Hot Take: 7 Eye-Opening Signs You’re An Empath

In this solo-chat episode you’ll learn what it ACTUALLY means (and feels like) to be an Empath and why the typical definitions, descriptions & tips are totally missing the mark. 

These 7 signs would’ve been so helpful on my own journey and they may even make you look back and understand your younger self differently like they did for me! 

Like many things in life, it was only in hindsight that I came to understand the true essence and beauty of being an Empath. My hope is that these eye opening signs and tips will help you more deeply understand and manage your own gifts as a highly sensitive person.

Show Notes: 

Episode 70: Your Aura 101: Dive Deep PLUS Proven Tools and Techniques! https://www.buzzsprout.com/2084888/14951747  or
https://www.joyfulmedium.com/blog/your-aura-101

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/empath

BetterHelp article quoted: 

https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/general/empathy-vs-codependency-a-clinical-examination-of-two-complex-interactions/

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Transcript

Hey beautiful soul Welcome to Spirit Speakeasy. I'm Joy Giovanni, Joyful Medium. I'm a working psychic medium energy healer and spiritual gifts mentor. This podcast is like a seat at the table in a secret club, but with mediums, mystics and the spiritual luminaries of our time so come behind the velvet ropes with me and see inside my world is I chat insider style with profoundly different souls. We go deep share juicy stories laugh a lot and it wouldn't be a speakeasy without great insider secrets and tips. You might even learn that you have some gifts of your own. So step inside the spirit speakeasy. Hey, beautiful soul Welcome back or welcome in for another episode of spirit speakeasy. In today's one on one chat, just you and me, I am going to share with you seven eye opening signs that you are an empath. Now, this is a bit of a hot take because this is not that candy coated kind of generalized list that is all over the internet, this might be a little surprising to you some of these signs might be completely different than what you expected. And you might actually find out today that you can see yourself in a lot of these signs in a way that you might not have ever considered before. So first, I want to share a little bit of a story and why I was inspired to share this. You guys know I think by now if you've ever listened to before that one of my intentions with spirits speakeasy is to create a trustworthy resource that's a little bit of an insider's perspective, not necessarily, you know those generic lists that you're gonna find online who were probably that were probably created by people who aren't working in this in this work in the spiritual work.
So this episode was inspired because I have so many clients that it typically is on their second visit. Sometimes if they're a little more open, they'll tell me on their first visit, but maybe I've done a reading for them and then I'll see them again for coaching or a spiritual assessment to help them start to understand what some of their gifts are. And they'll ask me if they're an empath, sometimes and my response is to ask them what being an empath means to them. And I often get very different answers. I don't ask the question to challenge them on it, but I asked it because I want to understand what they are experiencing. This is a key word. So hang on to this word as you listen to the episode because really, experience is one of the keys to this conversation. In the spiritual gifts. sense of the word being an empath has more to do with our experience and how we process emotions, both ours and others. And as I was writing this list this list out I kept thinking of one beautiful soul in particular, I'm going to call her Yara for the story. And this is a true story. But I've changed the name for privacy because those of you that have ever worked with me know I keep my you know, there's a confidentiality to reading for someone. So Yara was a student of mine at one point and she was working on intuitive development and she was in mentorship with me a program. She arrived to our one to one appointment. She was really upset and stressed but she was ready to work. When she got there. She came with a notebook and pen, and I made her some tea and we took a few deep breaths. And then I noticed she was tightly grasping something with her notebook that she had printed out on like printer paper, and it was highlighted and it had notes written on it. In our last class session before this one on one, the group and I had started working on the first steps of building that relationship with your intuition with start with starts with learning about sensing energy, and Yara launched into why she was upset. The way she shuts said it was like I found all these lists on the internet of what I should be feeling. If I'm an empath and I know you said that we can work on my intuition. But if I'm not even an empath, is this even gonna work? And my response was, I want to check in on your homework first because I give homework as a as a mentor as a teacher. We learn in the practice, right? So I want to check in on your homework first, and then let's go over your list and she