Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - An Empath’s Guide to Understanding Your Emotions & What It Means for Extra-Sensory Abilities

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Are you an empath? Are you too in tune with other people’s emotions? Mayim and Jonathan take the “Are You an Empath?” quiz and reveal how to know if you're truly an empath. They break down the 3 types of empathy (emotional, cognitive, and compassionate) and explain how to spot the telltale signs of being an empath, from absorbing other people’s energy to struggling with emotional boundaries. Whether you're wondering how to know if you're an empath or trying to stop feeling everything all the time, this episode explores the science, psychology, and real-life challenges of being an empath—and how to manage it without burning out.   The "Are You an Empath?" Quiz: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-empaths-survival-guide/201812/are-you-empath-take-the-self-assessment-test   The "Empath Type" Quiz: https://www.empathconnection.com/quiz   Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/   BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you have strong intuition? Do you experience deep emotions? Do you often feel pulled to deep emotional reactions to other people's experiences? A hundred and sixty million people have this unique characteristic? You may be an empath. A lot of empaths will have this set of extrasensory abilities. Some people are like, I see energy, I read energy, I feel energy. It's like, what?

How am I feeling something that someone else is? Is your life being controlled by a dark empath? A dark empath is someone who uses cognitive empathy for personal gain. They can be vindictive, manipulative. They often use love bombing, gaslighting, ghosting. That person that you're describing is a very dangerous person. You think that there's a high level of understanding there, but really what's happening is... Hi, I'm Bielic.

I'm Jonathan Cohen. Welcome to our breakdown. Today we're going to be talking about something that affects hundreds of millions of people. 160 million people have this very specific, unique characteristic. And if you have it and are interacting with people who don't have it, there can be a real significant divide. Are you the person that everyone confides in? Do you regularly feel burnt out?

Do you regularly experience emotions and you don't know why? Do you often feel pulled to deep emotional reactions to other people's experiences? If so, you might be exactly the person that we're talking about. You may be an empath. And you may have heard, oh, you're empathic. You're too sensitive. You're so sensitive. But what are the superpowers of being an empathic?

What are the different types of empaths? What happens with the dark side of being an empath? And if you're not an empathic person, is this something you can build? We've got all of the answers to that and a lot more today. One of the most fascinating parts for me was the dark side of empathy. We cover that later in the episode. But it is so terrifying because usually you think, well, empathy is great. It helps people feel seen and felt.

and there's a connection that grows through that bond. And we are going to cover scientific basis for the benefits of being empathic. But it can be used against you in a way that can be manipulative. You have to know where the connection is coming from and are tactics being used to manipulate you. As well, if you are highly empathic, this touches on some of the extra sensory highly sensitive people episode that we did a few weeks ago. And there's some overlap here where if you are an empath, one of the ways that you can protect yourself, keep yourself emotionally, your emotional reserves charged in order to make sure that you're showing up in the world the way you want to.

We're going to be breaking down the science of empathy. Is there really something different going on in the brains of people who are highly empathic? And we're going to talk about low empaths. What does it mean if you're a person who doesn't seem to be able to feel what other people are feeling? Have you been accused of being isolated emotionally, shut off emotionally? We're going to talk about what those interactions mean and specifically how the brain responds to different kinds of calculations that we have to do socially. What's interesting about the low empathy quotient, some people will say, is empathy helpful? Does it get in the way of getting ahead in this capitalist cutthroat world? Or is it actually really a superpower to help you build teams, build alliances, and get people all on the same

page moving forward. We're going to explore. Break it down. All right. Let's get into some generic signs that you might be an empath. And also I want to distinguish between empathy, which is the feeling of being an empathetic person and someone who is an empath. So we're talking about someone being an empath. Do you feel drained when exposed to intense emotions. Do you avoid emotionally impactful media? Are you the person that everyone naturally confides in? Do you feel compelled to practice compassion in everyday life? Do you have strong intuition? Is your intuition often correct? Do you dislike crowds? Do you experience

deep emotions, like even crying in response to somebody else's experience? Experiencing emotions without knowing why and often feeling burned out because of these things. So these are signs. that you might be an empath. Now, you might be thinking, that sounds an awful lot like being a highly sensitive person. So I'm going to make this distinction very clear, as clear as I can. I would say, and this is a non-clinical diagnostic measure, all highly sensitive people are empaths, not all empaths are highly sensitive people. So being empathic and being labeled an empath is often something that happens with highly sensitive people. Highly sensitive people tend to have more emotional and physiological reactivity to stimuli, whereas people who are empaths may have some, but it's not,

let's say, disturbing or upsetting or need to have them kind of removed from situations in the same way as people who are highly sensitive. So highly sensitive people tend to have, you know, sound, smell, taste, auditory, over-stimulation. That's not necessarily true. of empaths. But there's definitely some crossover here. What was fascinating about a lot of the feedback and we got so many comments in the YouTube channel in the comment section from people who watched and listened to our episode on highly sensitive people, people were giving us their scores and we're going to encourage you to do that for this episode too. There is a quiz coming. Hold your hats.

