The BTG Podcast
The BTG Podcast
127/The Dark Side of Being an Empath
Welcome to The BTG Podcast! 🌟
In this episode.... Are you an empath or know someone who is? Join me for this eye-opening episode where we dive into the lesser-discussed side of being highly empathic. Learn how empaths, often unintentionally, manipulate those around them through emotional absorption, projection, and a lack of boundaries. This session will help you understand how to harness the superpower of empathy without falling into unhealthy patterns that can damage your closest relationships. Whether you’re an empath or simply curious, this presentation will offer profound insights and practical tools for healthier connections.
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Hello and welcome to the BTG Podcast. I am your Je n, of BTG, wellness and LiveLifeUnbrokencom. Btg stands for Bridge the Gap and it's inspired by my own healing journey. After receiving seven different mental health diagnoses by the age of 19,. I quickly realized that there was a massive gap between what I believed and understood in my head and what I truly felt in my heart, and no matter how many therapists I went to, I couldn't seem to bridge that gap until I found the tools and information that I share in my one-on-one private sessions, trainings and right here on this podcast. My goal is to help you begin to bridge that gap by bringing you different topics related to mental, emotional and spiritual well-being and, in case you didn't know, this podcast is recorded live during my bi-monthly virtual healing circles. These are virtual gatherings that are 100% free and no RSVP is required, so you're welcome to come whenever you can and stay as long as you want. Each circle, we open the space with a candle meditation, after which I will share with you my favorite grounding practices and lead you through a circle casting guided meditation and breath work, and lead you through a circle casting guided meditation and breath work, followed by a soul-inspiring gratitude practice. If you are interested in learning more about how you can continue your journey and experience my virtual healing circles in real time, please visit wwwbtgwellnesscom and join my free Circle membership If you like what you hear in today's episode. Please also remember to leave a review and share the love by sharing this episode with your friends, family and social network and, as always, if you have any questions about anything at any time, please feel free to reach out to me through either of my websites, either btgwellnesscom or my coaching website, livelifeunbrokencom, or through email or social media. Enjoy the episode.
Jennifer Febel:Welcome to the Virtual Healing Circle with me, Jen Febel of BT G of Wellness and LiveLifeUnbroken. com.
Jennifer Febel:And tonight I want to talk to you about the dark side of being an empath. We talk a lot about being able to sense other people's feelings and about this idea that it's a superpower, but tonight my job is to kind of piss off all the empaths and make you think about what it actually means to hone your gifts. That's what we're going to talk about tonight. So why is this important? This is important because being highly empathic can be a superpower, but that doesn't mean it lets us off the hook from owning our own shit. Empaths, we're so good at identifying other people's issues, but we forget to turn that lens on ourselves. This is important because empaths tend to get so hung up on other people that we don't realize just how manipulative we can be. That's a hard pill to swallow, but it's important for us to be aware and keep an eye out. And this is important because if you are an empath and you are not using the right tools, you are definitely being emotionally manipulative and that's a surefire way to blow up your closest relationships. So if we're going to talk about being an empath, let's first talk about this idea of empathy.
Jennifer Febel:So what is empathy? So the actual word empathy comes from two Greek words em, which means in, and pathos, which means your feeling or emotion. So it's about being in the feelings. Empathy is considered to be a universal human trait, meaning that anyone with healthy, functioning human neurology has access to the skill sets and the ability to be empathetic. This means being able to understand and share the feelings of another person, to put yourself in their shoes, to see things from their perspective. Being able to access empathy is what allows us to connect together, into tribes, into groups, into families. Without the ability to empathize, we can only see our own motivations, our own perspective, and that makes it really hard to blend with others. So empathy is an extremely important human trait.
Jennifer Febel:Biologically, we think being able to be empathic comes from something called mirror neurons. So mirror neurons are types of brain cells that activate not only when we do something, but also when we notice someone else do something. They were identified first in the early 1990s by a team of Italian neuroscientists from the University of Parma and basically they were noticing that when they watched the macaque monkeys, when the monkey would perform an actual action, certain neurons would fire in its brain, but then those same neurons would fire when the monkey would watch another monkey do the same action. We know that mirror neurons are extremely important in how we learn and how we learn language and how we learn to fit in with the world. Mirror neurons are why, if you have a baby and you stick your tongue out at them, they will instinctively stick their tongue back out at you. It's not because they're consciously being like oh, I'm going to stick my tongue out. Our bodies are designed to mimic our environment. It's how we learn. It's how we learn to fit in and become part of the tribe and the family Mirror neurons are also part of why we can empathize and put ourselves in someone else's shoes.