nodded. She was still really stressed out but she was calming a little bit. So I had taught the class a tool to start practicing a simple meditation that would begin to help them start focusing their awareness. And she had been doing her homework which was great. She'd been practicing the tool, my intuition and experience let me know that There was this fear coming up for her as we started our work. And that was one of the issues that was happening. I could see it pretty clearly, which is how intuitive coaching works for me. If you've never done intuitive coaching with me, it's I am understanding emotions and fears and blocks and things that are coming up as you're sharing with me so I can be directed on what we need to work on or how to best move forward. So Yara started flipping through her pages. And I was really proud that she had done her homework. And but this, you know, this fear was coming up for her. And I smiled at her. And I said, Well done, like you're exactly where you should be. Let's talk about these lists. Tell me how you're feeling. So as she's flipping through this page, she says, If I have intuition, then I should definitely be an empath. I took this quiz. And then I looked at these articles, and I don't even fit into most of these. What if I always remember the way she said this? What if I'm like the opposite of an intuitive? And I said, How about this. And of course, I was calm and grounded. And you know, holding the space for her, I said, Let me tell you my thoughts on what it means to be an empath. Some things might really surprise you. And we can see how you feel from there. And she agreed. So first, I want to start by talking about what it means to be an empath, so that we are all on the same page. Because if you've spent any time with me at all, when I'm talking about this work, the spiritual gifts, whether it's mediumship, or being an empath, or using our intuition, or getting signs or any of it, it helps to be on the same page, because the wording that we use is never exactly right for these mystical spiritual experiences. So I like to make sure we're all on the same page when we talk about being an empath. And often much of the confusion around the spiritual gifts comes down to us thinking because of the wording, thinking that they actually mean something or present in ways other than they actually do. So we just think it's something different than it is a lot of times, this happened to me early on in my working with these gifts. We think it's something different than what it actually is. And when we learn what it actually is, we usually think like, oh, yeah, I've been, I've been doing that, like I do that I know how to do that. So according to the Cambridge dictionary.com, which of course, I'll link in the shownotes. They define Empath, as, especially in science or fiction stories, a person who has you unusually strong ability to feel other people's emotions or mental states. And the example that they give, these are all quotes from them, obviously, I think Barry is actually an empath, one of those people who is able to absorb and reflect the feelings of others. And again, that's Cambridge dictionary.com link in the show notes. I found similar definition with many of the other dictionary sites as well. My issue with this definition is there's a couple of them, it implies in this definition that we know that we are sensitive to or have a strong ability to, quote unquote, feel, absorb and reflect these feelings and emotions of others. So one, it implies that we know that we're doing it, which we don't always and two, it also implies that you feel the emotions of others, like their feelings as strongly and as consciously as you feel your own emotions at all times. So those are two of the big things that make me feel unrest with this definition. I don't like it. Unless you grew up in an atmosphere, where subtle energies were talked about or feelings were openly shared and discussed all the time. Chances are, you might not know that you're an empath. And you might be one of these people, like I was at one time saying like, No, I'm not doing that. Or like, that's like, yeah, of course, I can tell when someone's upset, but like, I'm not I'm not feeling their feelings. It's because that wordings not exactly right. The truth is, I believe that everyone is an empath. Most people are not conscious of what that means, or how it shows up, or how to practice managing it. But the ability is there for each of us. And like most things, we experience it on a spectrum. It's not a light switch. Either you have it or you don't, it's on this spectrum. And most of us, like I said, we're not conscious of what it means. We're not conscious of how it shows up or what it actually quote unquote, feels like. And we're not taught how to practice managing it, but you do have it. And on this spectrum, we can hone these abilities with practice. It's a natural part of us as sentient beings as feeling beings. Many of us are not taught to feel our own emotions, and we're confused by the subtlety of feelings of others. Often as we casually go through our day like We might misinterpret someone else's feelings if we're not taught to understand deeply our own feelings which I don't know about you please let me know in the comments.
