Provided by Dr. Ramya from Self Life Hacks
There are various personalities around us and one of the most beautiful personalities is “The-helping personality”. These people can feel the pain of others and their distress, take a responsibility for the welfare of others and act to help them and keep them happy.
If these characters match with yours then you are probably the empathetic personality or helping personality. If yes! Are you working to make people be comfortable and thrive to make them feel happy always around you then there are few things you have to know about yourself. It is great to be a person with an empathy and feel the pain of others around you but some times this is not a good idea when coming to taking care of yourself.
The people whom you care, people whom you work with or even the strangers gain belief from your helpful nature and that is good thing !! But some times this nature of yours can attract the people of counter personalities like the toxic or narcissistic personality( the selfish and hard hearted personalities).
No doubt that the world need empathetic people around us !! But some times this empathetic behavior doesn’t motivate the healthy helping because their emotional experience can some times be a lot painful .
The empaths are so motivated to reduce the pain that some times they don’t realize that it would be a bad idea to show excess empathy. Empathy can lead to impulsive rescuing when rescuing is not the good idea. It can lead to unhealthy helping of others in ways that compromise your integrity. This unhealthy helping can lead to poor performance or irresponsibility.
So how can we get way from this unhealthy helping?
If you are an empath that easily experience others distress then – This is high time you should keep boundaries for yourselves.
Keep a note: keeping boundaries doesn’t mean that you are selfish or self centered.
This would be very hard for a empath to keep a boundary especially in initial stages of the self realization. These few things helps you to know about yourself and make you think whether your empathy is a strength or a weakness.
1. Don’t take immediate decisions
For the empaths the decision making can be a intense and their desire to help and ease others would be so strong and impulsive. It will not put one in danger or anything immediately.
This helpfulness can sometimes enable another immaturity, addiction or irresponsibility. One should think whether physically, emotional or even financial putting yourself at risk is rationally done or not.
If you feel empathy towards others that doesn’t mean you should take the responsibility or need to fix the situation of others. if you decided to help , it should be the type of help that it should be healthy for all parties involved.
2. Take the mask of empathy
When you set a boundary to yourself- you might think that how far my boundary is justifiable. You might see the boundary from the other person perceptive. Its feels hard to say NO to the people and again you might go back into the empathy spin.
Reminding about yourself about why you have kept the boundary can help you to stop going back into the spin. This also motivates the assertiveness. This helps to vanish the persistent smooth talkers before they ware you down.
Seeking the help from the family and friends can help you in setting the boundaries that you might be needed or you might not be acknowledging.
3. Learn self love
Empathetic people go so far that they forget to love them self. They don’t treat themselves, the way they treat others. They extend themselves physically, emotionally sometimes financially to a peak.
Try to learn compassion to yourselves and practice self love. This is done by setting helping boundaries to yourselves without a guilt,. Everyone needs love, even you!
Conclusion
Being empathetic is very good personality but sometimes it can become curse to oneself. This can lead to putting yourself in extreme leaves of physical, mental strain and stress to ease others from their distress or pain. This empathetic personality behaviour some times can attract wrong people to you and can lead to disappointment and pain.
Practicing self love and setting boundaries can help to stop your empathy to manipulate you. An unhealthy helping can lead to both physical and mental stress and helping to realize your self can be the best part of the well being.
I so needed this! Thank you
Thank you very much for reading!
Before I read the entire post, my answer to your question was BOTH! I am one of those empaths. I’m learning boundaries but it is not easy. I constantly question them. Am I hurting that person’s feelings? And I’ve come face to face with the toxic personality you speak of. But I’m also the giver and the one who cries and feels others hurts. It’s a fine line I’m working on. Thank you for the post!
No, it’s not easy because it’s not a constant thing. It differs from one person to another and from one situation to another. Thank you very much for reading!
Boundaries are definitely important. I worked as a nurse for a long time and I really cared about my patients but we all need to look after ourselves as well.
Yes, we do! And sometimes we put so much energy and effort into others’ wellbeing that we have little left for us.
Wow! Great post. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for reading!
I am also an empath. Yes, we should think about ourselves too. Nicely written post!
Thank you for reading!
I am an empath and I agree with your opinion. If I remembered about the old days, I often being too kind to others and end up hurting myself. Then one of my close friend told me to treat myself better and not too harsh on myself, just like the way I treat others. Thanks for writing this. It’s a reminder for me
Thank you very much for reading and for sharing your thoughts!
Thank you so much Bogdan 😊😊
My pleasure! Thank you very much for providing it!
You know it often comes as a surprise to people (even myself, initially) that I’m an empath because I don’t show it more often or rather, I work well with negative motivation. I’m usually lost when people get emotional. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand them, I’m prone to logical solutions rather than solely relying on my feelings. It took insurmountable strength to admit to myself that all along in life I’ve probably understood more about other’s emotions and how to tackle them more than they ever figured it out themselves. What left me scarred is how my kindness was always shunned aside and people chose to focus more on my deteriorating behavior due to mental health. All in all, I love spreading the kindness I never received, even with people who are unkind to me. Not every battles requires a tit for tat solution, some simply require us to be humble. Thank you for this thought-provoking article! I loved it.
Thank you very much for reading! <3
Excellent message. I think all of us who are naturally helpful need to remind ourselves of this. Thank you.
Thank you for reading!
I can so relate to this. I think it’s why I’ve read and written so much about boundaries lately. When you are an empath, you tend to think of others’ feelings and neglect your own feelings and boundaries… you neglect your own self care. So empathy has a light side and a shadow side.
My quest is to find the balance point in between both the shadow and light where self care (which comes first) enabling care for others from a healthy place of personal strength and balance (my cup is full).
I think when we are not balanced in this we feel drained, depleted, or over-used (my cup is empty). We have more to give others if we have first made sure our own cup is full. Our full cup overflows naturally to bless all around us.
Sorry so long 😮 thank you for more thought provoking content!
We love long replies! Thank you very much for reading and for providing this awesome comment!
𝙸 𝚝𝚘𝚘, 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚘𝚍𝚊𝚢. 𝙸𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝚠𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚞𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚎𝚖𝚙𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚢, 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝙸 𝚘𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚢𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚋𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚜. 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚞𝚗𝚏𝚊𝚒𝚛, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙸 𝚊𝚖 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚗.
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Thank you for reading! I guess that empathy doesn’t necessarily need to come with responsibility.
How do hard-hearted become hardened? Don’t you have a little steel in your veins to practice self-love? The thing that I am still learning is discernment. I used to yield for everyone and everything. I went from that to being suspicious of everyone and everything. Now, I am in a strange place where I realize that too much, either way, leads down a lonely path. Bogdan, what prompted you to chose this topic, besides pointless overthinking?
Thank you very much for reading! As you already noticed, it’s not my creation. It has been written and provided by Dr. Ramya from Self Life Hacks. I’ve chose to publish it on Pointless Overthinking because I believe that empathy is one of the things that can get us close, as human beings. It helps us understand each others’ feelings and that can get us to a better understanding of each other. However, this has risks if we let other people’s feelings affect our own way of living. I believe we need to be aware of both sides before we deep dive into other people’s feelings.
I am a empathetic person, to me, helping others is a way to make myself happy, but yes when i cross my boundaries to do that i will feel regret and guilt later on and that will cause me some kind of a anxiety. I agree with you, we should have limits to when helping others.