Wait for it. But people were posting in the comments what their scores were for the sensitive people quiz. And what was fascinating is the number of them that said, oh, I'm also intuitive. Oh, I have extrasensory abilities. And those extrasensory abilities come in all different shapes and sizes. Some people are like, I have dreams. Some people are like, oh, I see energy, I read energy, I feel energy. So what I think the significant differences here is highly sensitive people may have an increase in the likelihood that they have extra sensory abilities, this level of sensitivity, when we call it sensitivity, what we're saying is that there's something else that they're processing, feeling, being aware of. Empathy is an extra feeling. And so when you say they have a

visceral response, the empath will have a visceral response. That is a level of information that they're processing that is additional to what someone else might be processing. And so where I'm going here is that a lot of empaths will have this set of extrasensory abilities. Now, how they integrate it, understand it, utilize that skill or integrate that skill, I think is a huge factor in whether or not it sort of overwhelms them and shuts them down and they feel over, like, disoriented by it versus can you make sense of it? We're going to be breaking down the science of what actually is going on in the brain that might

indicate that people who are empaths might have an opening into other kinds of understanding. But I think we should talk a little bit more about the specifics of empaths. What is this energy that Jonathan's talking about? What are you actually picking up? That can sound a little bit like it's floating in the air. Let's bring it down to the ground. So there are three. main types of empaths. And there's lots of different ways to categorize this. But for our purposes

today, we're going to talk about cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and compassionate empathy. So cognitive empathy is the ability to cognitively identify what someone else is feeling. So believe it or not, that's its own kind of empathy. Like some people look at other people and they're like, I don't know what they're feeling. Other people like me get a whiff of of someone's pinky from around the corner and I'm like, I know exactly what that person's feeling. That's cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy is the ability to feel someone else's emotions.

So again, for those of you who are listening, it might be like, of course I can feel someone else's emotions. Of course I can experience that. Other people might be like, that person is experiencing something, but I don't feel anything. So that's emotional empathy. And just to touch on that, there are people out there who are like, someone is crying, someone is doing their thing

they're totally oblivious. They're like watching the game or they're doing their dishes. They're cooking. And like they're not impacted at all by other people's experiences. The third type is a compassionate empath. So we have a cognitive, emotional and compassionate. Compassionate is wanting to help someone who is in need, meaning feeling a desire or a pull to actually be helpful. So some people may experience what someone else is feeling. They may feel it. They may not feel they need to help. A full empath. A full empath has developed skills in all three of these categories. So for those of you out there who are like, I feel what other people feel, if you don't also identify it accurately and have a desire to help them, you may not be a full empath. It's super awesome to be

empathic in any of these ways. It's amazing to be a cognitive empath. It's amazing to be an emotional empath or a compassionate empath, but are you a full empath? Like certified. Certified with the diploma. Michelin Star. You have a Michelin Star empath if you've developed skills in all three categories. So what does that look like? What does it look like to be a full empath? It means that you are interacting with people and animals in many cases and you can identify accurately what they're feeling. You feel it yourself. and then there is a subsequent helping or assisting of the other person from a place of compassion. That's kind of the full empath experience. Now, you might be wondering, are there other types of empaths?

Yes, there are. And I just gave you a hint. We have listed here 12 other types of empaths. There is an animal empath. Jonathan, what's an animal empath? People who are empathic to animals? That's right. Amazing. Gold Star.

The other types of empaths are psychic empaths, precognitive empaths, indigo empaths. If you haven't checked out our Indigo Child episode, you can learn more about that. There are dream empaths. There are psychometric empaths. What is that? A psychometric empath is someone who senses energy with objects or places. We actually have a crazy story about that from Elizabeth Crone, who was one of our most viewed episodes on the near or death experience topic area of this podcast, where she had

an experience with an object, the necklace. She felt like inexplicably drawn to purchase from a store that had no idea where it came from, how it got into the jewelry case, or how much to charge her for it. She insisted on purchasing this necklace, and it ended up, uh, foretelling a lot of very strange things. She tried to get rid of it. It kept ending up on her doorstep. She buried it in the yard.

It showed up again. Eventually, it showed up under the front seat of her car. She thought she had gotten rid of it. And when she went to sell the car, it was underneath her seat. She has no idea how it got there. We have a quiz here that we're going to link to. It is 20 questions that Jonathan is going to administer to me. I have not looked at them.

And it's a yes or no. So keep track. How many yeses do you have? And we know that you're an HSP. So we're assuming you're an empath, but we don't know because you may feel things, but not want to do anything about them. MyNBialx breakdown is supported by superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get

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but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention myambiotics breakdown to help support the show. Question number one. Maim, have you ever been labeled as overly sensitive, shy, introverted?

Overly sensitive, yes. Two. Do you frequently get overwhelmed or anxious? Yes. I'm overwhelmed and anxious right now. Three, do arguments are yelling make you ill? Very, very not pleasant. Yes. No. I can't even, if I see it from like a hundred yards away, I can't deal with it. Yeah. Doesn't. But a fight in Lord of the Rings, no problem. Yes. And we'll talk about later the role of fiction. Number four, do I often feel like I don't fit in?

Yes. I'm also an eneogram four. For any aneogram fours out there, that's one of our traits. Number five, are you drained by crowds or need a loan time to revive yourself? I didn't know that I needed a lone time to revive myself. I was just functioning on overwhelmed by everything. Yes. Just a little family feud by herself.

She'll be good as new. Number six. Am I over stimulated by noises, odors? Yes. I'm overstimulated in general. Or nonstop talkers. Yes. What happens when you get a nonstop talker?

I feel it like an engine starts revving in my chest. And what do you want to do? Run. Or put a sock in their mouth? No. Could be a sign of Jonathan being a dark empath. That he wants to put a sock in the mouth. of someone who's speaking.

We'll find out later this episode. I don't want to. I just want to run away. Number seven, do you have chemical sensitivities or can't tolerate scratchy clothes? Yeah, yes, that's me. Yes, but you did have linen sheets, which I did understand.

I have chemical sensitivity, but I'm the other side of, like I'm just like numbed out to any physical sensation. I'm a cut off from the neck person, but I do have chemical sensitivity. So that's a yes. Sleeping on some sandpaper, no problem. When your son asked me if my feet sweat, I was like, what? Who even knows? I don't know.

Do I even have feet? Do I have feet? Actually, we were playing pickleball with your child. And when I was wearing a non-fancy sock and I could see that my toe was sweating. And I said to him, look, my feet are sweating. But only because my sock showed it. It was like a pale gray sock. and it was thin and possibly not cotton.