Lots of emotions were not encouraged. For most parts of my life, a lot of people don't want to hear our emotions are encouraged us to understand them. So, on top of that, our emotional gauge, like how we gauge emotions is altered and colored by the things we do and do not experience in our lives. We're not often clear about our own emotions, and that changes based on you know, our life experience. I'm going to give you this list of seven in just a minute. But I just want to put this upfront as a precursor, just so we're all on the same page, I'm gonna give you an example. For example, many of us maybe this is you two had someone in the home that we grew up in, that was emotionally unpredictable, or even emotionally unstable, somewhere on that spectrum. Because we are all empaths, we learn to gauge the mood or the emotions of this unpredictable person to see how we should moderate our emotions, or our behavior on the moods of this person. So we're usually unconsciously sometimes subconsciously, sometimes consciously, kind of taking their emotional temperature to gauge how you should behave. Should you just go in your room and not bother this person? Could you have a conversation with this person today? I like to say it's taking the emotional temperature and kind of feeling it out along the way, you likely knew that you were doing it, but you probably didn't realize that you were using your subtle sensing abilities to take this emotional temperature and fill it out along the way. For many of us, this also changes the way we relate in other areas of our life as a result, for example, with friends or with partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, what have you. For example, I believe that codependency is an unhealthy expression of our gifts as an empath. I did a Google search and it turns out betterhelp.com agrees with me. I'll link the article in the show notes. And an article linked in the show notes. BetterHelp says, this is a quote, empathy and codependency can often overlap. For instance, someone with a high level of empathy might start to exhibit codependent behaviors if they prioritize other's needs above their own. And this has conditioned into a lot of us sometimes it's from relationships in our early life, whether it's someone in our home someone in our school, a teacher, an authority figure, for some of us, it happens a little bit later. But that's actually the first unexpected eye opening sign I want to share. So sign number one that you might be an empath if you've ever experienced codependency, I like to throw in this little disclaimer that I'm not a therapist. I'm not a psychologist, but I can read. I do have education in the spiritual work. So have you ever based your self worth off meeting someone else's needs and not your own? Have you ever felt like your self esteem was based on someone else's approval? I definitely have. Have you ever blamed yourself or beat yourself up for someone's emotional happiness or unhappiness? In a more extreme way, this might look like I'm sorry, it's my fault. I know that your potato should have been steaming hot. Going immediately to I'm so sorry. That's my fault. Instead of just like, Okay, I'll warm those potatoes up. It's this dip, like kind of gauging how your emotions are based on the happiness or unhappiness of someone else on this example. It just means that you're using your gifts as an empath to set your emotions by someone else's emotional compass rather than your own sidenote, things like your personal attachment style. I know this is really popular on podcasts I listen to there are a lot of books about it right now. Attachment styles when it's called, like you might hear it as anxiously attached avoidant Lee attached your personal attachment style, we all have one. There have done a lot of studies. You can research this further if you want. Whatever your attachment style is will also color your abilities as an empath, because we're using the sensing abilities that we have, usually subconsciously to gauge someone else's emotional temperature to decide how we should behave. Building up your sense of self improving your self esteem and processing past traumas can help you prevent codependent behavior. This is why in the spiritual work, personal development is so important and I know you guys have heard me beat this drum a lot. But it's why to be in this work, we're required to continue to do our personal development because as sensitive sometimes we do unconsciously just slip into that pattern of basing our own happiness on the happiness of those around us putting other people's needs ahead of our own On instead of equal with our own right or even putting ourselves first all revolutionary idea. So if you've ever experienced codependency, that's proof in the pudding that you're likely an empath, which like I said, we all are. Sign number two, that you are an empath, if you've often felt like you don't fit in, out in the world. Now, this could also be in your family of origin or in different groups that you might belong to. Like, for example, you might be a part of groups in your life, there's lots of groups out, there could be a group of colleagues, a church group, maybe something that you do for fun, like a sports group, or whatever a club. So you might feel internally just a little different, or even kind of like you can't bring your whole self to the table, hiding different parts of yourself in different groups situations, it's a version of code switching. But if you find yourself doing that, it's you usually unconsciously, or subconsciously quickly assessing where you can fit in where you can't what's acceptable to say here, what's not acceptable to say here, in this group setting, and then basing your behavior or how much you share of yourself in these groups. Now, often, this is a protection mechanism that we develop as kids or growing up or whatever culture or society you grew up in, we kind of learned to do this as protection, right? Who do I have to be in this situation or on this team, for example, but when you're an adult, you get to pick your own friend groups, or clubs or pickleball, team, whatever, maybe we shouldn't have to do that so much anymore. So it is an empathic nature to feel like we don't fit in quite in most groups, and like we need to censor the truest version of ourselves holding parts of us back in different groups. Sign number three, that you are an empath. If you are often the leader or