Change Your Brain Every Day - Empath & Empathy: The Surprising Difference with Dr. Judith Orloff

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

Have you ever felt like you have an uncanny ability to make judgements about people that turn out to be correct? There may be more than simple guessing involved. In the third episode of a series on empaths, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen are again joined by bestselling author Dr. Judith Orloff for a detailed discussion on the crucial differences between someone who is an empath, and someone who merely feels empathy for others.

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. Welcome back. We're with Judith Orloff and we are talking about empaths. This is so fascinating to me. I cannot wait to buy your book. Driving is an Empath, 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People.

So I did not know what to expect today, Judith. I really didn't. And my little brain is like on fire at the moment. So it's just crazy. So I just didn't really know which direction we were going with this today. But so many things you have said are just like triggering inside of me like, oh, wait, I understand, like this makes sense to me because of certain things with people in my family.

And I'm assuming that because of that, with people in my family. And I'm assuming that because of that, probably a lot of our listeners are having that same light bulb moment and they're curious. And something you've said, you've made a couple of connections throughout these podcasts this week about intuition and empathy. And I don't know if those are different or the same or they're connected. Because I know my mom, who we talked about in the last podcast who is sensitive, quote unquote, she refuses to use the word psychic.

She doesn't think of it as psychic. She just feels and sees other things when she's around people. But I always like, I think I resisted that because of what happened in my family and how people saw it. I was like, I was always like, Oh,

okay. This is just too much for me. A little bit like the twilight zone. A little too much for me. It's too much twilight zone for me. But she would always look at me and go, you have more of it than you think. And I'm like, no, I don't. No, I don't. But you always say that I have intuition. Oh, yeah. No, I can't do anything wrong because I know you'll just know. But I think of it differently. So I don't see things. I don't see things like that. When I'm around a person, I don't see events and stuff like that. When I'm around people, I know instantly whether I feel safe, connected, whether I feel like it's

a warm feeling or whether it's like, don't go there. Like this person is not a safe person for me. You have exquisite judgment about people right judgment is how i've always thought of it and that's a form of intuition it's just knowing in your body you know instantly bam bam and you trust it i trust it so is so is that connected to what you call an empath is that similar is that part of it? You're reading energy. That's why you can trust it so quickly. Okay. Interesting. Because I refused to believe I had anything to do with any of that. So what's the difference between empathy?

I understand it. And you don't have to look at it that way. You can look at it any way you want so that you're comfortable with it. Well, I'm fascinated now. The gifts of empathy and intuition serve us as psychiatrists, that they're actually critical tools. But what's the difference between having empathy and being an empath? Having empathy is when your heart goes out to somebody, they're going through a challenge, and your heart just resonates with them. And you kind of hold a love space for them. Now, or if somebody has a, you know, a happy occasion, a baby's born, or a marriage happens,

where your heart gets warm and happy for them. And you can literally feel it in your own body. This isn't an intellectual endeavor. Empathy comes from the heart. And so the heart is an energy and you feel it. So you could feel in your body that happiness. But an empath is a little bit higher on the empathic spectrum where I can feel what's going on in you. Let's say you're going through an emotional challenge, but I also can feel it in my

body so there's no filter or boundary and that isn't what i want because then i start hurting and so one of the key self-care techniques is setting clear boundaries for empath and to notice the second someone else's energy comes into your body or you start picking up something from someone else so you could breathe it out so you could practice meditation so that you can expel it you don't want it but because empaths tend to be over helpers you know and they always want to help they always want to heal and they feel that the way to heal is to suck somebody else's pain out of their body into your own body you don't think about it that way but it it's an instinctive motion, energetic motion. And so that's something you have to be very discerning about and make it a choice rather

than an instinct. So I imagine many empaths get compassion fatigue. So therapists do this, especially trauma therapists. And I've been a psychiatrist a long time goodness for almost 40 years since i made that decision and and i tend not to get it because i'm sort of always excited about helping fixing yeah you're getting people's brains better and and i don't think that means i have low empathy, but it doesn't sort of come in and wound me. Where it sounds like an empath, if they're not careful, can get overwhelmed by it. Yes, and feel the pain.

