For starters, an empath has the uncanny and often unfortunate, or let’s say really challenging, ability to experience (I can’t emphasize that word enough) the consciousness of others.
They experience the energy of others, to the point that it can be debilitating, physically exhausting, emotionally painful, and mentally confusing.
EXPERIENCE is the key word in this description. It’s very challenging to describe the experience. But it could be described like being possessed, but not the way possession has traditionally been considered.
Take a child empath to the mall and watch their behavior turn from sweet to ugly real fast. It’s not necessarily a tantrum. It’s a hyper-vigilance. A fear that breaks out. You’ll look at this formerly wonderful child and think, “What the heck has gotten into them? Their behaving wild, what is going on?”
Then you take him home, he’s maybe angry for a little while, calms down eventually, feels safe again and it’s like nothing even happened. You can even ask him later, “What happened to you at the mall?” He’ll look at you dumbly, like what are you talking about? It’s not because he has amnesia. He really doesn’t know, yet.
The experience of an empath summed up in one sentence:
What has gotten into me?
Some of that energy comes in by way of feeling and thoughts of others, but it’s beyond the level of feelings and thoughts. To identify as an empath is not to see how one responds to people, places, and things, it’s to become aware of how one experiences people, places, and things.
Unlike empathy, where one can place themselves in another person’s shoes. An empath suddenly has that other person (or energy) in their own shoes.
It’s an inexplicable and again, often challenging ability, to be a pure medium or conduit for energy and varying levels of consciousness, which don’t authentically belong to the individual expressing the consciousness.
The empath can experience themselves energetically violated, again and again, though they may not know how to express this until they take some time to understand.