team captain, or quote unquote, the responsible person. What I like to say here is like this doesn't necessarily mean that you want to be the leader or that you even like volunteered yourself. It could be because you really care about getting the project in on time, for example, meeting that deadline, it could be because you have a need to please everyone. And so you step into that role, because no one else wants to do it. It could even be because you know within yourself that you don't trust someone on your team. Obviously, I don't work in a work setting where I'm this, you know, something I faced. So I always think about when I was in school, whether high you know, high school, college, whatever, middle school even, were you the person that was often either the the formal leader of the of the project, or just the person who did all the work kind of behind the scenes. It's part of being an empath, because you know, whether it's because we're a people pleaser, or because we just want to get that in on time or want to make sure it's right. Or we're subtly, again, using our sensing ability in conscious or unconscious way that we know like, Oh, I know, this person is supposed to be the team captain, but I just I don't trust them to do this work. So if I want this result, I will, you know, bend myself is the way I want to say. So if you are often leader, team captain, the responsible person. And like I said, it doesn't mean that you wanted to be the leader or that you even necessarily volunteered, you are an empath. If you This is number four, if you have a very strong inner compass for justice, quote, unquote, what's right, quote, unquote, or what's fair or equitable. This, of course, does not mean that you're perfect, none of us are perfect or no perfect people, or that you're not still learning about inequalities, I think that we all need to still be learning about inequalities, injustice in the world. So you could still be learning about this. But it means that you like when you know, in your bones that something is wrong, unfair, unjust, etc, that you feel it strongly, like it ignites something in you, you may get really fired up about it, you may feel the need to talk about it over and over. I believe activism looks different for all of us. So it might be just you deciding, oh, I need to watch a documentary about this to understand this. It might be you know, it can show up in lots of ways. So, but just having this really strong inner compass about right and wrong, fair and not fair, what's just or equitable. And like I said, all of this is on a spectrum. So it could be when you see it for someone you care about, like a sibling or a best friend or child even, it could be within yourself when you feel like hey, like, you know, everyone else is getting five pieces of candy and I only have one and that just doesn't feel fair. But it's having this little bit of
it's, it's, we're all different. So for some of us, it's a physical feeling of being like fired up about it. For some of us, it's just feeling really unsettled about a situation or feeling like I don't want to take part in this or I didn't see this person in this light before I don't I don't know this doesn't feel right is the way usually people say it. But if you have a strong inner compass for justice, what's right, what's fair or equitable, you're an empath. That's number four. Number five, if you have ever been told that you're quote unquote, too much, now, this could be too sensitive. This could be, quote, unquote, too picky. This could be you care too much, or you worry too much. This could just be too much in general, like your emotions, your personality, someone's saying the essence of you is too much. Remember, it's a spectrum. For example, You're too sensitive might actually be someone else saying, You're too comfortable expressing your emotions, and that makes me uncomfortable, which is actually a healthy behavior for an empath. So sometimes that too sensitive is really kind of lighting up something that someone else needs to work on, because you're comfortable having the emotion, the feeling that you have, and they're not. So it could just be, you know, your I don't love the word trigger here, but you're kind of triggering something in them, but really as an empath, that that's a healthy behavior for you to be saying, oh, you know what, I feel this or I feel bad or, and for some people, they don't want to hear your feelings all the time. Because, like I was saying, most of us were not given permission to feel our feelings all the time. So it might make someone else uncomfortable, but it could actually be healthy behavior for you. But feeling like you worry too much could be you trying to preemptively control situations to try to prevent discomfort and others emotions. And pre empathic is what I like to call it. This is a sign that the empath can work on their own boundaries and examine their own need to be responsible for managing other people's expectations and emotions. I'm guilty of this for many, many years, and many examples in my life, where sometimes, especially if I know someone in my life, I've really worked on this a lot. But I'm thinking of in the past, if I know someone is a volatile personality, or someone that kind of goes off really easily gets upset really easily or kind of out of nowhere. Sometimes, I have often been in a pretty constant state of underlying worry that I'm trying to like, preemptively control the situation of what we should make sure this is already set up. This is done and I'll do this for them. And I'll get this ready. And I'll you know, I'll make sure we have gas in the car so that we're not going to be late. And so it's me as the empath trying to control situations to try to prevent discomfort and someone else's emotions. That's a that's a control challenge. But it's really common as empaths. And it's usually if you if you've really ever investigated this idea of control, fear of control need to try to control which we know control is an illusion. But if you've ever experienced that, it's your gifts as an empath. It's just we're not using them in the healthiest way. We're not exercising our own boundaries, and we're trying to take responsibility for managing expectations and emotions of someone else. And it's usually because we feel and like weren't talking about the word feel again in a little bit but we feel other people's emotions are were greatly affected by other people's emotions. So