Are you too empathic? Is your empathy hurting rather than helping your
relationships with men and people in general? I work with a lot of empaths
doing this job, and in fact, I am big one myself, right? I started my career
as a veterinarian, and you don't get a field that's filled with many more
empaths than you do vet, right? You have to be able to sense an animal's
pain, have to know what the animal feels like, and then want to treat
that and help that animal. The problem is that empathy can go too far,
and we all know someone. It might be you, it might be one of your friends who
uses "loving acts" as an excuse to meet everyone else's needs and make
everyone else around her feel good while she does nothing for herself
and her own needs go unmet. So I'm going to make this really quick and
powerful for you. Here's three signs that your empathy might be going
too far and ruining your relationships with men and people in general.
Number one, you confuse self-sacrifice with love.
There's this idea that the more we sacrifice for someone, the more we
must love them, the more that is a loving act, and it's ridiculous.
I think it comes from the idea that while we see someone who gives
nothing like a narcissist and we say, "well, I don't want to be that person
that's not loving, so the opposite of that, the person who gives everything must
be really loving." That's complete BS. Loving cannot be measured on a
scale of how much you sacrifice.
You're literally comparing apples and oranges. A loving act comes because
you feel an abundance of love in yourself. You feel an abundance in
yourself and then you want to give it to others. Neither the narcissist nor the
extreme self-sacrificer fills an abundance of love within themselves.
They both love scarce and neither is going to be able to perform loving
acts to their full intent until they fill themselves up first.
Number two, you're unable to cause short term hurt to others in order to
help them. This was a common one that I get again dealt with in the
veterinary profession, which is where sometimes when an animal's in trouble,
you have to hurt that animal a little bit to ultimately help it.
You might have to put a cannula in its arm, you might have to put in a stingy
local anesthetic. It's one of the challenges and you know what? I had to get over
my empathy to be able to do my job and help that animal.
A real life example from my own life was when I had a relationship end because
honestly, the sex wasn't there for me, and it would've been easy to lie to that
person or to say something else or that I just wasn't feeling it, but it's my
responsibility to that person I'm with to tell them the truth.
I may have had to hurt her a little in the short term for her to hear that,
and hopefully, in the long term, that helps her because it then gives her
the feedback. In the end though, that's not up to me and I'm not responsible
for that. What I have to do is be honest and authentic in my own life
and do my best to help others in the long-term with that. So if I'm unwilling
to hurt someone in the short term to potentially do that, it could mean I end
up lying, and thus, my empathy has gone too far.
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And number three is that your resulting emotion is negative.
So I can always tell an empath who's giving too much from an empath,
who's giving the right amount by looking at how they feel after the
giving act. If they are feeling drained, if they're feeling resentful,
if they're feeling like they didn't really want to do the thing, but they should
because of some kind of guilt or commitment, I know that that empath
has gone too far and is not doing that for the right reasons. If an empath
is giving for the right reasons, they feel great afterwards. They feel abundant,
they feel like they've really made a difference to someone's day, and
they have a spring in their step. So if you're an empath and you're
worried you might be giving too much or performing too many "loving acts"
for people, check in as to how you feel after the act, and you'll be able to get
the truth. So those are the three signs that you might be "too loving" or giving
too much in your relationships.
You're confusing love with sacrifice. You're unable to hurt someone in the short term
to help them in the long-term. And basically, you feel cruddy, resentful, or drained
after the loving or empathic act.
Well, that is the video. Thank you so much for watching!
I would love to hear thoughts, comments, questions on these concepts below.
Hit that subscribe button with the little bell, so you get the notifications for the
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