Quote:
Originally Posted by RascalPuff Empathy is frequently confused for 'mind reading'.
That is not what the blessing and curse of an extraordinary empath is.
The blessing is the clairvoyant vehicularized ability to feel what others feel and to thereby consort with and comfort them - assure veritably suffering individuals and groups that they are not misunderstood or alone.
The curse is the pain that the - inadvertant or vigilant - empath feels, in exchange for the emotionallly roller coasting gift that was betrothed them by Nature.
The gift and burden of above average empathy is rife with rewards, punishments and charleton pretenders who attempt to duplicitously capitalize on the subject.
Clearly, the entire world is in desperate need of more genuine empaths - to contribute to a more caring posture toward those in need of understanding and comfort.
Websters:
The experiencing of one's own of the feelings of another - the capacity for this.
Synonym: Sympathy.
Antonym: Insensitivity, arrogance, sadism. |
Rascal....I am glad I found your thread here, this is an excellent rendition of empathy and the empath. I was trying to explain in the thread "the root of all evil" that empathy is otherwise a higher expression of feeling than compassion and that the empath feels on a higher level of emotion with others in pain...I kind of feel that compassion is like alignment with anothers pain while empathy is a merging or understanding with another's pain for example when I am in the presence of someone being humiliated I fully rush through their reactions of shame....it sometimes allows me to make a responce to the perpetrator which reveals to them their not too gracious moment...I am then able to attend graciously with the shame of the offended person...
Empathy may be both a reward and a curse but would it be more important to look at this sensitivity as an essential human quality rather than seeing it as a painful liability...it does allow the empath to constructively work on human arrogance...
Peace Mikal