we think okay, well if I know this person, you know gets upset if we're late. I'm going to really try to like already iron their clothes already fill up the gas already, you know, have the lunch packed already do all the things so that they don't get upset and I don't have to be in discomfort because they're in discomfort. So have you ever done that? I've sadly done it quite a bit. And it's it's beyond just the regular like if you're a parent, it's beyond just the like, Oh, I'm gonna get everything ready ahead of time. It's really having to do with boundaries and trying to preemptively like pre empathizing or using your empathy in advance to try to negate situations from happening to manage someone else's expectations or emotions. This is a tough one that most empaths fall into at some time or another. And like I said, you might not even be conscious that you're doing it. Maybe you haven't done that work yet, but just think about it. Now Number Six sign if you feel drained and or your mood changes from being out in the world. Now, I know this is common on a lot of lists like oh empaths don't like to people too much or, and some of us don't, some of us have, like, I have a little bit of like a, there's a part of me that likes to be out and about and likes to be at a comedy show, for example, and feel the energy and, and participate and be with people that I care about. But then there's another part of me that, you know, typically at least one day a week, I like to be kind of hold off to myself. You know, of course, it doesn't always work out that way. But I prefer to have like a low key, low engagement day, at least one day of the week. And this is not true for everybody. And that's why I wanted to include this like we've like everything we've discussed so far, this sign if you feel drained, or your mood changes from being out in the world, this also has a spectrum of how we might experience it. Have you ever had the experience of being kind of tired or blah, and then you go out to take the dog for a walk or having a coffee with a friend. And it really shifts your mood. And by the time you get home, you're feeling upbeat, or maybe peaceful or maybe even energized. This happens for me sometimes with client sessions, where I might just be kind of like, a little low energy, and then I go into the office and have a reading with someone or you know, give a reading to someone and I am energized. This happened to me just the other day. And lately, you know, I noticed that more and more. So it doesn't always have to be kind of more of that challenged end of the spectrum where we're like totally drained and exhausted by being out in the world, although that can happen. And for most of us, there are different places that make us feel that way. So for some people, it's the grocery store, going to the grocery store just makes them feel so drained and exhausted, because there's so much happening and so much energy. And it might not even be conscious that that's why for some people, it might be a day at the office. I know in our last asking medium anything session from a couple months ago now maybe we talked about energy vampires. So it could be something like that, or there are people at your office that are just emotionally and energetically draining. But it also works on the other side of that spectrum where it can really give you energy or pump you up. And like I said, it might be the people that you're with maybe the people at your office drain you but you have your book club that really makes you feel peaceful and calm and brightens your day a little bit. So just think about in your own life. How does that spectrum show up for you. Because this this was one when I read it out in the world kind of drives me a little bit crazy because not everyone identifies in the same way or feels the same way that they're you know that they're totally drained from being out in the world. It has more to do with a mood change for us. So you know, if you're already tired and you go out, you're probably going to come home tired, but you might come home more peaceful from an uncap like a coffee with a friend or like a you know, maybe you went to a movie out in the world. So it can be anywhere on that spectrum because we're all individuals but if you've ever felt drained or your mood has changed from being out in the world, that's a sign that you're an empath. I also invite you to go back and check out I'll link it in the show notes but the the aura 101 deep dive, plus a tool and technique for your aura. If you miss that one. We'll talk about that again in a minute. I'm going to give you the number seven sign though before we do. So the number seven signs to help you understand if you're an empath is if you are naturally quick to forgive, before I lose you. This does not mean that you can don't abuse or inappropriate behavior or that you have to allow yourself to be a doormat, I actually believe quite the opposite. It simply means that if someone makes a mistake or an error in judgment or a misstep and comes to you, genuinely, here's the key word here genuinely to acknowledge, you know, hey, this happened I realize I made this mistake or this error in judgment and they want to do better and you see them actually behaving to do better. Your natural desire as a human as a sole is to forgive to give grace maybe even to help them in some way maybe even to say like yeah, I've made mistakes before. That's okay. Like, I'm glad you're genuinely acknowledging it. It's not where someone is, is being dismissive or they don't mean it in their apology are in their acknowledgement, or they're using that acknowledgement to blame someone else, which, you know, there are a lot of personalities out there that do that like, well, I know that I slammed the door But if you hadn't been blah, blah, blah, I wouldn't have felt like that you made me feel like that. So it's not that it's, it's really just if someone is genuine, and they, you know, realize that okay, now I'm sorry to that. I'm sorry, LD, I'm sorry, I raised my voice I'm sorry, I don't know, whatever, I'm sorry that I flaked on our meeting, I really didn't mean to next time, I promise, I'll call you. Your natural desire as a human is to forgive to give grace. And maybe even, you know, you would say like, Oh, that's okay. Next time, I'll just make sure that we text the day before to like double confirm or whatever, like, that's, you're gonna help them with it a little bit.
