EMPATH....what does it mean to you?..

[Hermit]

Three things.

1. Empathy involves true autonomy.
2. 99.9% of people are unable to maintain emotional autonomy because we have not been trained how to be emotionally autonomous.
3. True autonomous empathy is probably something only the Divine is able to attain.

So a truly empathic person would, say, be someone who witnesses the suffering of another human being and permit them the dignity of their humanity. Which leads, at least for me, to the idea that the empathy will move one to action to assist. The problem being point number two.

And to take a point from another thread, this is where the games begin.

There's a scene in the Bible where Jesus comes across a beggar on the sabbath who can't walk. He tells the beggar to stand up, and the beggar does. My intuition tells me that this beggar was probably not crippled so much in the physical sense but in the sense that he played a cripple for profit, and the miracle that occurred was in Jesus showing him that his way of life was crippling his soul more than anything. Of course I can't prove that. But let's assume that's true. Would that be considered a good example of autonomous concern for another resulting in a kind of metamorphosis?

Does empathy exist in a situation where one is expecting the profits of empathic responses? Is that true empathy? If I feel empathy for someone I perceive to be suffering who is actually only suffering in action for profit, is my empathic response genuine? Is it a dance? Is autonomous empathy even possible?

If I render assistance that only promotes the suffering, who is the greater sinner? (And I use the word sinner for ease and flow of conversation here.) The beggar taking my money, or me for being fooled into giving it?

[Eelco]

At the moment it just hurts a lot mainly..

To me it is taking on the feelings of others as if they were yours.
Mirror neurons come into play here.

I tend to take a more distant approach, for me empathic abilities can be "trained" So one can clearly differentiate between the different feelings one has as being originated from self and those originated in others. In my case I usually don't see much difference between the 2 as I am awful at setting boundaries which means sharing others sorrow a lot. somehow others joy not so much.. strange that.

Then again what do I know

With Love
Eelco

[Naga_Fireball]

Although this phone is slow, really enjoyed reading this thread.

Although "empathy" is absent from many studies I've read, there are some medical papers & journals available online that demonstrate the effect of one's environment and stress level on one's ability to precognate.

There are also scales of emotion to consider - individual, communal, global.

A person might have a very strong reaction to a special individual due to his or her integrity, charisma, or perhaps some negative factor.

Community driven reactions can be a bit different & more predictive in nature than emotional.
(Phone is screwing up doing the stuck cursor thing )
Global stuff is confusing due to lack of context, ie a dream about the WTC site is only scary if sonething

[Naga_Fireball]

*if there is something personally threatening in the dream.

sorry about this phone.


P.s. some empaths are good at finding things. Theres a local guy here whose talent has caused him inconvenience at work.

[Pris]

As far as I know (lol) empathy is a relatively new word in the English language, having been imported from the German early last century, & I take it to mean feeling what another feels.

The word comes from the Germans? Geez, that's a surprise HAHAHA! (I come from a German family, so I can laugh.) [Maybe they recently invented the word to describe an 'uncomfortable' new phenomena that was developing that needed to be labelled lol.]

Well for starters, here's what it doesn't mean:

Naive, credulous, gullible, wishy-washy,... I could go on. Empathetic is a word I would avoid, as it literally contains the word 'pathetic'.

What an empath is NOT is a dupe or a fool; quite the opposite IMO.

I agree with this. Empaths are sometimes wrongly thought to have soft underbellies. Personally, since I do feel I am empathic, I like to think I'm not all vulnerable and gullible (just try it -- I've got my dukes up! ).

Plus, one last thing is, for me anyway, a continuing and growing awareness of the aliveness of everything. To me, everything, even seeming inanimate objects, has consciousness of a sort, and holds energy that can be communicated with. Not to be weird, but I even thank the ground that I walk on, and apologize when I kill a mosquito that wants to suck my blood, or start killing flies with the fly swatter when I get too many in the house. I verbally warn them what I am going to do and give them the opportunity to leave. I even apologize when pulling weeds in the garden. Now ya all probably really think I'm nuts, LOL.

Sure, you are nuts. Welcome to the club. I pretty much do the same things you do and apologize if I feel I have to kill something (same with weeds). I also thank food before I eat it (it's more a feeling of apology). At the moment, I've got a black widow in a container in our heated garage. We can't exactly let her run around. Winter just hit hard so I won't put her outside where she'll freeze to death. I'm hoping she survives long enough for warm weather to come.
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[Eelco]

Right now, my understanding of empath is something like meaning a state of being able to stand in another's shoes etc. To see and feel things as others do.

I think you are very close already here Norman. The state of imagining what it would be like to stand in someone else's shoes is empathetic or empathic. Not sure which is the english word for it. It deals with the ability to understand another.
An empath however wouldn't need to understand or imagine. He or she would feel as the other as if it was themselves.

That way an empath could theoreticaly discern in his own feeling body what the other is experiencing.

The line between the 2 is less clear than many an Empath would like, and I have seen empaths make the mistake of projecting their own feelings as if the belonged to someone else...
Which makes my idea's of just being human the lot of us be valid yet again.

With Love
Eelco

[Pris]

.....and I have seen empaths make the mistake of projecting their own feelings as if the belonged to someone else...

Hmmm... this is an interesting thought. Being misread/felt by someone and that person running with it no matter what you say... Yes.
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[Edythe]

To me, being empathic is an inner emotional knowing.. aligning oneself emotionally to other living beings. The trick is being able to turn it off. I have a very hard time with that, especially around human beings, so, I tend to retreat from the world from time to time.

[Shezbeth]

To me, being empathic is an inner emotional knowing.. aligning oneself emotionally to other living beings. The trick is being able to turn it off. I have a very hard time with that, especially around human beings, so, I tend to retreat from the world from time to time.

Emphasis on the 'turning off',... but be careful. Ppl might call you a sociopath if you do,.... Xp

[Edythe]

To me, being empathic is an inner emotional knowing.. aligning oneself emotionally to other living beings. The trick is being able to turn it off. I have a very hard time with that, especially around human beings, so, I tend to retreat from the world from time to time.

Emphasis on the 'turning off',... but be careful. Ppl might call you a sociopath if you do,.... Xp

Hi Shezbeth! That was a good one Oh you know.. turning off by leaving the vicinity.. extricating myself from all those crazy emotions out there.