Look how much awareness you're getting through this podcast. Number eight, do I prefer taking my own car places so that I can leave early if I need to? And not have to speak to people on the way. Yes. Also, there's always an escape plan. Even with you, I always prefer to just be in my own car. Anytime we've ever gone somewhere, you inform me ahead of time that we won't be staying long. That we will be leaving early and that we will have no fun.

You're in good company. My ex-husband said he never ate a piece of wedding cake. We were invited to weddings all the time. We were gone by the cake. He's like, I just want to try some wedding cake. This is a little tidbit I think people will appreciate. We don't go out very much for this very reason. And we got invited to dinner in Santa Monica for someone's going away party.

And so, you know, Santa Monica is not. It was our friend Scott Barry Kaufman. Cognitive scientist, Columbia professor, Scott Barry Kaufman. Great podcast that he has. And so, Scott, if you're listening to this, what you told me ahead of time was, let's go for dinner, but we'll just pop in and say hi and then leave before we have to order. And I said, how are we going to a dinner party and leaving before we eat anything? Well, first of all, a true empath, a true.

True HSP would know exactly how to do that. Valerie, do you know how to go to a dinner and leave before? If anyone orders a main course, 100%. It's something we're just like, it's in our DNA. We know how to do it. I know the sentences to say, really sorry, have to, we're just going to have an appetizer and then got to go. Don't want to be disruptive.

I'll leave now if you prefer. Also, Scott should know this had nothing to do with my affection or tenderness that I feel for him or our friend Sam Harris, who was at the dinner as well. There was a lot going on that week. It had nothing to do with Scott. I wasn't sure I could deal with the stimulation. I think that's an unfair characterization. Spoiler alert, you made it through the entire dinner,

and you were able to walk out on your own. You didn't have to be carried. I'm going to give you the two words that allowed me to stay at that dinner, which I think Valerie will understand. French fries. If you serve me French fries, I will stay. Number nine, do I overeat to cope with stress? This is a vulnerable one,

And I actually am surprised to hear that that's on the list. Yes, I didn't know that this might be a thing, but yes. It's actually a surprising one. And I think, you know, what I'm always fascinated by when we do these explorations of people's personality or tendencies, characteristics, is that there's always like, oh, did you know that frozen shoulder was actually the result of something totally else? Or did you know that overeating was the result of this other emotion? emotional thing going on. So there's always these surprising correlations that we find. Before we get back into the quiz, we just did an excerpt of this episode that you need to hear on Substack. So if you have not yet gone over to Substack, sign up. You can adjust all of your

settings and notifications to whatever you want. But this is a particularly hilarious and important one. And it relates directly to this episode and the episode on highly sensitive people. So please follow Miami-Bi-Biolix breakdown on Substack. And now we will get back to the quiz after a Really, really significant. Insert that we highly recommend you go over to My Ambialx breakdown on Substact to listen to. Number 10. Am I afraid of becoming suffocated by intimate relationships? Yes.

Some people like me are clinging, codependent, needy, velcro humans. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have fear about intimate connections and interactions. You just fear not having them more. Well, anxious or avoidant attachment will do that. You want to be close and it's scary to be close. A lot of my like desire to cut and run from relationships, which has plagued me my whole life, is exactly this. So thanks for bringing up that incredibly painful aspect of my existence.

Look, if nothing else we're here to be real, to bear it all for our MBB listeners. Number 11, do I startle easily? Just you asking that startled me, yes. Number 12. Do I react strongly to caffeine or medications? A hundred percent. You don't even drink caffeine? I don't even, I very rarely drink caffeine.

And I'm that person who, if you give me like pseudafed or any of those like those other medicate, I lose my effing mind. It's like I'm stoned. I once took a suitor fed. I can't remember it was a strong reaction. Before I got on a plane, I literally was concerned I might be stopped. I seemed out of my noggin. And I'm that person who has to tell like an anesthesiologist or a dentist, like, I react strongly

to certain medications. Please be careful what you give me. Yes. Number 13. Do I have a low pain threshold? You know, this is a funny one. My trauma has given me a high pain threshold. But I do often feel things that other people don't.

So I'm going to go ahead and say I do have a low pain threshold. I have a very complicated relationship with pain, as a lot of people kind of in my universe do. But I'm not the kind of person who, like, some people, like, if you stub a toe, it's like you may as well have broken the whole body. That's not you. That's not me. It's Jonathan, but I won't say it out loud. I think a lot of women might be thinking, like, my man might be an empath because of just this one. You need more than one to qualify.

Okay. Number 14, do I tend to socially isolate? Yes, that is a coping mechanism. By socially isolating, we're talking about not necessarily if you're in a group, are you isolating from the group? We're talking about avoiding social interactions by just staying home and being by yourself. Number 15, do I absorb other people stress emotions or symptoms? I didn't realize that's what was happening, but I think that that's what's happening, yes. Number 16, am I overwhelmed by multitasking and prefer to do one thing at a time? This is a maybe for me because, you know, my ADHD qualities in many cases allow me to have a lot of hands in a lot of pots at once.

So this might be a no for me. I think that could be a no. Do you replenish yourself in nature? Yes. Again, another thing I didn't know was a thing. Didn't even know that that's like a thing. It's a thing. Send you into a body of water to swim and...

You come out a new person. Do you need a long time to recuperate after being with difficult people or energy vampires? Absolutely, yes. It feels depleting. It feels like someone has sucked my energy from me, hence the name, energy vampire. Number 19. Do I feel better in small cities or countries rather than large cities? You know, I feel better when there's less stimulus.

I think that's a yes for me. But I do like the madness of a New York. I like the madness of a Jerusalem. I like the madness, you know, of certain anonymity aspects of that. But generally speaking, I don't love the stimulation of a large city. Yeah. Do I prefer one-to-one interactions or small groups rather than large gatherings? Absolutely, yes.