But it's our natural inclination to want to feel at peace. Like we don't want to hang on to animosity, we don't want to stay angry. And like I said, it doesn't mean that you're condoning inappropriate behavior, or that you're saying, Oh, I'm going to be a doormat, because I just want to forgive and I don't care about myself. It's not that at all. That's more on the challenge side of the spectrum of using your empathy on the healthy side. It's just being like, I just want to be a piece just not that big of a deal in my world. If someone's genuine. Yeah, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has a bad day or everyone you know, spills, the milk, sometimes whatever it is. But just kind of check within yourself. Is that your typically natural way that you want to be like just everyone you wanting everyone to get along in a genuine way. Most of us Yes. And if not, then typically that just means we have work to do on ourselves personal development or holding some animosity that probably is too big for the situation and is totally indicative of something completely separate. Like it's triggering something from the past and has nothing to do with this person actually in front of you. So, if you're naturally quick to forgive, or your nature is to be forgiving, or give grace, you're an empath. A few things that may surprise you about being an empath those are the seven that I listed, but I've got a little kind of extra. This may surprise you, most, and often all of the time, quote, unquote, sensing the emotions of others is happening unconsciously or subconsciously. Like we don't necessarily know that we're doing it all the time. i This is one of the things that drives me a little crazy about the wording of it, is when they say like, oh, yeah, empaths feel everything. They feel all the emotions around them. We're doing it unconsciously, as we're moving through the world. Were in a meeting or on a call, and we're unconsciously kind of sensing the emotions of everyone. So we know the tone of the meeting. This phrase is used so commonly in our popular world read the room. Have you ever heard someone say like read the room, they're asking you to be an empath. And usually it's something we're doing in a very unconscious way. We're not usually we're not a cartoon with like these energetic beams going BBB okay, this person's this, this person says it's unconscious. It's something that we do so naturally, because it is part of this group of our six senses that we've talked about before. It's not one of our five physical senses. It's something that we don't often talk about, but it's something that we naturally do, like I was talking about at the top of the episode where we naturally learn to gauge you know, someone's mood who can be unpredictable, we naturally learn to drop our guard with someone who's consistently calm and rational and reasonable. We're not making a conscious decision of like, okay, Yara is my friend and she's usually calm and reasonable. So I can be relaxed with her it all happens unconsciously or subconsciously through the energy of just the way we sense the emotional temperature of others. And the next thing I want to say here, that might surprise you about being an empath, the more connected you are with your own emotions, the greater ability you have to discern what you're feeling from others. So we may feel sometimes like oh, something's a little off with that person today in their mood and their emotions, I'm kind of feel it. But if it's an emotion that you haven't really uncovered or dealt with or process within yourself, you probably going to have a really hard time consciously naming that emotion. And the other thing that I that I like to really highlight is I saying that we're going to touch back into this word feel, feel the emotions of others, one of the biggest misconceptions and again, it's on a spectrum. So before you write me and say, I actually do feel the emotions of others like my own, some some people do. i It doesn't work like that for me. And for most of us, I've discovered it doesn't work like that. It's not feeling the emotions of others like you absorb them and feel them as strongly as you feel Your own emotions, it can happen sometimes. Where you see this sometimes is with kids, where like if they play with a friend, and that friend is like an angry kid, and then your kid comes home and starts displaying that, like a more of an angry emotion, they're matching that kid's emotion. That's part of what it means when they say absorbing and mirroring someone's emotions. When we talked about energy vampires, if you have, if you have picturing from that Movie Monsters, Inc, if you've ever seen it, that the lady who sits at the front burner, and she's a little bit grumpy, and she's a little bit down, and she might be draining, you know, energetically emotionally draining for people, because she's always in a bad mood, and it's difficult to deal with her. You know, you might not feel that as your own emotions, but you might you might go home and be like, I don't know why I'm so moody has just been dealing with, you know, and you might not even make the conscious connection that that's what's happening. So that's part of the discernment that you get to learn if you choose to learn to work with your gifts as an empath we all have them. It's understanding what emotions actually belong to you, and what you are kind of picking up absorbing, mirroring, matching