From "The Lodestarre": Katherine's Musings on What It Is Like To Be An Untrained Empath

Empathy is based 100% on feelings, sometimes physical, but primarily emotional. There are no words or pictures, no past or future; it's all about feelings and sensations, and time has no relevance. An Empath can be psychic or telepathic, but those are completely separate phenomena.

Empathic events involve other people's feelings, not the Empath’s, but an untrained Empath has no way to know this. An untrained Empath does not have the necessary tools to distinguish between their own feelings and the sensory output of others.

The biggest problem for the uneducated Empath is it’s hard to identify.

No-one is supposed to hear voices or see hallucinations, but everyone is supposed to have feelings, so there's nothing concrete to describe as being unusual or out of the ordinary, which is why it's so hard to differentiate between being an Empath and not. What would the Empath say? ‘I’m having a feeling” ??

But just try to imagine what it must be like; imagine experiencing other people's feelings. And, of course, it would only be the most powerful ones. Being glad you're about to eat a tuna sandwich at your favorite restaurant might make you glad, but is not likely to elicit a whole lot of passion.

So - pretend you are an Empath but you don’t know it, and pretend you are walking down the street. As you walk, you cross paths with of a very angry man. Empathic events are not always about proximity, but we’ll use proximity for this example. You’re walking along and you’re feeling fine and then suddenly, for not reason, for just those few moments as you and the angry man pass each other, you feel absolutely furious. The anger comes on like a tidal wave.

Then the man is gone and it's over. And your anger slowly fades. And you’re slowly starting to feel like yourself again, except that now you approach a woman who is desperately sad. And as she passes, your mood swings from fading fury to intense grief. Suddenly all you want to do is double over and sob, but in reality, there's nothing for you to cry about. Then she's gone and just as equilibrium is starting to return, along comes a man who just got the job of his dreams and he's ecstatic - and before you’ve really had a chance to recover from the rage and the tears, your ragged emotions slingshot abruptly from anguish to euphoria.

Can you imagine what it must be like? How confusing and frightening?

Now try doing that in the mall at Christmas time…

Or at Chicago O’Hare Airport in the midst of a sudden snow squall…

Copyright © 2008 by Pamela S. K. Glasner, All Rights Reserved