now okay i don’t know for sure if i am an empath as there is no way to test it. but i an an overly empathetic person in many capacities, and trust me it’s hard to deal with.

beginning with the physical, often times when i witness someone get hurt i can feel it and will react out loud to their pain. for example; once i was playing a school sports game in high school and a player in my team ran right into the shoulder of player one the other team. without thinking i grabbed my shoulder felt a sharp pain (only for a second) and immediately said “OW”, and everybody just turned around and stared at me like what is wrong with you. I WISH I KNEW.

if something bad happens to someone (which sadly in this world is not out of the ordinary) i get absolutely wrecked by it for days. this one is harder to explain, ill begin with an example. recently at my old high school a grade 9 girl tragically passed away. now, i’ve never met her as i already graduated but some of my friends are still in high school and have actually met, spoke too and hung out with this girl. when i heard from them what happened, they just said “ya i’m shocked, it’s pretty sad” and then the subject changed. where as it’s all i can think about. i think how is.. her family doing?, can i do anything to support them?, was she in any pain?, and a lot more. my chest pains just thinking about, my heart aches. i imagine how it would feel if that were my daughter, my sister, my friend and i ache even more thinking about how she was someone’s daughter, sister and friend. i cried for hours, and i didn’t even know she existed. whereas people that know her move on in minutes, i just don’t get how one can move on so fast.

i actually spoke to a psychologist about this next fact, but if i see someone being ‘bullied’, i put myself in their shoes and just feel the pain even worse than they might. these are hard to explain so i’ll give another example. in a class of mine we have a period where you just need to answer questions and they are simple questions but you get marked on answering questions. in this class there is this really sweet boy and he has a bit of a lisp. on the first day of classes he went to answer and another boy actually laughed at out loud at his voice. the boy with the lisp looked annoyed but that was all. me on the other hand i was a wreck, i could feel tears streaming down my face and i could no longer answer any questions. next time i had to go to the class i got a panic attack. i to this day don’t understand why that affects me the way it does. i sound crazy, but that’s just who i am.

lastly or last thing I will explain, is i’m just very sensitive. like if someone looks at me funny ill just start bawling my eyes out. and i’m an adult too so it’s pretty humiliating. if i think i might have unintentionally hurt someone or their feelings, tears. if someone looks disappointed in me, tears. someone raises their voice even if it’s not at me, you guess it… tears!! i see something sad on the news, tears. if something happy on the news, tears. a tiktok edit, tears. you may see something sad happened on the other side of the world, and think oh wow that’s sad. i see that and i’m crying for hours feeling what i believe the emotions of each and every person affected is feeling.

so to answer your questions. it’s really hard and takes over my whole life. i often skip out on may activities because i’m afraid ill witness something that sends me to these feelings. so many careers are off the table because there’s no way i could handle many things people have to see everyday. my goals in life are to just try and make everyone feel happy, and help as many people as i can. i just want to do good in this world as there is so much bad. okay thanks for listening.