is the way we say it in the work matching the emotions of someone else. And a lot of times, like I said, it's totally unconscious, we can usually identify it better. And other people have like, oh, yeah, every time they hang out with that person, they're, they're like that they're matching that person's energy. And it works. Again, it works on the positive side of the spectrum, too. I have a couple friends, or more than a couple, I'm pretty, pretty picky with my friend group. But you know, people that when you it's not to say no one ever has problems, or no one ever wants to share something tough. But by and large, when you're with that person, you feel good, or you just don't feel like you have to carry around this heaviness with them of like, oh, this person is always complaining, they're always down, they always want to argue about, you know, that they have all these problems that they can't solve. And like I said, sometimes we all need to talk or need help. So it's not that it's if someone is using that as a personality consistently, you're gonna feel drained. And you might be conscious about it, or you might be unconscious about it. But you might also have people that you can place in your life. You can mentally think of of like, oh, yeah, you know what, I always feel good when I see that person. And I don't know why or I always feel comforted. I always feel uplifted after and it's not like they're giving you a pep rally, every time you see them. It's that you're able to match their energy as well, consciously, unconsciously, consciously is more if you're like educated in in this work, most people do it unconsciously. And that's okay, too. But if you want to learn to manage it in a more conscious way, you can do that. If you are interested, just message me, I will be opening my intuitive course again soon, probably later in the summer. And this is part of what we work with. Starting to hone your gifts starting to understand your gifts, being able to feel okay, my mood changed, after I, you know, left this place and got into my car. What happened? Is that someone else's emotions that I'm matching, is that do I am I having a feeling is? or is there an emotion going on in me? That belongs to me like, Oh, when I saw that girl with her mom, I was sad, because my mom's not here. Do you know what I mean? So it's not really for most of us, most of the time, it's not really feeling like we feel our own emotions. It's more of a matching or a sensing.
And it's happening all the time. It's just we're not, like I said, unless you live in this work, like some of us do. We're not usually conscious of it. We just know like, oh, a person feels a little down today or this person feels a little. I don't know, I feel some underlying stress with them, even though they're talking normally and speaking normally and they're prepared for this meeting or something else must be happening with this person. It can be as simple as that. Sometimes we acknowledge it consciously, but most of this is on conscious. And this is what really kind of stumped me early in this work was I would read things and it would say like, oh, you feel people's emotions, like you feel your own. And yeah, sometimes I do if someone's very close to me, but for the most part, I was unconsciously matching people or unconsciously or subconsciously taking their energetic temperature, their emotional temperature and deciding, okay, I can be my whole self today this person is in a good mood or, okay, there's some eggshells here. I'm going to really, I'm going to really like be gentle because I don't know what mood this person is about to shift into or I could set this person off at any time. If you've ever experienced someone that's a little bit volatile or unpredictable in their emotions and you know, you could you know they can be easily set off. You're an empath and it does overlap up with our common sensibility to observe people with someone's behavior. But it is two separate things. Lots of these things overlap, right? Kind of similar to how our smell and our taste overlap. Those two senses are totally separate senses that we have in, in and of themselves. But there's an overlap, they go together. So it's not so black and white in these boxes. And it has to show up like this. We're all individual people with individual life experiences. Some people have done therapy, some people grew up in super open households, some people have read a lot of books. So whatever your life experience is, is going to color how this shows up for you. If you missed that episode, or as from April 2020, for Episode 70, I'll link it in the show notes. It was called your aura 101 Deep Dive plus proven tools and techniques, you definitely want to check that one out for a deeper understanding of what's happening, like the mechanics of how are you subconsciously understanding someone else's emotions, emotional temperature, and why we sense other people's emotions, even if it's unconsciously through our aura, and how to start learning how to work with your own auric field, I really, these two episodes of that one and this one really go together. Since all of our gifts are interconnected, like we were just talking about. So if you want to understand more of the mechanics of like, how the how am I doing that? Why is that happening? That's the episode for that. And there's a tool in that episode, we do a mini mini tool techniques, so you can