Those were the 20 questions. Let's ask Valerie, how you did? 19 out of 20. Okay. So if you answered yes to more than 15 of those, that means you are a full-blown empath. Card carrying, maybe we'll print certificates from the MBB with the MBB logo. 11 to 15 means you have strong empathic tendencies. 6 to 10 means you have moderate empathic tendencies.

And 1 to 5 is you're partially an empath. We're also going to link to a quiz which allows you to figure out what type of empath you are. Meaning you can figure out if you're a plant, an animal, a psychic empath. We'll link to that quiz below. It's a really fun one. I want to get into the science of empathy, which is the quality that empaths possess. And from a sort of scientific perspective, you know, what is empathy, right? It's a combined ability to interpret the emotional state of others, right?

that's that emotional empath component, which also involves a sort of cognitive component, right, the cognitive empath being able to identify that, and simultaneously being able to experience emotions that then elicit, let's say, compassionate behavior, right? So when we talk about that full empath spectrum, that's what we're looking for. And scientifically, this is actually something that can be studied. So the term empathy from a more clinical perspective is the, vicarious sharing of another's pain or sorrow. So there's obviously positive empathy and you can feel other people's positive emotions. But when you think evolutionarily, like, what's the purpose of this?

Like, why do we have this? Why is it useful? If you, you know, read philosophers like Ein Rand, she might say, like, it's not useful, right? Everybody should just kind of mind to themselves and we don't need to have this. But the empathizer, the person who is empathizing, is understanding the negative emotion of another person so as to sort of change behavior. And why is empathy considered a complex emotional process? This is something that scientists have determined developed later compared to basic emotions, right? Like happiness or fear, those are emotions like, is something good, is it bad, right? Do I go towards this? Do I stay away from it? Those are kind of more basic emotions. But when we talk about empathy, this is an experience of what's called blended emotion,

right? It's your emotion and mine, or it's my emotion and yours, right? So goodwill, concerned for others, you know, symbiotic kind of interactions. Those are things that developed, in theory, kind of later. They're more complicated, as it were. We talk a lot about the prefrontal cortex here. If you've been following, this is probably a, a, a, a term, an anatomical region or a set of interactions that you've heard us talk about. The prefrontal cortex is important for emotional processing. So that's literally processing others' emotions. It's the major, the major representative in the cortex of the limbic system.

So the limbic system is all of those kind of complicated, like emotional and elaborate emotional interactions. And the prefrontal cortex is the cortis. is the cortical representation of the limbic system. This is where that information is kind of getting moved to for processing. So emotional processing and executive functioning. So what is executive functioning? This is working memory. This is emotional regulation.

It's the self-monitoring processes. It's when this part of you is damaged, you often lose impulse control, right? So when you think about the prefrontal cortex, it's a combination. right, of emotional processing and executive functioning. And that's what they think is one of these regions that is both holding emotional information, allowing you to switch the attention of concentration between, is this mine, or is it yours, and to then execute and orchestrate an appropriate emotional response. So this is all prefrontal cortex.

So emotional information processing, the ability to switch attention between, your feelings and someone else's, and then to orchestrate and execute an appropriate emotional response. So there's many, many interesting studies that are done. One of the studies that I was reading about was 128 children. So it was a study of 128. I think they were, yes, six to 10-year-olds. What they found was symmetrical activity between the left and right hemispheres often reflected a better ability to express empathy. So this is one of these things that's incredibly interesting to neuroscientists

and those of you who are interested in these kinds of things. Also, frontopolar activation was seen and particularly bilateral activation. So when you think about why are people empathic and why are people not empathic and is there some genetic basis, yeah, it could be that there are certain pathways

that predispose you or make you more likely to have this kind of biolathing. symmetry, which in this kind of study would show people who are more likely to be experiencing an empathic reaction. That leads us to a conversation of, what about low empaths? What about people who are like, I'm a good person, I'm a nice person, but like, I'm not failing it. What's going on there? So some of the qualities of low empaths, and you may already know them if you know someone who is a low empath. They may be critical and judgmental, in particular, you wouldn't be in the situation you're in now if you had done this, right?

I know what you could have done to not feel that is often a feature of someone who's a low empath. Could also just be a feature of someone who's kind of a jerk, but with all of these other qualities, we're trying to kind of paint a picture. Low empaths often feel like it wouldn't happen to them, meaning I wouldn't be in that situation. So why should I feel for you when I kind of know what I would have done in that situation? Low empaths often call other people too sensitive, meaning if you know someone who kind of tends to call other people overly sensitive or see other people's feelings as optional. So just because someone is an empath, doesn't mean that they are always empathic. Correct. Yeah, that would mean that if we're looking for like diagnostic criteria, I fall more on the empathic side, but I can also be a jerk sometimes and sometimes low empaths can be jerks too.

I'm going to touch on number one and two on the low empath scale because a lot of people, and this goes to the idea of, is this helpful or harmful? Some people will say, quit wallowing in all of your issues. It doesn't matter how you got there. It doesn't matter how you feel about it. The only thing that matters is what you do next. Like pull yourself up by your bootstraps, even if you are in a bad situation, you need to be able to get out of it.

