I have been diagnosing my soul for years through research and self-help reading. I’m not diagnosing a medical condition, instead I am taking the temperature of my soul and figuring out how to get the best out of my life. These are the nuggets of wisdom that I like to share on this blog.  My life has changed completely in a matter of weeks, but I will talk more about that in later posts.

This past weekend, I was reading  about hypersensitive souls. A highly sensitive person (HSP) is someone that is acutely aware of energies and has a heightened intuition. I was enthralled when I read this and I began searching for more and more information. As I read more about it, I knew that everything was describing me. In the past, I’ve written about being sensitive and emotional vampires. I didn’t realize that I was experiencing energy in a much deeper way than most people. I started to replay moments and people in my life and it was amazing that I have certainly been affected by people’s energies.

HSP can also be referred to as an Empath. Empathy is not the same as sympathy. Sympathy is when you feel something about what someone else is going through, but your own feelings are separate. Empathy is when you put yourself in the place of person so you can feel exactly what they are feeling. An empath is someone that experiences the feelings of other people in their own body. They absorb the feelings. An example is that I could be feeling great and encounter someone that is having a bad day. They share with me and unburden their soul. They leave feeling wonderful and I feel awful. The only thing is that it doesn’t always have to involve talking. An empath can absorb feelings without even being in the room with the person.

“Intuition is seeing with the soul.” ― Dean Koontz

This may sound strange to some, but I have realized that I can feel people’s energies. I didn’t know that I was walking around being an “emotional dumping ground” for people’s negative energy, but it makes sense for what I’ve been going through. It makes sense why I don’t enjoy crowds. It explains why I’ve felt burnt out in situations where I feel responsible for the feelings of others. It also explains why I’ve been attracted to the friends and men in my life. It explains the ups and downs of my emotions and my reactions. I explains so much.

I am learning how to separate myself from other people’s energy and how to determine which emotions are my own. It’s going to take some time, but I am more aware that I can be easily affected. The best thing about discovering this is that I can trust myself. My intuition has always steered me correctly. I always felt that I knew more than I should about the people around me. I thought it was some type of wisdom I had that I didn’t know where it was coming from. I’ve really just been tuning into their feelings. It’s such a relief to know that I have a choice of when I do that. I will write more about this discovery in my next posts.

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” – Alan Alda