I am an Empathic Introvert

And boy is that a difficult type of person to be right now

I’ve been in therapy a while. I think I’ve been with my current therapist for 3 and a half years (don’t tell him, but part of me wonders if I’m his longest relationship). I know this because he told me, not because I have been counting the months. A while into therapy, I had the realization that I was highly empathic. It wasn’t that I don’t feel feelings, like I originally kind of thought, its that I *DEEPLY* feel the feelings of the world around me.

My kids (now 10 and 13, so it doesn’t happen often) crying, real hurting tears, just about kills me. I feel their pain. Sometimes when they are close by, and sometimes when they are far away. I was at work one afternoon, and felt the urgent need to get home to pick up my girl. I got in the car, hooked up my phone, and I wasn’t a block away before it rang. It was my girl’s school and they wanted to let me know that she tripped at dismissal and was pretty upset. I told them to send her along to her after-care and I would be right there to get her. Seeing my son cry instantly brings me to tears. I can feel all of it, and it hurts.

There are a lot of feels surrounding us right now. Some people are excited to see the world opening up. Some people are dreading taking off their masks (me). Some are excited for large gatherings. Some want to keep things small and intimate for now (me). Our country is all over the spectrum of feels right now, and so us empaths are too.

Feeling all the feels takes up so much capacity that it can seem like it isn’t that we don’t possess our own feelings, its that everyone else’s feelings become our own; and as introverts, that is exhausting. We don’t want random and uninvited people in our brains.

On the introverted side, it is a nightmare right now. Everyone wants to start seeing everyone and we’re not quite ready to get back to that yet. This is a really scary time for some of us. Be kind to one another, someone else might be really scared too.