Dark Ops Of An Empath

I just said something to you. I can tell by the look on your face and your body language that I upset you, and I immediately felt that heavy push on my solar plexus like a punch in the gut. That punch always comes when I have done something bad. No doubt. It is my fault. I can not believe I did that. Let me try to make it right.

This was how I might have experienced a conversation with you before I discovered that I was bringing the energy of others into my body and mistaking it for mine. A simple conversation could have turned me upside down if you had had any negative feelings during our talk.

The saddest part about this is that I began misidentifying others’ energies as mine when I was a toddler, maybe even as an infant. It hurts my heart to remember and accept the fact that I went through my childhood blaming, punishing and hurting myself for things I was not responsible for, namely: other people’s emotions.

I was born an empath, someone who has the ability to feel what others are feeling. Out of necessity, I trained myself to be an extremely sensitive one; I thought that I needed to know what others were feeling so I could avoid emotional pain.

The people I encountered in my childhood often pushed their negative energy onto me because they could not face that they were responsible for their own negativity. They wanted me to take on that responsibility, to be the willing scapegoat.

When their negative feelings were pushed out at me, those punches became so powerful that they would almost knock me down, and I was left with a horribly strong sense of guilt in the aftermath.

Naturally, it became my main objective to duck those painful punches of negativity. I accomplished this by dialing up my sensitivities to take the temperature of others remotely, allowing me to anticipate their unhappiness or anger. If bad feelings from someone were detected, I took the necessary counter measures and tried to change their mood by making them happy, by being a good boy.

I imagine this procedure of monitoring people without their knowing became habit for me very quickly and, soon after, faded from my consciousness. I know this because the procedure has been invisible to me for all of my life, like a dark ops mission with an unlimited budget. Intelligence was gathered and swiftly reacted to with tactical precision. I was sending operatives over my boundaries, into enemy territory, avoiding detection, bringing back intel and acting on it without awareness of the deployment at all!

Unknowingly I had adopted two false and contradictory beliefs that obliterated my boundaries: the invading energies of others were mine and I had the power to make others feel better. Normal interactions were cumbersome as a result, and I was exhausted by the mere act of avoiding conflict, let alone facing it. Not only was this confusing, but I also sabotaged my ability to experience the world as a separate person.

I had a bit of a breakthrough recently. I asked a friend to do something for me and, before I finished my request, BAM! I felt the punch of emotion hit my gut. Instantaneously I identified this bad feeling as mine, alerting me that I had said something wrong. This rapid analyzing and flawed conclusion brought on yet another strong feeling, one that was definitely my own, the feeling of guilt.

Because I had recently identified myself as empathic, I questioned this conclusion. I wondered if this bad energy was his and not mine, and I knew that if the emotion was his then the guilt was invalid, unwarranted. Had I really done something bad by calmly asking my friend to help me?

I questioned him, “Did I upset you? Did I say something wrong?” He replied, “No. I’m just stressed out because I’m so busy today that your request seems like a huge weight on me.”

This was how I was awakened to the clandestine operations. Even though I had become aware that I was taking in feelings of others, this was the first time I really noticed the detailed workings of the dark ops. All along it was right under my nose!

Right then and there I decided these dark ops were too costly to my wellbeing and I pulled their budget.

I wish this meant that I am healed, but it has let the healing begin. I continue to feel the emotions of others, but more and more I am catching myself when the feelings come in and I am identifying them as foreign. This identification process allows me to push the emotions back to their rightful owner. It has brought a little more peace and a piece of me back.

Photo Credit: Flickr/DVIDSHUB