Change Your Brain Every Day - Are You an Empath? With Dr. Judith Orloff

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

A small contingent of our population claims to be able to physically experience the emotional energy of other people. Sound crazy? Well there may be an actual science behind this. In the first episode of a series with Dr. Judith Orloff, the bestselling author of ‘Thriving as an Empath’, Dr. Daniel Amen, Tana Amen, and Orloff shed some light on this mysterious ability.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Well, this week we have a very special guest, and I think this is going to blow your mind just a little bit. With us is my friend, Dr. Judith

Orloff, who is a New York Times bestselling author and has a new book, Thriving as an Empath, 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People, which offers daily life-saving self-care tools for sensitive people, along with its own companion, the Empaths Empowerment Journal. Now, you're going to learn about what an empath is shortly. Dr. Orloff is a psychiatrist, an empath, and is on the clinical faculty of UCLA Psychiatric Department. She synthesizes the pearls of traditional medicine with cutting-edge knowledge on intuition, energy, and spirituality. Dr. Orloff also specializes in treating highly sensitive,

empathic people in her private practice. Her work has been featured on the Today Show, CNN, Oprah Magazine, the New York Times. Dr. Orloff has spoken at Google. I got to do that. And has a popular TEDx talk. Her other books are Emotional Freedom and Guide to Intuitive Healing. You can learn more about her empath support online course at drjudithorloff.com. Well, Judith, what a joy to have you on the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Oh, I'm so happy to be here talking to both of you. We are happy to have you. Yes. So when did you find out you were an empath?

Well, why don't we explain what an empath is? Well, let's have her tell us when she found out and what it is. Right, what it is. Because I think a lot of people listening may not, they might think, oh, I have empathy, but they might not really understand what it is. Are you saying you have empathy? Well, you think my empathy is broken, but let's talk about it. I'll answer both.

I'm a psychiatrist, and I'm also an empath. And so what I do is I combine my traditional psychiatric skills. I went through USC Medical School, UCLA for my psychiatric residency. I did my internship at Wadsworth VA Hospital. And I combine all of that very worthy, incredible knowledge with my abilities to intuit what's going on in other people in terms of my patients and to be an empath where I can feel in my body, in my emotions, what's going on in other people, is I've never had the ordinary filters that people have. So I've always been wide open, it's felt that way, where I am an emotional sponge, and sometimes a physical sponge, where I can absorb what's going on in other people in my own body. And needless to say, that's helped me as a psychiatrist so much in order to have added

compassion and to experience what my patients experience. But my challenge as an empath, as an emotional sponge has been how not to absorb the stress, the anxiety, the issues of other people into my own body, yet keep my empathy and my intuition alive and well and growing. And so as a little girl, I didn't even know I was an empath. I was an only child of two physician parents. I have 25 physicians in my family. So very logical, linear heritage there.

And I was a little girl who was quiet, and I would go into crowded places and walk in feeling fine, walk out exhausted with some ache or pain I didn't have before, anxious or depressed. And I didn't know what happened in that crowded place that would cause such a change in my body. And later on, I realized that I'm an empath where when you're around crowded places with so many people, there's subtle energy that goes through the body and expands beyond the body so you put all those people together and all these energies mix and there's all this emotional information mental

information physical information swirling around in crowded places in my poorest body and my sensitive neurological system I took it on but I didn't know that as a child so my parents just said oh dear get a thicker skin and I had no self-care techniques at all growing up I was totally alone that's why I feel so passionate about this book and providing self-care techniques every single day for empaths so they're not lost. So they know what to do to stay centered, to stay energized, to stay clear, to not take on everybody else's stuff. That's so interesting. So being an empath is different than just having empathy for people.

So what I'm hearing you say is like I can have empathy. If I see a child hurt, I have empathy. But I don't feel that pain the way they feel it. It's different to have empathy versus being an empath, right? Exactly. There's a spectrum of empathy. And in the middle of the spectrum are regular, beautiful people who have empathy and feel the joy and pain of others. But if you go higher on the empathic spectrum, you get the highly sensitive person who's sensitive to noise, smells, sounds, excessive talking, light. And then if you go even higher, you have all those sensory characteristics plus the emotional sponge

and the physical sponge characteristic where you literally become one with, which is a positive thing in a spiritual sense at one month, but it's not a helpful thing in terms of taking on other people's emotions. Do empaths have, do you feel more for some people than other people? Do you feel more things when you're around one person or is it the same no matter who you're around no it varies according to the person and i you know it depends i can feel all the positive things empaths have incredible gifts and part of the self-care is taking care of your gifts intuition depth the capacity for love creativity love of nature knowing that there's a oneness in the world, that we're all brothers and sisters in one family, that anything else is an illusion.

