Semi-Aware Empathic Person with HSP Traits
This combination creates the need for a lot of self-monitoring and self-care. HSPs’ support is typically found in psychology and counseling, while an empath requires more specific mentoring and awareness to work with their clairsentient ability. But self-care and self-awareness are vital tools for both an empath and HSP. And this can not be overstated: Self-awareness is the greatest GIFT we can give ourselves and humanity.
Identifying the source of your sensitivity
Ask yourself if the sensitivities are more aligned to environmental elements that impact your five sensory networks—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and feeling? This would indicate a sensory processing sensitivity of an HSP.
Do you notice and analyze fine details in the room and in people’s behavior to build context and plausible outcomes and scenarios, which are often proven correct? This is also an HSP trait of sensitivity to subtleties. For your self-care, do you need to remove yourself from loud noises, bright lights, and busy/crowded places with too much stimuli to track? Do you tend to be hypersensitive to criticism and lean towards perfectionism? All of these traits align with an HSP.
The HSP label, which was presented in 1997 by Dr. Elaine Aron and accounts for 15-20 percent of the population, gives a legitimate framework for environmental and social sensitivities, but it doesn’t account for empathic sensitivities.
From my experience, there’s an evolutionary arc from being an overly sensitive person who tries to survive in their environment by feeling separate, to that of being an engaged and functional empath who witnesses what is out of balance and honors that connection.
Admittedly, the awareness that we’re all connected takes cultivation, and for some, it remains theoretical. For empathic people, however, its application is very much a part of our reality, which is poignantly ironic considering that many of us relish time alone. It's exactly why we sometimes struggle to feel comfortable in our own skin. The boundary between the external and internal can certainly be hard to define when you’re able to feel so much, even though you may not be able to physically see where the source of the impression comes from. It’s also why we continually question if our sensitivities are a blessing or a curse.
As a semi-aware empathic person, you are still discovering what it means to have a larger conversation with the environment without it being a detriment to your own sense of boundaries and responsibility.
Semi-aware empathic tendencies:
Unaware empathic persons typically accept everything they feel as their own and this can complicate knowing themselves and having an accurate sense of self. (It’s difficult to process someone else's emotions, and yet this is what happens to an unaware empathic person.) Semi-aware empathic persons realize that they can receive impressions that do not originate from them, but they tend to feel responsible for everything they “pick-up.”
Too few boundaries equal too great a sense of responsibility. “Semi-aware empathic person” is a dynamic point on the arc of an empath. It is steeped in personal teachings of what an empathic nature aligns itself to, which is a form of service. This sense of service can create situations where a semi-aware person overextends themselves and their abilities and can lead to feeling fatigued, drained, and vulnerable.
Or, they can develop a perception that the environment always wants something from them and it can eventually feel like a burden and a curse. It is then easy to project frustration and fear outwardly; as in, that space, that person, that event makes me feel . . . and then the semi-aware empathic person may become preoccupied with needing protection.
Self-care for a semi-aware empath:
If you are afraid of your abilities and feel like you need protection–reach out to an intuitive school, program or guidance (or me), to learn more specifically about how your empathic receptivity works. It doesn't put you in harm's way, it actually protects you.
If you consider that the essence embedded in an empathic nature is to sense what is out of balance in a space, you can see how important it is to examine where you may be out of balance in your own life.
Notice when your personal involvement in the problems of others becomes out of balance; or if you carry a perception that you must save or help everyone. Where is that need coming from? Maybe focusing outward rather than inward can give a sense of control over the environment. If you are chronically over-extending yourself or overstepping boundaries, it is time to look inward and find your center.
Learn to discern when you only need to observe information, and when it is your’s to witness. Explore the energetic differences between observe and witness.
Do you understand the energetic mechanics of empathic receptivity, and the necessity of looking at your own life experiences to better differentiate what is yours and what is something you are picking up from the environment?
After taking the Empath Quiz, look for my followup emails to learn more about how to use your sensitivities as a guide. I tend to say that once you identify as an empath, you are on a spiritual path. It requires that you know yourself and accept your life’s experiences. This takes patience, but it garners wisdom and compassion.
