You cannot make yourself an empath. An empath is a person who is born with that quality. An empath can perceive energy all around, and empaths very often are psychics who never fully developed. Highly sensitive people are always empaths.
An empath carries energy around like a sponge, receiving all the signals from everyone around them: nature, people, situations, rooms. An empath can sense everyone's mood, even when they say everything is fine, as well as know when someone does not qualify to say what they are saying. Psychology does not list empathy as a clinical diagnosis, but it does recognize, under a different name, hyper-empathy: a higher than average level of emotional perception paired with emotional contagion, the tendency to catch someone else's feelings almost involuntarily. Often empaths are not prone to setting any boundaries, which leads to complete people-pleasing and emotional exhaustion.
At least one in five people is estimated to be highly sensitive. You are not imagining this, and you are not alone in it.
Empath or Highly Sensitive Person
The two terms overlap so often they get used interchangeably, and most of the time that is fine. There is still a real distinction worth knowing. If your overload is mainly about other people: their moods, their conflict, their pain, empath is the more accurate word. If it also includes light, sound, texture, and general sensory input, highly sensitive person captures more of what you are carrying. Many people who feel this have quietly wrestled with the label, simply because no one ever gave them the language to separate the two.
Where the Word Comes From
The term empath entered popular language through psychiatrist Judith Orloff, who also framed it as a psychic or clairvoyant trait. That framing is debated in mainstream psychiatry, and if you have ever felt dismissed for using the word, that is likely why.
In my opinion and experience, as I am an empath, all those abilities are amazing gifts, but they require very specific training to learn to live with that gift. That gift will give you discernment no regular people have and can give you all you desire in your life. You will have to take control over your mind and your energy field in order to have this gift serve you.
The Gift Most People Call a Curse
An empath is born with a desire to love and to share love. An empath believes in goodness. An empath believes in peace.
Right after we are born, we are told this is weird, that our perception is not widely understood or even accepted. We are judged, so we begin to step into the only way we know: people-pleasing. In our mind, if we fulfill someone else's desire, we make them happy. If we are good, we keep them happy and well. But that is only illusion, as in reality, we cannot make anyone else happy.
From a very young age, Sophia could feel the energy. She knew when her mother was overwhelmed and when her father was angry. She even knew when an argument was about to begin. No one explained these feelings to her. She simply sensed them. She could not understand all of it logically, but because she loved her family, she learned to meet everyone's needs before they even asked, just to keep them happy and peaceful. She agreed even when something inside her felt differently.
Her subconscious mind formed a belief: when everyone around me is happy, I am safe and loved. Over time, she shut her own feelings down so deeply that she nearly forgot they were there.
Sophia grew into a capable, successful woman everyone could depend on. She could sense what people needed before they asked. She said yes to everything, and she always stayed silent to avoid conflict. What began as a beautiful sensitivity and discernment had quietly become people-pleasing, and it completely shut down her intuition and her voice. She found herself constantly tired, exhausted, and at some point, physically sick. That is when she realized that hiding her true feelings was actually making her invisible and disrespected. She felt like nobody cared for her.
Then she realized it was time to change. It was time to say no to everyone around her, and yes to herself. Through hypnotherapy, she began to understand that her gifts were never meant to require her to put herself last. She built her self-worth, set clear boundaries, and everything began to change. She learned how to stop absorbing other people's energy, and she was still that beautiful, loving, intuitive, and generous person, but this time without losing herself.
That is the difference between being lost in your sensitivity, and learning to master it
Signs You Are an Empath
✦ You walk into a room and your mood instantly changes.
✦ You go visit a friend happy and uplifted, and you leave feeling tired and depleted.
✦ You can sense someone's mood and emotions even though they tell you everything is fine.
✦ You often wake up in the morning feeling low for no reason, because the core of being an empath is sensing energy: energy from other people, and energy from global consciousness and the universe.
✦ You feel a shift in your own body before you understand why: the thinner boundary between you and everyone around you picking something up before your mind catches up to it.
An empath is a person on an energy mastery path. If you do not understand that requirement, the suffering in life is very harsh.
The Fear Underneath the Pattern
Empaths are stuck due to fear: fear of not being accepted, of not being approved, of not being liked. An empath is a person who, most of the time, craves other people's approval, recognition, and reward. All of it comes from a desire to be loved, because what is love? Love is acceptance. Love is approval. I love you: that's me, I accept you for who you are.
I do not think our society uses the word love in a proper way. I often hear people telling complete strangers “I love you,” and I wonder if they even understand what that word means. You barely met that person and you are telling them you love them. Very often an empath will say “I love you” to someone who stabbed them in the back, lied to them, or abused them. That is a pure qualification of being an empath: lowering your own worth and value just to be approved.
Why Empaths Stay Stuck
What keeps empaths stuck is the very core of who they are. They want to be loved. The core belief of an empath is: I love, I can be trusted, and I can prove to you that you can trust me. Instead of standing up for themselves, they fulfill everyone's requests and say yes all the time.
You need to learn that you are not responsible for anyone's happiness or anyone's positive life, and to stop absorbing people's energies, moods, and emotions and carrying them like you own them. You can use your antennas and your perception of energy to your advantage without absorbing it. It takes practice. First, you have to restore your core in the subconscious mind: restoring self-worth, restoring the identity of who you are. This gift of perception, once controlled, becomes an amazing gift of discernment. Most people do not have discernment. Once an empath steps into their power and learns to control the gift, discernment becomes the beautiful gift of knowing with whom to connect, and who not to.
This is where the real work begins, and it is also where the pattern shows up hardest to see on your own: in relationships, and in the way you run your business or your career. That is what Blog #3 and Blog #4 of this series are about.
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Why Saying No Still Comes with Guilt
If the fear of not being liked, not being approved, or not being accepted sounds familiar, this free class walks through the subconscious root of it, and what finally begins to change it.