Jennifer Febel:It allows us to feel what someone else is feeling. So then, what's an empath? An empath is someone who strongly feels the emotions of another person and does it so unconsciously and so automatically that they don't even realize they're doing it and therefore can't tell the difference between their own emotions and the emotions of others. The idea of being an empath is something that hasn't actually been studied very much in psychology. We've studied empathy a lot, but not empaths.
Jennifer Febel:The idea of being an empath actually originated in sci-fi literature. They think the term first started with the Scottish author JT McIntish in 1956 in the book the story of the empath, about a empathetic being who the government was trying to exploit. Those of you who are Trekkies also know of Deanna Troy, who was half human, half Betazoid. Trekkies unite, and she had the ability to be empathetic, to empathize deeply and feel other feelings as her own. Outside of sci-fi, this idea started to take root as more and more people identified with this ability to be able to really be empathetic, and so the idea of being an empath started to spread. It started to spread in pop culture, in psychology in the New age communities and now describes someone who has the ability to feel other people's feelings as if they are their own. Scientifically, again, we haven't studied it too much, but we think it might be because an empath has very hyper-responsive, hyper-sensitive mirror neurons. It makes them extra sensitive to the electromagnetic fields that are generated by other people's brains, other people's hearts, other people's emotional states. It's also hypothesized that empaths are more sensitive to dopamine, which is the neurotransmitter that's responsible for feelings of pleasure.
Jennifer Febel:The big question that hasn't been answered yet, though, is is an empath born or made? According to the New Age movement, we are special starseeds who are here to solve all the earth's problems and elevate the consciousness, and that's a beautiful idea and possibly true, but it's also possible that becoming an empath is something that is created as a result of our upbringing. When you look at people who identify as being an empath, there's a very strong correlation between that and trauma. We know from a psychological perspective that children who grow up in environments that are unstable or unpredictable often develop hypervigilance. When we are born, we're squishy and useless. We can't really do much. We're completely reliant on our caregivers to take care of us. We need to be able to develop what's called attunement, to be able to fit in with this family our soul has chosen. If our caregivers are not stable in how they present themselves to us, if they're not predictable in their behavior, then as children we don't have anything to attune to. Therefore, our neurology doesn't feel safe.
Jennifer Febel:When we grow up in households where there is this lack of stability and lack of predictability, either because one or both parents struggles with mental illness, personality disorders, illness, personality disorders, addiction or actual physical abuse, children don't learn what it means to feel safe. They stop trusting the people's behaviors and words and instead have to find a way to attune to something else. It's been shown that children who grow up in these types of environments learn how to very, very closely monitor the emotional states of their caregivers as a means of trying to prevent conflict and keep themselves safe. Because they become so highly attuned to others' emotions, they don't learn proper communication skills. They don't learn other ways to connect. They stop relying on their words because they don't have to. They learned how to use their feelings instead. The problem is that when you take behaviors that help keep you safe in trauma and you go out into the greater world where there's people who are not traumatized. The same tools don't work, so we have to learn better ways to get into the world.
Jennifer Febel:A big problem that empaths have a hard time acknowledging is the idea of projection. Empaths often assume that what they're feeling is a true reflection of the other person's emotional state. They think that somehow, because we're special and gifted, we get off the hook from human neurology Again, that's not true. Projection is an idea that was first talked about by Sigmund Freud, and it's the idea that whatever we don't acknowledge or that we repress in ourself, our neurology will reflect out onto other people as a way to get us to deal with our own shit. We are not meant to store trauma and unresolved emotions indefinitely. Every time you put something out of your mind, every time you push it down, it's meant to be temporary. When we do it permanently, it starts to clog up the joint, and so we have a backup mechanism where our unconscious mind will project it onto other people as a way to get us to learn how to deal with it. This is a natural built-in mechanism of human neurology, which means, if you're human, this is happening. If you haven't resolved your childhood issues, if you still can't set boundaries with your mom. If you still need to please your dad, if you're still holding a grudge against an ex, I promise you you are projecting onto the people around you. This is true for all of us, but empaths get sucked into the belief that somehow our projections are true. We then start to respond to those people through the lens of our own trauma and wonder why we start to create conflict everywhere we go. Oftentimes, empaths expect other people to feel and react the same way we do, and when they don't, we get upset. React the same way we do, and when they don't, we get upset.