And you're making a face of like, oh, that's really harsh. but a lot of people will say that and they're saying, I'm not a jerk. I'm just if you want to navigate and have a successful life, there's a certain amount that you can focus on your emotions and how you got here and why you feel so badly for yourself. And then you have to take some kind of action and take a step forward in order to activate and be self actualizing. Like someone like Joe Dispenza, someone like Bruce Lipton, even like Tony Robbins,

people who like those kinds of things, even Mel Robbins, right? That's not to say those people are not empathic. That's a different approach. So I don't want to, I don't want us to confuse those. We're talking about these features of people who are low empaths. But I'm going to take it one step further and say, you can feel like that, that that should be the end result and not dismiss the experience that someone is going through. Meaning you could have the same end result, which is, you know, you wouldn't be in trouble if you had taken the right actions earlier before you got in this situation, while still. having an empathy for them being in that situation, because I don't want to confuse these that,

oh, if you're empathic, you can't set a boundary. You can't take a step in the right direction, or you can't make concrete plans. I don't want to, I think there's a difference between the emotional realm of feeling and sensing and the action realm of navigating the world in ways that help you push yourself forward. Another thing that low empaths do is they often respond in inappropriate ways. And if you've ever known someone who there's sometimes overlap here also with the spectrum where sometimes people literally don't understand what's going on. But people who are low empaths and who are kind of on this scale might seem indifferent or even cheerful. If you've expressed something sad, they may literally not be resonating with what's going on.

And in addition, in kind of in a similar vein, people who are low empaths may have trouble understanding how their behavior affects others. And we often see this in the autism spectrum. It's very, it's not ill intention, but often low empaths literally don't understand that their behavior affects other people. And they may seem selfish. They may even seem vindictive. They don't realize that it's actually hurting other people. So those are some qualities of low empaths. Some of these low empath qualities can occur in autism, can also see low empathy in psychopaths or antisocial

personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, also narcissistic personality disorder, different from narcissism per se, but this is a place where you may see low empathy as kind of features of those diagnoses. And just a quick note, you know, we've talked about some of the prefrontal cortex stuff and some of the sort of like neuro pathways that might be involved with different aspects of empathy, prefrontal cortex in particular. Low emotional intelligence is often linked to low empathy, meaning not having an understanding of emotions can lead you to not understand obviously the way that they impact other people and exist in other people. And prolonged stress, emotional avoidance, these are reasons that people also may not feel generous in terms of empathy.

And many people feel it's not worth the mental effort, time, and emotional weight to develop empathy. The idea of shutting down and what creates emotional flooding, which is basically the overwhelm where you can't process. You know something is happening. you're feeling something's happening, but you feel unable to either communicate it, metabolize it, speak to it, respond in a way that's going to yield a result that's positive. You can tend to just block it and shut it down, which can show up as a lack of empathy where someone is either stonewalled or if you're trying to have a conversation with someone and they've sort of become introverted and they're blocking that communication, you may say,

oh, they have no empathy, but it may be that they actually feel a lot but don't have the tools to communicate it. And I think that is often happening in couples. One person will have a higher emotional language and vocabulary than another. Someone might be a faster processor than another. That is different than having low empathy in general or the capacity to build empathy. I think the other thing that is really interesting to think about is our stress level. How much bandwidth do we have for emotional processing versus how much are we just

simply using our resources to survive, keep our head above water, and tend to our basic needs. When we are exposed to high levels of stress, especially ongoing stress, empathy is one of those hierarchy of needs that can be put by the wayside. One study in particular found that empathy was associated with forgiveness in men, but not in women. This was based on, it's about 130 people, but just kind of interesting to think about the different aspects of empathy that might vary in some cases by gender and might be able to be tackled. So just wanted to give that a shout out. So let's say you're a person who has low empathy or you love someone who has low empathy. Is this something that you can actually work on? Is it something

that can change? There may be genetic predispositions. There may be obviously personality types that people have. But how do you build these different aspects of empathy? So we've talked about cognitive empathy. We've talked about emotional empathy and we've talked about compassionate empathy. Let's start with cognitive empathy. So that is basically understanding and labeling what others are feeling. The way that you do this is to literally, it's like put yourself in someone else's shoes. One of the suggested activities was go different places where there are people who believe or live life differently than you do and try and actively understand what they're experiencing. This is a time I think in global history and certainly in the history of North America where there's a lot there

that people have found challenging to understand, but that is the true kind of way to build that cognitive empathy. Also, second guess yourself, oh, this is a great activity. Have an internal or even written debate with yourself about something that you think you believe strongly. argue the other side of it. See what it's like to second guess yourself. See what comes up. I always love when my kids have a debate and they come home, you know, a debate class and they come home and I'm like, what did you debate? You know, and it's usually some like really big thing. You know, it's it's abortion. It's, you know, voting rights, things like that. It's, it's an important exercise for your brain to develop cognitive empathy. Especially in this day and age when we're all on an individualized media drip of news, trying to see the world. through someone else's perspective is such a valuable exercise. What about increasing emotional empathy? So this is basically being able to emotionally feel what someone else is feeling. Active listening is something.

Like, are you actually listening to what someone is saying and what emotions they're expressing instead of just thinking, what do I want to say next? Right. What do I want to say next? How do I want to react to it? How am I going to tell them that they're wrong and I'm right? Right. Asking open-ended questions is one way of doing this.

and really listening. Also, harness the power of oxytocin. Eye contact, look at people, see if you can understand what they're feeling from looking at them. Also physical touch, being the person who places a hand or says to someone, do you want a hug? Those things can increase your ability

to also feel what the other person's feeling. In this work world where so much moved to Zoom, we lost one of the biggest ways that we create empathy with other people, which is being together. The digital interaction is not the same. We don't exchange energy the same way. That's not the scientific term, but we know that there are scientific studies of simply being around people, sharing gaze, eye contact with them, increases our levels of feeling bonded and connected and increases our ability to show empathy to one another. What about enhancing compassionate empathy?

So this is the ability to want to sort of act on understanding that you can support someone else's emotional process. Developing cognitive empathy and emotional empathy help towards developing compassionate empathy. In theory, they're kind of wired similarly in that there should be some sort of domino effect here. One of the suggestions is to read fiction. So learn about other people's stories. and understand, especially from writers who can write richly about other people's emotional experience, it can stimulate those other aspects of empathy so that you can start to kind of garner that compassion. I thought that was a very interesting suggestion.

