empathy

by Xorkoth

I've been empathetic my whole life, although when I was young people thought I wasn't, as did I because I didn't understand what I was experiencing. That was because I felt frightened by the emotions that I would feel from others, because it was so powerful. As a result, I would shut myself off as best as possible and try to dissociate from the situation, so people thought I was oblivious to it all. The emotional state of others has always deeply affected me, to the point where when I spend much time around depressed people I start to get depressed myself.

As I got older, I eventually tried psychedelics, which opened me up even further, but also helped me to understand what I was experiencing. I can accurately judge how someone is feeling and generally also understand why. I feel emotions coming off of people almost like I can see them. I feel them from a distance, too, without even looking, like a certain kind of tingle coming from the direction of the person. This is the main reason that I generally trip alone when I do a psychedelic, because if the person I'm with is feeling negative, that negativity will be imposed on me. Recently I've been able to separate my own emotions from those of others much more easily while sober, which has helped me a lot personally, but it can still be a challenge to me while in highly suggestible states. I used to be unable to separate my own emotions from others' most of the time, and it frightened me because I'd feel sad or angry or something and not have any idea why. I'm also able to project my own emotions very strongly, as I've been discovering in the past year. I'm usually now able to bring those very close to me out of negative states by projecting positive emotions consistently and consciously directing them towards others.

Source: Bluelight

empathy

• power of projecting one's personality into object of contemplation.
• the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.