An Introduction to Empaths + HSPs
What’s with all this Empath talk?
My clients have expressed two different feelings about the word empath.
Some of them have found great relief in learning a word that describes their experience of feeling and processing intensely and deeply their whole life. It feels orienting to have this word to act as shorthand for how it’s felt to navigate the world from a heightened, empathic place.
Others think it is totally obnoxious.
Even though they display the empath traits themselves, they’ve expressed frustration at hearing people self-identify as an empath as though it’s something ideal or extra special.
I get it. Labels are tough. They can feel orienting and minimizing, validating and reductive, good and bad. All at the same time.
Regardless of how the word lands for you, the experience of being an empath, or someone who has a sensitive set of receptors deep within that is constantly taking in information and processing it intensely is very real.
It doesn’t matter so much what we call it as long as we acknowledge it as a valid experience.
A psychologist named Dr. Elaine Aron has done a lot to validate this experience with her research and writing regarding folks she refers to as Highly Sensitive People. The research she began over thirty years ago shows that about 15 to 20 percent of the population can be described this way.
That is too many people for it to be labeled as a disorder or neurosis.
A better way to think of HSPs is that they share a personality trait, or rather a group of tendencies that work together, to form a personality trait.
What do empaths and HSP’s and introverts all have in common?
A large majority of HSPs are introverts and almost all empaths are HSPs.
One thing HSPs and empaths have in common was revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (or fMRI) machines. When slightly different images were displayed, the brain scan revealed activity in the part of the brain that deals with the deep processing of information. As Elaine Aron’s research progressed, it emerged that HSPs are more sensitive to the subtleties and nuances of sensory input.
They process the sights, sounds, smells, and textures the world throws at us more deeply than others. The same holds true of emotions and bodily sensations. As a result, HSPs are vulnerable to the everyday torrent of sights, sounds, and stresses in our world. For example, they’re likely to require serious quiet time after a normal day (enter, introversion).
It’s validating to have the research back up the experience. Recognizing this as a very real trait can go a long way in beginning to pay attention to how it feels for you to be an empath or HSP.
Once we name it, we can start to know about it.
And when we know about it we can start to have agency with it - deciding how we want to be in relationship with it, how we want to use it, what boundaries we need to set for ourselves.
Call it anything you like, but your sensitivity is welcome here and there’s much to learn about how it operates in your life.