We know that without a doubt. We feel the earth, the earth and the empath are one. So there's no division, you know, so that's very clear clear and that clarity is extremely helpful and how how come what makes what makes it to where you and other empaths feel so much more than say the average person and why don't we well we not i'm saying collectively we why don't we understand it yes what's the neuroscience has anybody done an imaging study on empaths you know i've done no wouldn't that be fascinating well i've done studies i've done actually a number of studies on channelers and that's actually been published in the literature um on people who channel the dead i've done studies on past life regressions. And I've done many studies on people who have sensory disorders. So the highly sensitive child, and now since I learned about your work, many of them are highly sensitive,

not only to sound and touch and lights, but they're also very sensitive to the emotions of other people. And what I often see is their parietal lobes, the top back part of the brain that are responsible for sort of sensing the world, work way too hard compared to other people. So that would be a fun study for you and I to look at empaths and to see is there a difference in their brain. We just did a fascinating study on prayer, looking at speaking in tongues, which is basically channeling the Holy Spirit. And it's one of the gifts in the Bible talked about in the book of

Acts. Anyways, our hypothesis would be when you're channeling someone else, you would actually drop your own brain function so that you become a vessel. And that's what happened in 60% of our people. Although one guy who did that, his basal ganglia lit up just like he just got a hit of cocaine. So I'm like, oh, he probably likes to do that a lot. But just thinking from an from an empath standpoint is it that there's less brain function so you're able to really feel what other people feel or is there more and that sensory part of your brain works too hard but it's a it's a sense sensations of energy as well so not so much an intellectual merging as it is an energetic merging. Because when I am with both of you now, I'm feeling you with my entire body. I'm not just thinking you, I'm feeling you and I'm having waves and changes going on in my body as we're interacting.

And so it's like a flow. Everything is fluid. It's not static in my world. And so it's a different form of perception. So how would someone know if they or one of their children or their spouse was an empath? Well, there's a 20 question self-assessment test in my book that people can take to find out how much of an empath they are. Yes, you can self-diagnose if you're an empath. It's not rocket science. It's very simple. And there's some very basic questions you can ask yourself, such as, have you been labeled as, quote, overly sensitive all your life as a put-down? Now, do you need a lot of alone time to decompress and replenish yourself

do you prefer alone time to being with people when you replenish yourself because some extroverts love going out and being with people and that's how they get their energy back but when i'm on sensory overload, I go to solitude. I go alone. And that aloneness is my nurturing place. It's my mana. It's spirit. It's mana from heaven being alone because that decreases stimulation. I feel you there. I'm the same way.

I need to be alone, like quiet, my little space at home. That's how i recharge yes yes exactly um or other questions am i sensitive to noise smells or excessive talking um empaths have a very strong sense of smell we could go into an elevator and there could be perfume there and i could feel like i'm being nuked by it. And you might feel like, oh, what a pretty smell. And so if you take your sensory capacity and magnify it by about a million, then you can understand an empath. And the reason this is beautiful is that my capacity for love is very deep.

And my capacity for spiritual connection and connection to nature and all the things that matter to me the most and other people is very, very deep. And connection is what's important to me. And as an empath, that connection is available. You know, you feel the flow of everything. But if you want to find out if you're an empath, take the 20 question self assessment test. Now, and even something as simple as one of the questions is, do you prefer

taking your own car places so you can leave when you please? Because empaths get Yeah, right. Empaths get trapped. You don't want to go to a social situation, I want to stay there for five hours. That's too much for me. You know, I'll maybe leave after an hour, hour and a half. Oh, this must be a common theme between the two of you. It must come up. He's very social. She hates going to the mall. I know he's social.

I hate the mall. She'll go to a store, pick the first thing that she sees, and leave. I feel overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. And I'm like, how do you know unless you look at everything? No, I don't want to be there. I want to learn online. That's not how it works. You don't want to linger in those

markets, especially if they're crowded. It's completely overwhelming when I see a total of... And I'm one of seven. He has a different constitution. He does. He loves big family, big groups, he's very social he's very we're just like night and day from in that sense so he's but the secret is and i talk about this in the book to

relationships if a non-empath is with an empath is to express your authentic needs and daniel for you to respect them instead of questioning them. Because it might be beyond your perceptual, the way you relate to the world. But her way is different. It's just very different. Like my partner is not an empath. I could never be with an empath. It would drive me insane.

I actually agree with you. We have to stop this. But when we come back, thriving as an empath, Dr. Judith Orloff, we're going to talk about how to thrive as a sensitive empath. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it,inics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.