Jonathan, you're going to give us some other suggestions for people who are too empathic, which is its own kind of problem. But before we get into that, I do want to touch on dark empathy. A dark empath is someone who uses, usually cognitive empathy, for personal gain at the expense of others. So they can see someone's situation. They're like, I get what's happening there. But they do not have sympathy for them. So I know everybody's brain is like, tick, tick, tick.

I know this person. I know this guy. I mean, they might have sympathy, but what presupposes or goes ahead of that sympathy is their need to control, manipulate, or benefit in some way. Right. So this is a person.

I'm going to describe the person who could be the dark empath. They could be. They're emotionally detached. They often have a grandiose bent to them that's actually fueled by intense self-criticism. They can be vindictive, emotionally manipulative. They're often extroverts.

They're often sarcastic, intimidating. They often use love bombing, gaslighting, ghosting. I can guarantee you that everyone listening who has ever dated someone who might fall on the narcissist scale is like, yes, because there's a certain kind of, I'm going to say it, romantic sexual predator. And I'm not saying it's always a man. They can be women too. To me, there's a certain kind of romantic sexual partner who like sees into your head. Valerie, am I getting a head nod? Like you, even if you didn't date this person or marry them, you know this person. they're like such a persuasive manipulator.

It's like they're in your head. They know your weaknesses and they can just twist it. And especially if you're in a vulnerable place, if you've had trauma, maybe they're helping you through it. Maybe they're a healer, right? A doctor, someone taking advantage in that situation. I never thought of it as like a dark empath,

but it's someone who's often very intelligent, I'm thinking of a very specific person. someone who's very intelligent and they get it. They can clock it, but they're like, how can I use it for me? That's a dark empath. That person that you're describing is a very dangerous person. There's also a version which we covered in our episode on narcissism, which is the covert narcissist who is super empathic,

lures often men in and then is, oh, woe is me. Everything is so hard for me. I can't, you know, I can't succeed because and pulls them in to be taking care of and offers in exchange this level of understanding, but starts to put parameters in place, starts to shift the narrative, often labeling their experience. No, it isn't like this. It's like, it's like how I see it. And I understand you more than anyone else. And you can get your claws put into you in a way that is very difficult. to extract because you think that there's a high level of understanding there, but really what's happening is manipulation. I love how there's so many different aspects of different kind of personality features and episodes that we do that show really the complexity of the human experience.

And it's not about one label. It's not about one diagnosis. It's really about a variety of like behaviors, interactions, and then how those impact the choices that we make, and particularly the people that we choose to be in relationship with. If you do have an experience with someone where there's a high level of empathy where someone's like, oh, they get me in this amazing way, take a beat, see what happens. Do they have an agenda, right? Like we can get lured in by the sense of being seen and understood really quickly.

And we want to know, is there an agenda there? What type of interaction are we going to have next beyond just being seen? So besides the desire to be seen, this leads perfectly into what happens if you're being an empath makes you everyone's shoulder to cry on because you're the person who gets them. You're the person who constantly feels what they're feeling. And if you've ever been told like no one gets me like you do or I can't talk to anyone else like I can talk to you. sometimes people really feel those things. You know, I remember I was, you know, labeled an old soul, right?

When I was young and I remember, you know, I had a friend whose father died when we were quite young. And I could see that like I was a person who was able to kind of hold for that person in the way that a lot of other 14 year olds weren't into. And I see now I had these qualities of like I really felt it. I felt it so deeply. and I wanted to be helpful. I wanted to be supportive. And I'm seeing that that can also take a toll, you know, on you. So Jonathan, we wanted to talk a little bit about if you are an empath and if you are feeling perhaps overwhelmed by the blending that can happen between other people's emotions and yours, we have some general tips here. You know, one of the things is to label what you

you're feeling when you're feeling it. So remember that thoughts and feelings are actually not the same thing. We often combine them, but when we feel something, there's a thought behind it, there's a need. Even creating a cognitive label for it can help. So you know what? I happen to have my feeling wheel right here. And the feeling wheel is a tool of nonviolent communication or NVC. And what it is is it's a way to literally label a feeling. So let's say someone's feeling something and you feel sad. Can you go a level deeper and label it? Do you feel despair? Do you feel guilt? Do you feel hurt? Do you feel depressed? Do you feel lonely? Those are all under sad, right? So the first thing we'd say is like, oh, I feel sad. Well, what is it? There's another layer, the third layer on the outside of this feeling wheel. Here are your choices. Isolated,

abandoned, victimized, fragile, grief, powerless, ashamed, remorseful, empty, inferior, disappointed, embarrassed. I highly recommend you can print one of these up for free off the internet. Learn to label your feelings. It is incredibly helpful. It gives a lot more information. So that's kind of the first tip. Learn to label what your feelings. so that the feeling does not become your entire identity. Ask yourself if what you're feeling is yours, someone else's, or a mix. Now, for me, I don't really have any idea what this is, but Jonathan is going to explain this to us. Also, Jonathan, does this extend into the realm of extrasensory abilities?

If you're going through the process of labeling your feelings, also know that you don't have to fix them, acknowledging them, being aware of them, bringing them to the surface, they will pass, they will shift. And one of the things to be aware of in that process of shifting is, are these mine or am I picking up on other people's stuff, especially with empaths when we think about them as having a higher aperture or, you know, bandwidth, you know, they're getting more information that can be energetic, can be sensory information. It may be that they are tuned into someone

who is not directly in their proximity. Could be a family member, it could be a friend, it could be someone going through something. How often, if you're an empath, have you thought about someone for a few days? I had this experience actually, a handful of months ago, a friend of mine from childhood

kept popping into my mind. I hadn't spoken to this guy in years, but we grew up together. We spent a lot of time together in school. I played hockey with him when I was six years old and was that summer camp with him. And he just kept coming up in my mind. And so I ignore it for the first couple times. I ignore it again.

