Empaths need both connection and detachment

Culturally rich and ever able to contribute within the fabric of their world, the empath is intrinsically interwoven into their environment, and this can cause both bliss and loathing.  It’s why the senses reach overload at the least opportune time and why there’s a paradoxical need to connect with the world yet also detach from it.

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I think Jesus, the human being, was an empath, in that he typified what it’s like to need to connect at depth with humanity yet also at times isolate from that same humanity.

I think Jesus as the God man continually harnessed and perfected the empath qualities, and perfectly exemplified connection and detachment from humanity at every appropriate time.

Being that none of us can do this, we’re left with the formidable strengths yet the cavernous weaknesses of the empath.

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When we slip into the vulnerable side of our own empathness, we may find we feel scapegoated for feeling these divergent yet urgent needs to connect and to detach—sometimes at the same time.

We feel there’s no way our world could possibly understand us, little that we understand ourselves at times.  In feeling scapegoat-worthy, we resent the fact that we feel so cogently, yet it’s this very capacity that makes us highly useful in both our connected and detached worlds.  Besides, defending against feeling or being scapegoated is always a good instinct.

Yes, that’s right.  Those who feel so deeply that they’re often at a loss to communicate what or how they feel are the very people who God uses to make this confused world make sense for others.  It’s good to be or feel defended when we’re victimised for simply feeling.

Empaths are kind, kinder than most.  They’re sensitive, more sensitive than most.  They’re prone to anxiety.  Just as they’re quick to slip into a depression, they also bear the capacity for a quicker than expected recovery.  All this because they feel everything.  And because everything is felt, empathy is copiously available to and for others in their times of feeling.

It’s sad that those who give so very much to their world so often feel estranged from themselves and also scapegoated by their world.  Yet, there’s that inner desire to give that’s an inexhaustible fountain of life within them.

For the empath, environment is everything.  It’s either a source of life or death, and there’s little middle ground unfortunately.  When an empath feels they can care and be cared for, there’s an expanse of life experienced.  But when an empath is subject to exclusion, isolation, partiality, and even bullying, and when they see their care is spurned, they detect it at light speed, and quickly sink into mortal loathing.

As birds of a feather stick together, so empaths are designed to be in community together.

If you relate, you could ask yourself, “How and where can I connect with others who value and understand the need to both connect and detach?”