Jennifer Febel:Empaths also have a terrible habit of gaslighting others but not recognizing that they're doing it. When you say to someone I know you're saying that you're not mad at me, but I can feel that you're mad at me and so I'm going to believe what I feel over what you're saying. When you say that to someone else, you're dismissing their reality. You're saying to them that what they're saying. When you say that to someone else, you're dismissing their reality. You're saying to them that what they're expressing isn't true. Now, if you are in a situation where it actually isn't true and they're gaslighting you, that's one thing, but if you're trying to create a relationship with someone and you're putting your empathic skills over their words and their behaviors, you're going to fuck yourself every time.
Jennifer Febel:Assuming that you know how someone truly feels undermines their reality. It's using our empathic gifts to deny someone else's experiences and autonomy. We do this under the guise of trying to help them feel, but it's not how it feels to them. Unfortunately, when empaths don't know that they're doing these things, we can become quite manipulative. This is a very hard pill to swallow. I know I very much resisted this, because why would I be manipulating people? I just want to help them. It turns out that's kind of the problem.
Jennifer Febel:Empaths tend to feel other people's feelings and because that makes us uncomfortable, we then need the other person to deal with their shit so that we feel better about their feelings. So we try to coerce them into healing. We try to make them do better. We unintentionally slash passive-aggressively, subtly, just stick things in there, try to get their attention. But it's not your job to fix other people. What happens is we try to do this and then we inevitably get hurt when the other person feels that they're being manipulated and then gets angry at us. We then say oh, they must just not be ready for this message and they're not enlightened enough, which is the most narcissistic thing you can possibly say. Hence why we often find and attract narcissists.
Jennifer Febel:Empaths will manipulate others by absorbing their negative emotions, by taking it on as their own to make the other person feel better and like you, to want to hang around you, to need you, because without you they're gonna have to feel all the feels. Creating that type of dependency so that you can feel valued and needed, is manipulation. 100%. Empaths manipulate others by not having healthy boundaries, by thinking it's our job to fix other people. How narcissistic is that? How dare we think that we could possibly know what other people need more than they do? That's not okay. That is manipulation. When we believe that we will act in ways, unconsciously, in an attempt to get other people to change, it's manipulation. Other ways empaths manipulate others is by needing validation and by fearing rejection. When we don't want people to leave us, we'll do whatever we need to do to keep them around. So what's the solution? Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. If you identify as an empath and you don't have strong boundaries, then 100% you are manipulating other people, period. There's no other option.
Jennifer Febel:Another solution is to work on building your emotional resilience. Another solution is to work on building your emotional resilience. Just because you feel all the feels of the world doesn't mean that you have to suffer, be the victim of it. Learn resilience. It's a skill set, it's an ability. You can learn that too. Stop focusing only on the world of energy and actually learn how to live in the world of other humans.
Jennifer Febel:Another solution learn how to speak up in a way that empowers others, in a way that doesn't require us to appease others. When we grow up in trauma, when we grow up where we need to attune to other people's emotions, we don't learn how to use our voice effectively, and then we get out into the world of healthy people who have learned how to use their voice effectively and we fuck up all our relationships. So it's really important, if you identify as an empath, to learn better communication skills. If, every time you speak your truth or speak up, things blow up around you, there's a good chance the language you're using is not as empowering as you think it is. Finally, stop making others like you at the expense of your own authenticity. Stop manipulating other people's energies to make them feel good around you. Be yourself and let the people who want to hang out with you hang out with you.
Jennifer Febel:So some key concepts to remember. Remember that being an empath doesn't make it special. It means you're human. It means you've learned to tune into other people's emotional cues more so than the average bear. Yay, but you're still human. Remember that being an empath does not let you off the hook from learning effective communication on learning boundaries. In fact, because you have these skills, it makes it even more important. And remember that sharing your truth with clear boundaries is essential if you're going to use your empathic abilities to do good in the world.