But over the course of three weeks, it just keeps happening. I call him. And then I find out we have a great reconnection. I catch up with him. He doesn't say anything to me. He still, after that conversation keeps coming up on my mind, turns out his mother passed away a week or two after I spoke to him. And, you know, it was so much nicer for me.

to be able to have had reconnected with him and then have sent him a condolence and sort of tracked and tried to connect with him around that time. But we can easily have people's either information or emotional experience come up to us, come up for us when we're not around them. So evaluating, if I have an emotion, is this mine? Is this my experience? What does it feel like when it's mine versus someone else's? And that is where, you know, this is a whole other episode on And what do people who do have extrasensory abilities do to try and differentiate between the types of feeling that they have? For many of us who operate in a very materialistic way, it's like, what? How could I be feeling, right?

Like, how am I feeling something that someone else is? And for this, we could refer people to any number of episodes we've done about a notion of collective consciousness. Thomas Campbell is a great example. Bruce Lipton is a great example. There's this notion that there are certain people who have an ability to tap into things that we often can't explain, but which often have very, very deep emotional repercussions. Any of the episodes we've done on near-death experiences have hinted at this. Dr. Bruce Grayson experiencing something inexplicable to him, someone who literally traveled outside of their body, right? The Angela Ford episode.

What does that mean for people who are empaths, they may actually be on this spectrum of having emotional ability that could possibly extend to other things? So when we talk about sort of the weight, the emotional weight of being an empath, let's say, Jonathan, that you're able to sort of say, I'm going to understand that I'm feeling something very intensely that's simply not mine, meaning I can have. compassion for that person. I can feel empathy. I can feel sympathy. I can understand it, but I don't want to physically hold it in my body. Jonathan, can you sort of talk us through? Is there some sort of way to visualize, like them over there and me over here? Like, what do I do when I feel it in my body? And it really feels like me? First, identifying that there is a feeling that is happening and identifying, is it mine or someone else's? Now, if you've never done that before, I would start by questioning. I'm feeling something, maybe use the feeling wheel,

but really asking, is this mine or someone else's? And if you don't have a direct relationship with asking your higher self or a collective consciousness, then I think that's another conversation that we could have. Maybe we'll do a substack on it. Put it in the the comments if you've had that experience or if you're stuck in that moment so that we have a better understanding of what people's experiences are. But that's the starting point. If it's mine and I'm feeling it, then I need to process it. And it goes through the pathway that we often describe of emotions being transient, right? They come up. They're clusters of sensation. They may have a narrative attached to them. They're going to pass as we observe them. We don't have to fix them necessarily.

or there may be a need associated with it, right? Like, I am sad because I'm disappointed. I'm going to acknowledge that. I may, there may be some interpersonal work to do. I have a question, because I realized I don't understand something very, very basic. Let's say I hear that something bad happens to someone, and I feel super bad. And it's not, meaning I'm not talking about, God forbid, you hear someone that is close to you is sick or someone, God forbid, passed away. I hear something that happened to someone else.

This is a point, I'm literally asking I'm not being facetious, where if I'm having a feeling, I need to literally say, am I feeling it or am I feeling it about that? Is that what this means? Like, I'm this years old when I'm understanding that I need to literally say, oh, if I'm feeling sadness because someone broke up with that other, person, that's not mine. This is an amazing moment, right? Where, think about a breakup. Like, I hear

someone broke up with someone. Where do you feel it? Viscerally in your body. So I know, like, do a quick skin. Where do you feel it? I feel it in my chest. Like, when I think about this, yeah. And it feels like I'm sad. I feel sad. You may feel sad. Yes. Now, in your mind's eye, Go to the person who has had that breakup. Yeah. And the same way you would do your own body scan, scan their body. What does that mean? You're closing your eyes.

You bring up the person who has gone through the breakup. Okay. You can see them. And now scan, quickly scan their body. Do you get any sensation or emotion? I think of their heart. Okay. So now you have to, you have the opportunity to say,

what you felt, how much of it is yours and how much of it do you feel? It feels like I'm feeling it for them. Yeah. Feels like I'm feeling it. So that's not mine. So that's not yours. And so what you just did in the moment of your empathetic experience was that you tapped into the energy of the breakup that exists in the universe.

And you went right to it and thought it was yours. Now I feel hot. So you can gently say this is your experience that. I was aware of, but I'm going to give it back to you. So it's like by me feeling it, it's like some part of my brain feels like I can make it better for this person when they have to feel it on their own. I mean, that is a whole other meaning that I'm not even touching on right now, which, you know, you could talk about the intellectualization of why you felt it, why not.

But if we just talk about the fundamental like building blocks here, every experience that people have exists in the database, you just went and tapped into that experience in the database and then felt it viscerally for yourself. And in theory, what a lot of people would do is like, I need to call them, I need to text them. I'm going to send them flowers. I'm going to take them out to lunch, right? And that may be coming from a healthy place or it may be coming from a place of like, I need to feel this go away. I need to like do something so that I don't feel their pain. and that's actually kind of a codependent thing to do, meaning like you're not feeling well,

so I need you to feel better so that I don't feel bad. I mean, that's like the basis of my emotional codependency is I don't like what you're feeling because it's making me feel it. What about the overlap between codependency and empaths? We did an episode on are you codependent, and go back and listen to that one. Tell us your score on the codependency episode,

and then the empath episode and see if there is an overlap, I would suggest that a lot of empaths aren't differentiating between what they're sensing in the database and what is their personal experience. Now, in that exercise we just did, you could very well feel badly for her. But feeling badly for someone is different than feeling their bad. Correct.

