Feelings

If you had asked me…well…basically…ever, I would have told you that my greatest weakness is that I have too many feelings.

I’ve heard it my whole life. “You’re too sensitive.” “You feel too much.” “You have too many feelings.” “You’re kind of a lot…”

I’ve heard it all. And I knew…the level of feelings that I have in me was…more…than most people around me.

It often leads me to a memory. I was around 21 and I went to a wake to support my friends. I didn’t even know the person who had passed. Never met him. But I was overtaken by very real grief. I cried like this person was my best friend. It wasn’t fake. It was very real emotion. Very real emotion that even I couldn’t understand.

As I got older, I started hearing the term “empath”. Someone who feels the feelings they’re surrounded by.

At first I latched onto that word. “YES! I FINALLY GET IT! THIS is why I feel it all! Why others’ sadness makes me sad. Why anger overwhelms me. Why I have to try so hard to surround myself with laughter. I get it!”

Then I started down rabbit holes with it…and was suddenly less enamored.

Wait a minute…the traits of being an empath sound an awful lot like being codependent…maybe it’s just a nice way of saying, “Gurl…you all kinds of fucked up…”

I definitely fell out of love with the word and have stayed that way for years.

So, last week, my therapist said something about me being an empath and that I have to protect my energy.

I had to ask: “Ok, but which came first? The empath or the codependent?”

She seemed surprised. I mean, she’s told me for years that I’ve battled some serious codependent habits…but she seemed surprised by the question because she also thinks I’ve gotten much better.

“It seems to me that empaths and codependents share the same traits. So…am I an empath because I’m codependent? Or did my being an empath lead me to being codependent?”

She laughed. “Empaths are born.”

Oh. Ok…

So, back down the rabbit hole I went. Apparently, some empaths are easily trained to be codependents, but not all are.

Ok. I can live with this.

Then…came the next phase. I was listening to a Brene Brown book…and she was talking about vulnerability. She was talking about how tempting it is, for all of us, to want to turn off our feelings. She talked about how it’s brave not to.

“Well…if an empath feels EVERYTHING others are feeling…and still doesn’t turn it off…wow. THAT’S bravery.”

Brave.

That label feels right.

In all the ways that the other labels never felt…RIGHT to me…

Too much. Too sensitive. Too many feelings. These labels never felt like ME.

But brave?

Brave feels like I was born with that label printed on me like Izod on a golf shirt.

Brave.

I like it.

I am it.

BECAUSE of all of those feelings.

./blog

*Jazz hands*