Jennifer Febel:As long as you haven't done the internal work, then your empathetic skills are being used to project your trauma onto other people. That is not shining your light. As always, I want to remind you to decide that you want it more than you're afraid of it. If you identify as an empath, you're probably pissed off at me right now and probably not liking a lot of what I've said. Good, we need to start thinking about the shadow side in a real way. We talk a lot about shadow work. This is shadow work. So just decide you want it more than you're afraid of it, and that's always the decision that will take you to the next step. And, of course, if you have any questions about anything from tonight's circle or podcast, please know you can always reach out to me through either of my websites, either btgwellness. com or livelifeunbroken. com, or through email or through social media or through email or through social media.
Speaker 2:Well, so there's several some of the things I've been very conscious of working hard not to do, but I'm absolutely guilty of several of the things on that list. My response to that was to laugh and go oh fuck For me. I don't know if I was that way anyway, but 100% it was out of survival right that I had to learn those skills and pay very, very close attention. I've never intentionally tried to manipulate anybody. I remember my boundary sock and anybody, um, where my boundaries suck and, oddly enough, my son has taught me to really take a step back, um, and not try to fix things for him, like for somebody else. I was really in order.
Speaker 2:You know the comment. I think it was trying to help somebody or fix somebody so they would like you more or want you. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty um. To the point where I've sort of realized now maybe I don't know, maybe five, six years ago, out of necessity, for my own sake, I needed to take a step back and stop being the person that fixed everything, and it changed the dynamic of several not all of them, thank goodness, but several relationships, and it made it painfully clear I didn't have a choice but to look. Oh well, I can't be mad. I'm the one that created that.
Jennifer Febel:It's a great awareness. It it's a great. We have to first be aware this is so. This is the shadow work. That is actual shadow work. Sitting down and like journaling once in a while. That's not shadow work. Shadow work is being able to say, oh fuck, uh-oh, I'm doing this, I need to heal some stuff, I need to get a better skill set. So all that happened with empathy.
Jennifer Febel:Empaths have learned a skill set of emotional attunement, but we never learned that skill set of connecting with healthy communication, with our words, how to actually bond with other people through the mechanism words. We learned how to use words to appease. We never learned how to use words to empower. But it's just a skill set. It's no different than any other skill set and it's really. It's really not that hard. It's so much easier than people think it is. It's just that we're not taught it and we're not exposed to it enough to be able to model it.
Jennifer Febel:Most of us are not surrounded by people who are speaking empowered, who are actually owning their shit, who are setting healthy boundaries. Most of us are surrounded by people like us who kind of suck a bunch right, and so we're not seeing it generally in media. We're not seeing it in our friendships, our relationships, and so we just don't get the opportunity to be exposed to it as often. But that doesn't mean that it's a hard thing to learn or it's a long thing to learn. I teach it to people in eight days. It's not that hard. It's just that we don't learn it. Once you learn it you're like, oh my God, that all Is that all it took, really? So it's just a skill set. Let yourself off the hook for sucking a bunch when you didn't know what you didn't know so do you know what, though?
Speaker 2:the one thing that I have difficulty with is in communicating with people when, when I really can feel an idea of how they're feeling, but they're not ready to face it yet, and when what they're saying is so contradictory to what they're feeling.
Jennifer Febel:How do you know that what they're feeling is actually what they're feeling and not also mixed in with your own projection of how you think you would feel if you were them? That's the trap. How do you know that is a?
Speaker 2:trap. That is a trap, and I have caught myself in that.
Jennifer Febel:I have.
Speaker 2:I've worked really hard to try to separate that to be able to recognize it. There's some instances, particularly, I guess, more intimate relationships, where a partnership say, for example, where he would say, well, why don't you believe what I'm saying? And I knew he was foolish, right, I knew that he was lying, that that wasn't true, that that's not really how he was feeling. Yes, I had to be careful about sort of my projecting to him, but I mean I would wait and I would watch and eventually it would come out that I did pick up accurately. He just wasn't ready to talk about or to fix it or to tell me that. So but the thing is, how do I protect myself? How do I protect myself?
