Oh, the New Age and all its inexplicable feeling rules. Wow, what a mess that was! But that community and those ideologies were great living laboratories for me to see exactly what happens when people try to repress, avoid, and transmute emotions. It so doesn’t work that it’s amazing people can’t see it. Silly rabbits!

Some people who are working with emotions in thoughtful and empathic ways are neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (here’s a post about his work), child psychologist Mary Lamia (here’s a post about her), our pal Frans De Waal. The emotions are slowly coming out of the shadows, yay!

I’m glad you’re here. We empaths have to stick together! Here’s an updated definition of empathy, which comes from a post I wrote for a site called Autism and Empathy: “An empath is a person who is aware that they read emotions, nuance, subtext, undercurrent, social space, relational behaviors, and gestural language to a greater degree than is deemed normal (you could also call them highly sensitive people).”

Huzzah!

Thank you for normalizing my experience as an empath. For much of my life, I’ve felt crazy because I realized I see – more accurately, feel! – the world much differently than others. I’ve often felt frustrated, scapegoated, shamed, and invalidated, because as an empath, I pick up on what’s really being felt and what’s there. But if others aren’t aware of their feelings, or don’t see them, they blame me or accuse me of being too sensitive. (Yep, I am also a highly sensitive person, but I don’t see it as a character flaw.) It’s like living on 2 different planets.

You’ve helped me appreciate that no, I’m not crazy! You’ve also given me a language for understanding. In one of your posts, you talked about how as children, we’re subtly communicated all these rules about how we’re supposed to behave and be. As a child, I picked up on all those hidden rules, perceptions, all the things that weren’t said but felt. I internalized all those rules and as an adult, ended up with a large pile of rules that I then I had to weed through – are these my thoughts/expectations, or someone else’s? These giant “shoulds” have caused me such suffering, and I’ve come to see that much of my healing journey is shedding or releasing these beliefs. You were the first person to put this into words for me, and I feel very grateful – I feel understood and validated, and with these words of explanation, I have something tangible to wrap my brain around.

One of my teachers, Dr. Gordon Neufeld, a developmental psychologist, calls emotions “the engine of maturation.” I think you, along with him and a few others, are at the forefront of helping our society appreciate that emotions are not a nuisance variable (another one of Dr. Neufeld’s phrases), but how we become fully alive and connected to each other.

I feel so angry when I see a chart in New Age circles of an emotions ladder, and about how we need to rise up out of the lower emotions to the higher emotions. Something in my heart recoils at this! In my experience, I felt ashamed by this chart, because I felt a lot of the lower emotions, and thought this meant there was something wrong with me, or that I was a “lesser” or “unspiritual” person…

So I did all this inner work to focus on only feeling positive things, to cut out my negative emotions, to rise up the ladder, which thankfully, but painfully, backfired. I then tried a radically different tactic. I stopped running from my emotions and started feeling all of them – not easy, but much more healing than running from them, suppressing them, shaming them, or trying to “transmute” them.

In feeling all my feelings – including the lower ones – I realized that I wasnt’ crazy or a terrible person, but one who was feeling fully alive. I appreciate finding others who walk this path, because it has felt very lonely at times. (I’ve found that if other people aren’t comfortable with all of their emotions, they usually aren’t comfortable with your feeling all of yours!)

So, thank you for your work and for normalizing my experiences. Thank you for being another voice out there saying, “Emotions are not the enemy! They serve a purpose.” And crucially, for me, thank you for giving me tools to work with my emotions. (I’ve got your audio series coming.)

I’m diving deep into your work.

In gratitude and appreciation, Karly

Thanks for writing. I actually did a post on how to create some privacy for yourself. See if it gives you any ideas: http://karlamclaren.com/how-to-ignore-people