, You're allowed not to take things on, You're allowed to stay in your own lane. Sometimes it's about remembering that and giving ourselves that permission. When we're hyper-vigilant, When we're hyper-activated, We can launch into everything like a bull in a china shop. Stepping back, Not taking things on, And staying in our own lane actually helps the collective a lot. It's not always the right thing to step in or take more on or move out of our own lane. Fifthly, We need to separate feeling, Feeling something, Right, From responsibility, From being responsible. You can feel someone else's sadness. That doesn't make you responsible for them having it or for fixing it. The best kind of caring to experience from someone is that they hold a safe space for you to feel what you feel and they validate it. Sometimes when people with the best intentions want to offload some of that sadness they're feeling because they're picking up on it from you, What they do is they try to rush to heal or fix it or cheer you up. That's not necessarily a comfortable feeling because it feels like you're being bypassed, That someone's saying it's not that bad or you're not really feeling this and really it's okay to feel sad and to have someone holding a space for you and keeping you company with that can feel very healing. So the key line here is I can care without carrying. Sometimes it's really good to reframe this identity of being an empath, Especially being an empath is something we use. I'm an empath and that means I'm often overwhelmed or I'm often exhausted or I find it hard to watch the news or I'm, You know, I'm sensitive to everyone, My feelings are too big. That's I'm an empath and therefore overwhelmed. We want to shift that to I developed strong awareness of others, Right? I developed strong awareness of others and now I'm learning to include myself in that awareness. Try saying that, I developed strong awareness of others and now I'm learning to include myself in that awareness. So the healing direction is this movement from monitoring to inhabiting your body and experience, To move from reacting to relating and importantly to remove from all that absorbing to discerning what you want or need to carry and what you don't and that is your choice. It doesn't make you not an empath to decide to step back or not carry things. It increases your empathic capacity and its usefulness because you're in your own body in space, You're grounded and you're more available, More discerning and a safer place for people to come to where they won't feel that they're upsetting you or agitating you or exhausting you or draining you because you feel steady and you care. When you come home to yourself you'll find that your sensitivity stops being a burden, It becomes something beautiful, Spacious, Like truly connecting. I hope some of this has landed with you. You can always come back to it, Journal with it, Let me know in the comments, The review section, How you found it, Maybe any aha moments you had. We need strong sensitive souls in this beautiful world and we need you to feel really good, Really present and really yourself. Until next time, Take care of yourself and bye for now.

Reviews

I found this talk thought provoking with some practical suggestions. Will come back again and listen. Thanks Alison.

Dearest Alison. Thank you for this very enlightening and helpful talk. Oh my gosh I realise while I feel for others I am definitely living in hyper vigilant mode a lot and have been like this all my life. I lost my Mother very young and I have always scanned my environment and picked up on even the tiniest cues on how others in my life are feeling and taking it on. Is it hard to fully overcome this Alison? This lesson I will need to listen to again and again to hopefully become less hyper vigilant and no longer absorbing other people's stuff. Thank you so much for this lesson again 💗 Do you happen to have a course in this topic? Kind regards Bridie

This resonated with me completely. I got so much out of this that I truly needed! Not reacting ~ relating. Not absorbing ~ Discerning. And best of all I can care without carrying. I think I have always felt the need to take that responsibility of the feelings and take them on so another doesn't have to hold that burden. And while they always feel lighter I'm completely under water and drowning. This gave a lot of great perspective and I wrote so much down to control reflect on it.