kind of start practicing with your own aura, which is the faculty that helps us as empaths. So truly everyone is an empath. I'm so curious to know how you saw yourself in this episode, if you can identify some of these things, I would love it if you had an aha of like, oh, it's that I'm doing that I didn't okay, I didn't know it was that I thought it was this other thing I thought it was, you know, the dictionary Cambridge dictionary definition of feeling absorbing mirroring in a conscious way I know that's what's happening. Because a lot of this stuff is below the surface. A lot of the stuff is just as we move through the world, this is what happens most of us are not trained on how to use this, how to have a relationship with it, how to understand when we are kind of matching or mirroring someone else's emotions, most of us don't mean to do it. And we do it all the time. It's kind of like if you've ever for me, I had to do so much code switching when I was a kid. I grew up in Boston, so I could have the Boston accent. Most of my family is from Philly. So I could also have the Philly accent, and I would and then I had a neutral accent that I could eventually slip into. That was more of like, I guess like a California accent. So I would kind of switch between those two, depending who those three depending who I was around or what was going on. It's really similar to that. We're just shifting our emotions based on the scenario situation, emotional temperature of those around us. But we don't always even know that we're doing it. I have some friends that unintentional unintentionally pick up a southern accent because they're from the south. Anytime they're talking to someone with any sort of southern drawl or accent whatsoever, they slip right back into theirs, they're matching that accent. So it shows up in lots of ways. It just, we don't talk about it a lot. And the languaging that are used around it is a little misleading and confusing and can really make us feel like an outsider to these gifts. And they're they're not outside of us. They're within us, you have them, you have the gift of being an empath of sensing the emotions around you, it doesn't mean that you then have to, you know, walk around in robes with a crystal ball. That's, that's not it. But you are doing it all the time. Your system is divinely ordered and intelligent. So we don't always have to think about every single thing top of mind, just like we don't always think about, you know, our heart beating or our lungs expanding in and out. Yes, when we're going to be mindful or if we're practicing tools, we're focused on it, but it happens all the time by itself. Being an empath is in a lot of ways similar to that. So I hope that you have seen yourself in one of these seven signs, maybe even all of them feel free to share with me how many signs have these seven unexpected hot take signs, eye opening signs that you're an empath that you see yourself in. And again, remembering that even within these seven, they're on a spectrum. All of this works on a spectrum. There's there's it's fluid, it's not so black and white and in a box So as people try to make it, so just know that however this shows up for you, you do have gifts and abilities as an empath as part of your subtle sensing as part of your, you know, it's really the psychic sensing or the the clairsentience. The subtle sensing, it works through the auric field, it works through the energy field, let me know what you think how many of these seven Did you see yourself and leave it in the comments, or you can email me directly joy, joyful medium.com. And like I said, message me too. If you are interested in learning more about this, because I'll put you on the list of people I'm going to notify first, when I I'm going to open my course again, I usually do a free workshop around that time. So if you'd like to be included in a little bit of free learning, it doesn't obligate you to learning more. It's just Yeah, I want to play with this energy. And I'd like to come to something so let me know if that's you. And as we move through the summer, maybe just let yourself be aware with the seven signs and how you identified yourself through them be aware of like, okay, I'm going into this group setting is this make me feel tired? Does this make me feel energized? Are there certain people in here that make me feel kind of tired or energized, or other words on that spectrum? So you can play with this starting right now if you want, but you're an empath. Thanks for joining me today. With this episode, I am so grateful for you. And if you found value, I would love it. If you would subscribe to the podcast that's totally free on whatever platform you're listening on. You just hit that little subscribe button so that you never miss an episode helps both of us because it helps me because you never miss an episode. And if you would give a little rating if possible on whatever platform you're listening or watching. And please share an episode with a friend if you found it valuable. If it's a conversation you want to open with a friend, maybe you have a friend that you feel is also sensitive and you want to open this conversation between you. Maybe you do it by sharing an episode. So and I'm so grateful for you being here being with me. You're the reason that I do this podcast. So thanks for being here and thanks for being you. Big hugs, lots of love from inside Spirit Speakeasy