Being an empath is just a way of saying,
that you always tend to know how others are feeling.
Science calls it affective empathy,
you know the kind where you don’t just understand someone’s pain,
you feel it as your own.
Where the line between their emotions and yours,
becomes impossible to find.
No definition quite prepares you for what it actually feels like.
Being an empath is like walking into a room and sensing the tension before a single word is spoken.
It is feeling genuine anger,
reading another newspaper headline
So you just end up avoiding the news.
Not because you don’t care,
but because you care too much
and your body knows it.
Being an empath means getting easily overwhelmed in crowded spaces.
Nauseous, sometimes, from the weight of other people’s energy.
It is putting your headphones on
and disappearing into your own world for a while.
It is having a handful of truly deep friendships,
rather than a big group of superficial ones.
It is being the person everyone calls,
when something goes wrong.
It is offering a listening ear, again and again,
and feeling so heavy by the end of the day
that you forget to ask how you are doing yourself.
It is people-pleasing to keep the peace,
even when the peace costs you.
It is shutting down completely,
when someone raises their voice.
It is always being the first to smell something burning in the kitchen
and somehow, that feels like a metaphor too.
It is finding a stray dog on the street
and immediately wondering,
if you could give it a home.
It is carrying the weight of the world so naturally,
that you forget it was never all yours to carry.
I can tell you all the science behind being an empath but ultimately,
feeling it is a whole different story.