It's very painful because this world has so much suffering in it. You don't want to absorb everything. It's everywhere. I can't watch the news. I cannot watch the news. I cannot watch the news without getting just like wound up tighter than, you know, for him. Especially lately when it's just so filled with hostility and negativity. This fascinating new study on political extremes. People who are at the far right or the far left, they actually have rigid

brains. And I've thought about that for a long time. Their frontal lobes work too hard. So if things don't go their way, they get upset. They tend to be argumentative and oppositional and a little on the OCD spectrum. And it was just really interesting. No matter which extreme you're at, you probably have the same brain. They would just hate that. Interesting. Yeah, very, very interesting. But empathy allows you to have empathy with extremes. It allows you to have empathy with people you don't like. It allows you to see beyond barriers. That's why I feel so strongly about it.

Because even if you don't like someone or agree with them, your heart can reach out to find out how they're perceiving it. So what happens if you block it? If you block this feeling? That's fine. You can block it. You can make a choice to block it. But does it affect you in any way?

Well, your mom purposefully tried to block it in you but it didn't help and that must have made you very unhappy very unhappy like there was something wrong with me it was a feeling of shame you shame a young empath when you don't encourage those abilities to come out when you don't say it's a beautiful thing you know and here is how you can develop it and here are some challenges you don't say it's a beautiful thing, you know, and here is how you can develop it. And here are some challenges you may face when it becomes a healthy dialogue. It's a whole different story, but when it becomes a source of shame and I need to hide it and I need to be this other person, my mother always wanted me to go down the mainstream and go to country, belong to country clubs and marry a Jewish doctor and, you know, all that,

which would have been fine, except it wasn't my path. Right. And so, but can it make you physically sick? Can you, can you take on physical ailments from blocking energy? Oh, from blocking? You can, you can at times. One self-care technique I talk about in the book is building a shield or a bubble around you to block. And many therapists use this with difficult patients. If they're with a borderline and the borderline anger is just searing, they use this positive visualization technique to purposely block that but keep the positive going. Oh, I think I meant, I think, um, cause that makes sense to me, protecting yourself.

Um, I would see that as protecting myself. I think I'm, what I mean is if you are an empath and you don't realize what's, you're an empath or you do realize it and you don't want to be, and you're sort of like, no, like just like if you would deny it. So it's like the left and right sides of the brain.

Yeah. The logic and the feeling part of you are like in conflict like they don't the logical part of you is like i'm not doing this yeah sometimes that's a phase that people go through and they need to go through that in order to see that they're paying a price for that because when an empath tries to shut up his or her basic nature that creates attention in the body and so it's just learning to embrace who you are in a very positive way. And so it's a balance, but it's very important not to be judgmental of people who block things out, you know, because that's a technique until they learn other techniques.

You see, that's just an instinctive thing. It's too much. I'm shutting it out. And it could be shut out with overeating and putting on weight. it could be sexual addiction, it could be substance abuse, it could be alcoholism could be shopping, whatever it is, I want to shut it off, because it's too much. That's what's happening. But they don't know what else to do. So once they learn the self care strategies in the book, then they have options and then they it's not all subliminal and subconscious you see you want to bring it up you want to identify this is an empathic issue and this is what you do there's nothing wrong with you you're a beautiful being but this is how you deal with it and there's so many um people i work with in recovery and 12-step

programs who are recovering empaths as well. They were just super sensitive. And part of why they drank and used was because they couldn't handle it. It's too much. I mean, when you're a non-empath, it's hard to get that, how painful sensory overload can be. It's very, very painful. I've seen so many children over the years. And when we scan them, there's a pattern we call the ring of fire, where their brain works way too hard. And they often will present like they have ADHD, and somebody will give them a stimulant. And 80% of the time, the stimulants make them worse. I mean, sometimes suicidal, sometimes rages. And if you don't look,

how would you ever know? That's been sort of the theme of my life. But when we come back, we're going to talk about a very interesting part of the brain called the mirror neuron system. And it'd be so interesting to look at that in empaths. And then we're going to give you some more strategies from Dr. Orloff's new book on how to survive and thrive as an 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, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements

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