Topics talked about in this post include empathy in both a mundane and psychic sense and consent regarding touching, including some discussion on racism and other oppressions. One of the folks talked about uses pronoun "it" and if you aren't used to hearing people referred to with that pronoun some of this piece will read weird.
I went through this period when I was just starting to get into the in-person Pagan community (at age 19 or 20 or so) when I had just this major craving for validation. And believe me, I'd never say I don't
still crave validation (I've been practicing Witchcraft a
long time for Goddex sake!) but at that point in my life I was really invested in magickal and psychic validation... I wanted personal proof that I was as spiritually badass as I wanted to think I was. The perfect place to get this validation was the very first Pagan ritual I attended, which was frequented by a lot of local Pagans and Witches ranging from the fluffiest of fluff to the most obnoxious Reconstructionist, and although the presentation beforehand was
super bullshit and involved somebody dressed as Glinda the Good Witch in it, it was overall a great experience that introduced me to such wonders as the
Spiral Dance, which continues to be one of my favorite group Pagan activities.
At some point, hanging out alone like the introvert I was, an older Witch approached me, smiling widely.
"You have...
the gift," she said as she looked into my eyes.
I had no idea what the fuck she was talking about. "What gift?" I asked.
"
The gift," she replied. She then looked at me in a way which felt like she was looking directly into my soul, held my shoulders, and said "Whenever you feel like crying, just wiggle your toes."
It soon struck me, or at least I think it did: She was saying I was an empath, or somebody who can feel the emotions of other people. It was something I suspected, and a mere couple weeks earlier I had a weird experience where somebody in front of me was talking on his cell phone and I just felt this intense, crushing dread and despair even though I had not heard what he was talking about. He hung up the phone and told the person he was talking to that a close relative had died, after which I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to cry a bit.
I didn't really talk about this to people. Folks who aren't Pagan or into this sort of shit are really not receptive to it and are quick to ridicule or try and find mundane reasons for them, and I had major performance anxiety when it came to folks who
would believe these things. But privately I really owned it. And I would own it for years, and even went to a Pagan empath support group once where I found that my experiences were pretty much the same as every other person who showed up.
A lot of things have changed since then that made me question this identification. "High level of empathy?" Absolutely. But as far as promoting myself as having some sort of innate, beautiful spiritual skill? Meh. Unclear. I use a lot of resources directed toward psychic empaths because they are useful for coping with my feelings, and in a discussion with a particularly accepting individual, sure, I might generically call myself an empath.
But I'm not invested in it anymore, and to make matters worse, there are a lot of quite problematic aspects to the empath life that I think everybody who owns that term needs to understand and unpack if they're going to continue describing themselves in that way.
It all started with a list of so-called "traits of empaths."
It was a checklist that was supposed to help you figure out if you were an empath or not if you were on the fence. And something stuck out that made me call the way we talk about empathy into immediate question: There was a
big focus on empaths' emotional responses to fictional characters, particularly an aversion to violence on TV and in movies.
This made me really uncomfortable, because so many of these resources seemed dedicated to convincing people they were supernaturally empathetic based on something that really
isn't feeling what somebody else is feeling at all. Fictional characters are just that...
fictional... and unless you're going to go all out on weird things like alternate universes created by the pen of the writer, this to me strikes me as nothing more than just plain old
mundane empathy, something we learn and develop that's based on mundane observations we make about others, like facial expression and tone of voice, including those we might not comprehend on a surface level.
Here's the kicker, though: Since fictional characters are created to
amplify those cues we all learn, because they're designed to be highly identifiable characters, and because we're likely to get a more "in their head" perspective, it's actually easier for most of us to empathize with them than it is folks who are right next to us.
Does a high level of emotion when consuming fiction mean you're
not an empath because you're creating emotions that aren't necessarily concretely there? Of course not. I believe you can have a high level of mundane empathy alongside a high level of spiritual empathy. But it's not necessarily a sign that you are an empath... and in lots of cases fiction empathy actually contributes to the following other problems with spiritual empathy.
A lot of self-described empaths are very, very bad at empathy.
One of the folks I see most often who describes itself as an empath is... a touchy-feely person. Walking through a park on Pagan Pride Day I was suddenly graced by an arm reached right across my shoulders, immediately raising my hackles in grating discomfort. I do not like being touched by strangers, particularly without permission, and was trying desperately to hint to it that I was very uncomfortable. And yet... it persisted, for quite a long time.
Too often when we think we are empathizing with people, that we can feel what they're feeling, what we're really feeling is how
we would feel in their situation. My Pagan acquaintance couldn't register that I was uncomfortable, because it wouldn't have been uncomfortable in my situation.
