Is It Affection or Protection? The Hyper Empathy Conundrum

What's the real motivation behind your deep care for other people's struggles?

That's just one of my questions in this 8 minute video discussing the connection between hyper-empathy and self-empathy. As a hyper-empath, I see self-empathy as essential to any conscious relationship. Otherwise, we may feel a need to fix others so that we can soothe ourselves. 

I'm inviting you to practice asking yourself these 2 essential questions: 

"How am I feeling?" and "What do I need?"

Hyper-empathy can often be a trauma response influenced by patriarchal culture.

I emphasize the importance of attuning to our own needs before anticipating the needs of others. Through this perspective, I aim to provide a mindful approach to balancing empathy and self-care. 

Transcript:

Kate Lynch: I'm not saying it's bad to help people. Of course we like helping people. It feels good.

I recently had a nourishing hangout with another long time Brooklyn yoga teacher.

So many things were resonant to both of us. She mentioned something about hyper empathy, and I asked to have a little time to think about it, because my position, and I consider myself a hyper empath, my position is that self empathy is a prerequisite to any conscious relationship, including empathizing with others. She was saying it's really easy for her to jump into the experience that someone else is having, whether it's on TV or in person and to go straight to empathy for them, bypassing empathy for herself.

She doesn't need to do that first in order to be in that hyper empathic place with someone else.

This is what I needed to think about because it's similar to the things that other people have said to me and I often don't have a great answer for it. Like this idea that in order to love someone else, we really need to love ourselves first. A lot of people disagree and think they can love others.

And it doesn't matter so much whether they love themselves. I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but I do want to share my perspective. I think there's a conundrum here with hyper empathy.

Hyper empathy is, honestly, it's a trauma response. Even if we weren't raised in traumatic circumstances. Those of us who are raised in patriarchy, even if we're not socialized as girls and women, we are still raised in a patriarchal culture, which impacts all of us. It's like growing up with racism impacts all of us. White people are not immune from being impacted by racism. We just aren't as impacted. as people of color. People socialized as boys may not be as impacted by patriarchy, but they're still harmed by it. You might be a man who's hyper empathic and still benefit from this reflection.

When we haven't attuned to ourselves yet. We are jumping out of ourselves and our bodies into someone else's experience, that's not real. Anytime we're going into someone else's experience, Even if it feels like we're really good at it, it's a projection. We are not actually in their experience.

We're not in our own experience, we're not in theirs, we're in a fantasy. I know that sounds harsh, but stick with me. I'm right here beside you. I am also a hyper empath. This is from my own experience.

Our nervous systems are designed to seek either protection or connection. If we're in a trauma response, we're seeking protection. Feeling unsafe, and trying to fix the problem. Those of us socialized as girls, often we're raised to anticipate the needs of others and squelch our own needs. So we're in appeasement, some people call it fawning. Our nervous system is trying to connect without any regard for our own needs. In fact, we need to shut down our own needs in order to be safe. And this is a learned trauma response. Our needs didn't matter. Being good at caring for others was how we stayed safe, or at least that was communicated to us on subtle levels when we were socialized in that patriarchal culture. If you didn't grow up in a patriarchal culture, this may not apply to you. If you really have zero trauma this may not apply to you.

And if you've done a ton of work on self compassion and self empathy, you might be doing this self empathy work without even realizing you're doing it. You are checking in and attuning to yourself before holding space for others. That does take a certain amount of self empathy, self compassion, self love, self acceptance.

To have perspective and to not be in the projection, we need to be coming from ourselves, right? We need that perspective of here I am, and there they are, and we are separate. There is a need for separateness in order to have mindfulness. Otherwise, we may end up in a situation where we feel like we need to be a savior or fix others to feel calmer ourselves.

I know I've experienced that.

It's very hard to allow others to have their discomfort, to be in their experience of struggle. With my family of origin, my friends, my loved ones, letting them struggle is very uncomfortable. I know this comes from the way I was raised and the trauma response of appeasement. Being really good at helping others, putting my needs aside, and caring for their needs.

When I can't do that, or choose not to do that, there's all this discomfort and anxiety that comes up. So if you feel that way, you're not alone.

I'm not saying it's bad to help people. Of course we like helping people. It feels good. But it is all about the subconscious motivation behind it.

And a lot of times it's more than connection. It's connection for the purpose of protection, of staying safe. Even if we know we're safe on a conscious level, the subconscious is still seeking safety by fixing others.

If we're fixing someone else's problems, guess what? They don't get to do it themselves. We need to trust them to struggle and to learn from struggle. Otherwise they'll miss out. Trusting others with their own story, their own struggle, their own timeline, can be very uncomfortable when we're empaths. I get that. When we are rooted and grounded in our own body, our own self empathy, we'll be able to more accurately attune to our own nervous system and see the lens that we are viewing others through.

So our perspective will be more accurate and our prediction about what's happening for the other person will be more accurate.

Responding mindfully requires us to attune to ourselves first. Don't skip the step of self empathy.

Just get so good at it that you don't even realize you're doing it before empathizing with others.

I would love to hear your response to this.

Ask yourself, "How am I feeling? What do I need?"

That's the whole thing. Ask yourself this, and notice the shifts. 

Thanks for listening to my TED talk.