Jennifer Febel:so in a healthy relationship, when one person thinks the other one's not being truthful, they can say hey, I hear what you're saying, but I'm feeling like there's something that you're not telling me. You don't have to tell me. Know that when you're ready, I'm here to listen, but I can feel that there's something off and I'm I'm hoping that you're going to feel ready to talk to me about it soon. That's the missing piece that empaths don't have. We don't communicate with the other person. We just feel what we feel and then we keep it to ourselves because they're just lying anyways. We tell ourselves this whole thing in our head versus actually talking to the person, saying hey, I'm not feeling that, you don't have to share with me. You're welcome to share when you want to share, but know that I feel something's off and I'm here when you're ready.
Speaker 2:that's the missing piece now, where were you 20 years?
Jennifer Febel:ago. Right, where was this? I know no one was talking about this stuff. I mean, I didn't learn any. I only learned this stuff because I pretty much blew up my marriage and almost lost it completely, right like I had no idea any of this stuff. It was only when we were like looking at separation papers that I'm like I got to figure out what my part of this is, because it's really easy for me to fall into the trap of everyone else who goes through this process, who ends up declaring that their partner is just a narcissist and they can't be with them. And I certainly thought about that stuff too and worried about that stuff too. But that's where my coach came in handy and she's the one who helped me learn how to speak up, how to see what I'm projecting, how to know when it's my stuff and to not make other people responsible, to be able to go to my husband and say, hey, I freaked the fuck out when he said that stuff the other day. That wasn't about you, that was about me. I'm sorry, I'm working on it.
Jennifer Febel:So empaths have to learn how to use their voice, but not to tell other people well when you're not ready, but to actually just compassionately. There's a compassion that needs to go with empathy, and I think a lot of empaths miss because we're not taught compassionate communication skills. We're taught so when you meet an empath. There's two kinds of empaths. There's an empath with zero boundaries and the empaths with walls, where we push people away and then we think, well, I must be not able to have relationships because I have to put up these walls and keep everyone away, otherwise they're here, but there's a middle ground. There's a place where we can blend our energy with someone else's, but not completely to the point that we lose ourselves. It's supposed to blend some of ourselves. It's supposed to be a portion of who we are, that we overlap with others, but not all of who we are. So boundaries is the answer, and learning how to compassionately share your boundaries and connect with others and use your voice to empower, not appease. That's the missing link. It's basically why I wrote the book. So, come November, read it and hopefully it helps for you, because that's the goal to help people who are looking for a more compassionate way to set boundaries.
Jennifer Febel:We all talk about what boundaries are, but the actual, linguistic how of it, how to share it in a way that isn't going to trigger the other person, that isn't going to make them suddenly project onto us, that isn't going to put them into fight or flight or freeze, because then it's no fun, right? Then their trauma is activating our trauma and everyone's traumatized in our own arguments. So how to do that in a way that empowers other people and feels empowering for you? That's the answer, and it is so much easier than we make it out to be.
Jennifer Febel:The problem is that most empaths don't search those tools out. We instead want crystals and bubbling and grounding meditations and retreats where we don't have to deal with people. So it's really, it's not a hard thing. We just don't go after it because it's gross, because we've told ourselves that we're star seeds who don't belong here, and I think that's done ourselves a big disservice because, whether or not that's true, we are here right now and we need to be here and live in this reality. We chose to be humans for a reason to have vocal cords, for a reason, to be with other idiotic humans for a reason, don't know why. This is what my soul chose. So I gotta be here, and I think empaths try not to be here and if we grow up in trauma. No doubt we don't want to be here, but as adults we get to learn and choose to be here. We get to use our voice to empower. So know that it's totally something that can be learned and it is so much easier than you think. You just have to seek it out.
Jennifer Febel:Thank you again for joining me for this episode of the BTG podcast. Before we sign off, I've got some exciting news I want to share. My brand new book, how to Set Boundaries Without Feeling Like a Dick is dropping November 2024. If you're ready to stop people-pleasing and reclaim your time without the guilt, this book is for you. To get an exclusive sneak peek and check out the first chapter, visit btgwellnesscom book. Trust me, you're going to want to go check that out. Thanks again and until next time.