I hear stories of this all the time from people who wind up with empaths popping their personal bubbles and not registering at all when they're making people uncomfortable.
And some of the wrongest empathy? It's even worse than just not registering that some rando is uncomfortable...
Empathy is often selective, including along lines of oppression.
Not sensing that somebody is internally screaming for you to stop touching him, well, that sucks, but in my example case there really isn't a
power over relationship. What about when there is?
It's a mess.
I was reading some Twitter threads on shitty white people behavior. This talked about a phenomenon that the authors referred to as
white sociopathy... essentially, as white people we learn to empathize with people of color and especially black people
less than we do other white people.
Part of this is actually the same issue I described above... we believe that we are empathizing with people when we feel emotions we would feel in their situation, regardless of whether or not they actually feel the same way. As a white person I have no idea what it feels like to experience racism. I can try
imagining what it feels like, but the accuracy of those feelings is dubious at best. So when I witness or am around somebody experiencing a racist attack, or viewing programming about racism, I certainly feel
sympathy, but my frame of reference is just too different (and too privileged) to really feel
empathy.
The same person who could not understand my dislike of its touching me without my consent? It also went to an anti-racism workshop and
entirely goddamn missed the point. Like, career level missed the point along with everyone else (among whom I know there were other self-described empaths). These were people who could not get beyond their own whiteness to even
sympathize with the issues being talked about let alone express some sort of superpower-level empathy like they truly think they have.
This is a huge problem that goes beyond just believing in something that might not be literally true (something I'm totally cool with). If you're convinced you have high psychic empathy, but are chronically bad at empathizing with marginalized people, you're the type of person who could be easy to manipulate into thinking things aren't as bad as they really are.
I think about the medical profession... doctors in particular are likely to prescribe fewer pain medications to black people (especially black women) because they believe they feel less pain than white people. Male doctors are likely to believe that women are exaggerating pain, especially menstrual pain. And while these aren't necessarily self-described psychic empaths, we are just as susceptible to our own biases as anyone else is.
So, you believe you're an empath anyway. What now?
I'm not saying that you're
not an empath. I think that plenty of the stuff above can be explained in ways that don't discount the whole concept, and I'm not even saying that if you have problematic empathy you are a "fake" empath. Like I said above, I have huge questions about psychic empathy, but I do use the concept where it suits me, because there is a lot of good coping information there.
It's really important to realize, though, that a lot of the cultural baggage surrounding psychic empathy can still manipulate us and quite frankly make us into really obnoxious people. So if you want to keep within the psychic empathy framework
without being obnoxious, I have a few suggestions.
First, always troubleshoot your own perceptions before concluding that somebody is "fake" or lying to you about their feelings. Remember that
you have emotions, too, and if they're charged up enough they will override anything you're feeling from someone else. A few years ago my grandma had a stroke, and everybody who was around me when I heard the news immediately felt it as if their own grandmothers had had stroke and became overwhelmed by "empathetic" feelings. But my grandma is actually a bigoted and abusive human being who I don't care for at all, and I felt very little emotion about it. I wasn't lying about how unremarkable I felt about the whole situation, but somebody who is picturing their own grandmother having a stroke could easily cross those wires and assume my emotions had to be in the same ballpark.
When you think you're being empathetic toward somebody marginalized under you, take extra consideration, and don't say ridiculous things white people say like "I know exactly how you feel," even if you think you
do know exactly how they feel.
I also want you to interrogate the entire idea of "fake" people. We use this term to refer to people who behave in a way that isn't really "them" in order to curry favor, to look cool or interesting, or to avoid drama... and it describes
pretty much absolutely everyone. The way I behave at work is different from how I behave around my close friends, which is also different from how I behave around my lovers. That's not "fake," it's just context. When we call people "fake," there's a good chance what we
mean is that they are behaving in a way that we personally do not like. As a trans person, I can guarantee a lot of my relatives thought my transition was just attention-seeking fakery. Men regularly accuse women who wear makeup of being fake (and don't get me started on the idea of "fake geek girls!"). People accuse bisexuals of being "fake." So when we talk about the so-called aversion of empaths to "fake people," we're meddling in a concept that is in and of itself... well, fake. Meaningless. And often oppressive.
If you're going to live the empath life, I'd also suggest you find ways to disconnect. I was in a lovely group ritual for empaths in which we narrowed and sometimes cut cables of psychic connection between ourselves and people we are too invested in (abusers, exes, politicians, etc.), because dwelling too much on other people's feelings is not good for us. You can use the wiggle-your-toes trick that elderly Witch I started this essay with gave me, or learn spiritual warding techniques (a really simple one is to cross your fingers when you feel overwhelmed), or make jewelry of iron or hematite to help block it out.