And if you just felt badly for them, it would, this is, this is sort of the criteria or characteristic of that feeling. It would be like, oh, that hurts my heart a little bit. I feel for her, but it would pass much more quickly. If you're, oh my God, that really hurts my heart and I can't breathe. And I'm crying. And I'm crying and I can't get over this. It's likely not yours because an experience that you haven't gone through won't sit and resonate

and impact you in the same way. So it is an energy. exercise to remove yourself and allow that energy to shift back because actually you holding that for them entangles you in it and doesn't allow it to shift more easily for them. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and say this. Valerie and I have this with animals. It is a little bit different because they are often dependent on human beings. No, but like I, but like if you see one in the wild or like I, I once saw a raccoon that had been hit by a car.

I mean, it was like, it was... It's harder to know in that circumstance because that's a very sad experience. And if it's been hit by a car... But I felt the raccoon. It doesn't feel like I was feeling bad for the raccoon. I was feeling the bad of the raccoon. What I think is the most interesting part of this is

think about all the information that exists in the database at any given time. We have the opportunity to connect into that type of information and we get to choose what we want to tap into. This is an example of what our automatic choosing does when it's not guided, but as we start to practice guiding our focus of what we feel, what we're connected to, then the possibilities for what we experience open up. I feel like I want to redo my whole life. Okay, here's an experience. Recently, not that long ago, you were watching the NBA finals. Oh, no.

And here's a question. Did you feel more connected to the people who were winning or the pain of the loss? The team that lost and the pain that they were going through or the excitement and exhilaration of the winning team? And can you direct yourself to focus on the winning team and, feel the joy that they were experiencing? Can you hold that energy? Because often when empaths go wrong and when they have the negative repercussions of being overly empathic is because they are tuned into the pain frequency of the human experience. That was a very special thing you just said. It's a it's a heavier, easier energy in some ways to connect to the higher vibration of joy,

happiness, excitement is a different almost tuning system. I mean, Evolutionarily, you technically would be more geared towards pain and suffering because, like, am I going to suffer what they're suffering feels more important than am I going to eat the happy berry, you know, that they're eating? It's like, oh, the person that's like vomiting and dying evolutionarily seems more important to pay attention to than hippie, like, you know, skipping, frolicing person over here, making their baskets. The people who found the magic mushrooms and are making the baskets. That's right. I want to know about, I'm more interested in the poisonous. mushroom people than the psychedelic mushroom people. And often what we know, and again, this is anecdotal. It's not coming from, you know, large data sets, but it's coming from the comments, the overabundance of comments and messages that we've been getting on these episodes. And what we've

seen in the near-death experiences that for people who are, their systems are primed to build extrasensory and intuitive information, they've often gone through some sort of difficult childhood, whether that be physical psychological abuse or whether it just be high levels of adversity and conflict and being othered, exclusion, whatever that may be, we know that that increases the people's likelihood of having intuitive and extrasensory ability. So they're again going to be primed for that challenge, sadness, grief frequency that they will just naturally tune into more. And again, that can feel overwhelming and it can lead to feelings isolated, wanting to avoid crowds, wanting to avoid interaction if you know that you're going to then tap into those emotions versus training yourself to tap into the higher frequencies. I want to answer the sports question because I think that's a really interesting one.

I don't know how many empaths out there are sports fans like I am. You know, there's a definite experience for me in seeing the losing team. And I often will say, you know, on the one hand, like, oh, their mothers must be so proud that they're winning, right? And like, I'll say to my kids, like, if you were that player, I'd be so proud of you. But then on the other hand, it's like, oh, the devastation and what does that feel like? And with these recent NBA finals that just finished a little bit ago, there were some heartbreaker injuries that felt really, really very difficult and painful. And actually there was, I think I can say it, in game seven of these recent NBA finals, Halliburton, the star player for the Indiana Pacers, you could see something pop in his leg on television.

And it was the beginning of, you know, the most important game of this series. And his entire team formed a circle around him on the floor, partly to protect him from having to be seen in his pain, both physical and emotional of not being able to play. He was removed from the game and couldn't play the rest of the game and they ended up losing. But the star player from the other team, Shea Gilgis Alexander, who was the MVP, actually came over and touched him and made a connection with him. And I was thinking, what a generous and complicated moment that is to be able to show that sort of extension of empathy. in the middle of this, you know, kind of situation.

So, yeah, I was also thinking about how after my kids were born, I became much more sensitive, right? And now I'm wondering if it was not just becoming more sensitive, but if my empathy was increasing because of the hormones, you know, the bonding experience that you participate in, you know, if all of that priming, right, that hormonal priming of labor and delivery and breastfeeding and all those things, they do make you tuned in because again, evolutionarily,

you've got to be a lot more sensitive to what others are experiencing because you're tuned into keeping this thing alive, right? For primates, it's like keep that thing alive for a very, very long period of time. And a lot of people who experience, let's say, postpartum depression would be the first to say, like, oh, I didn't feel that pull, I didn't feel that connection. I didn't feel like I cared, right? So interesting some of this overlap. So Jonathan, thank you so much for explaining.

Now I would like to go back to my entire life and try and see every emotion that I've had. Was it mine? Was it someone else's? And now I know how to do that. So thank you. You're welcome. I would love to hear from anyone who has either used this technique, tried it. Are there stumbling blocks?

Are there successes? What other strategies also post in the comments? Let us know how you. you navigate whether or not you're experiencing your emotions, whether you're experiencing someone else's. I know a lot of people use cord cutting as a strategy. There's also visualizations to put a field around yourself. You can find out more information on Mindyallix breakdown on substack. We'll post and will provide some additional resources there as well. Jonathan and I are going to reveal the results of our

What kind of empath are you tests? So I know you're curious. Jonathan's probably going to be a lot more interesting than I am. I think I'm just sort of the garden variety, but... You never know. You never know. So please head over to Substack for more on the types of empaths that you might be. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have.

We'll see next time.