The Life of an Empathic Person

The feelings of sympathy and empathy run deep in people like me. How would I describe people who are like? They are the ones people would call an old soul, someone who acts mature way beyond their years. Someone who would do anything, someone they cared asked about them because it is driven in their human nature to people everyone else above themselves. When someone you care about looks you deep into your eyes, into your soul, and tells you the hardships they are going through, your heart tears into a million different ways as your mind starts to churn and your heart starts to pulse. These overwhelming feelings of how to make their pain your number one goal is something that pushes aside any feelings you personally felt. You want your soul to reach into their heart and pull out all the negativity they feel and gently caress their minds. It is like when you would rub the head of a child to soothe them, to put to mind any feelings of unease. You want to take away their feelings of guilt, pain, sadness, being scared, or any worries that they have about that monster that could be hiding in their bed or hiding in their closest. As an adult, there will always be those monsters under our beds and in our closets, but now, they are also in the trunk of our cars, in the bathroom stalls next to us when we are taking a bathroom break at work, or when we go to the gym. Being considered an old soul, at times, tends to feel more like a curse than it is a blessing.

Do any of these thoughts describe you? Then you might be a different kind of person. The kind of person who does stressful things for fun or the kind of person who keeps busy because this tends to help people other than yourself. If so, how does a person like this even function? Let me you… they don’t.

People who live their life for others are doing something that they think is admirable and at the same time, it really isn’t. Being selfish is not something that always has to have a bad connotation because people who live their life for others tend to really become unhappy with themselves and the lives they tend to lead. What is more important in life?

Your happiness or someone else’s?

If you are someone like me, you might say “someone else’s” and that, my friend, is something that at the end of the day, or even at the end of your life, will leave you with many regrets. Let me paint you a picture.

There is a dark room where you are standing. This is the life that you have always known. Darkness is blinding, almost more blinding than a bright light. One day, something new has changed. There is light in this room, and you have two doors. Now, there are posted notes all over the wall telling you which room to pick. Most people have told you to pick door number one. In your heart, you feel the importance of door number two. If you are living your life for others, you’ll pick door number one. Let’s take this perspective for a moment. Go ahead. Pick door number one. Opening the door, you see more of this darkness continuing. Soon, this just begins to start a cycle. The first few times you look at the notes to see if something has changed. Nothing has. Door one. You go through again. Door one. You go through again. Same thing, same time, every day. Soon, you don’t even look at the notes anymore. Your mission is door one. These are the people in your life who take you for granted. Is that person you care about still a person who is active in your life? Or are they just there when they need you? Doesn’t the darkness weigh on you?

Let’s look at another perspective.

You’re back on the first time you had a choice to make. You look at those notes and decide that you want to follow your own heart, your own path. Opening door number two gives you some light, it might not be bright, but there is some light. This is what happens when you do what you think is best for you.

Now, doing what you think is best for you might not always be the best thing. Maybe, there might be something worse in that room. It could be a feeling you do not want to overcome because the time is not right or maybe it is past trauma that needs to be left in the past.

The point is: The choice is yours to make. It should be the choice that you feel is right. If it goes wrong, go to your support system.

Do not handle all of your burdens alone nor should you ever hold the burdens of others.