Empath: The Ultimate Survival Guide for Empaths and Highly Sensitive People

By Camelia Hensen

This is a 3-book bundle, which addresses various subtopics, including but not limited to these:



Book 1: Empaths… empathy… sensitivity… what’s the difference?



Some people have developed a knack for feeling compassion or empathy for other people. To others, it comes naturally. And to some, it’s an intense gift that has ups and downs, pros and cons that allow them to help others but also become fatigued when they don’t watch themselves.



Are you an empath? Or do you just have a lot of empathy?



In this guide, you’ll figure out some of the major distinctions, as well as specific types of empaths, like earth empaths, physical empaths, relationship empaths, dark empaths, and food empaths. You will also receive some advice about how to lead your empathic children in the right paths of life.



Book 2: Being an empath can be a good thing, but it also comes with some problems. In this book, we’ll address both sides. These factors of being an empath will have an incredible impact on your life.



For example, we will discuss some tips for raising empathic children. We will point out the three types of empaths, so you can identify with the one that suits your personality most. Additionally, we’ll talk about why emotional empaths usually stay alone or why they feel lonely. At the end of the book, some encouraging thoughts are given to help you cope with the difficulties of life, and to help other empaths.



Book 3: Why are some people empaths?



What is the science behind this?



And why are some empaths more susceptible to addictions?



These and many other questions will be addressed in this brief guide. On top of that, you will learn more about narcissism versus empathy, how to become a more empathetic spouse, the dangers of social media, healing methods for empaths with traumatic memories, and what the difference is between empathic parenting and “rescue” parenting. All of these topics will help you understand empathy, empaths, and yourself better.



This is a great treasure of knowledge about human psychology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Efalon Acies
• Release date: Sep 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9788835897729

Book preview

Share

Chapter 1: What Makes Us as Humans Empathic?

Why is it that we get miserable when we see someone crying and wince when a good friend cuts his finger? Do animals feel this emotional contagion as we do? An experiment released today in the leading diary Present biology shows us how the brain makes us share the feelings of others and how likewise the brain of people and rats seem when sharing feelings.

For a long time, many really believed that empathy is a distinctively human sentiment that sets us apart as a more moral species. More current observations chip away at this notion. Remarkable anecdotes emerged of chimpanzees who risked drowning in heroic efforts to rescue fellow chimpanzees in aquatic peril. Research studies showed rats, not known as the noblest of moral beings, invest considerable effort to free fellow rats from a trap.

Indeed, emotions are contagious amongst rats: If one receives a moderate, but shocking, electrical shock, the rat gets terrified and freezes; it stops all movements. Rats do this to keep away from being detected by the main risk they encounter: predators. What is fascinating is that rats that notice the anxiety of another rat have been observed to also freeze. Somehow, the fear of one rat is moved to other, nearby rats, just as we get worried around anxious people. This observation led the way to checking out the brains of humans and rats to see what systems make feelings travel from one person to another, and to comprehend whether these systems are similar across species.

In humans, this has been done by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and typical experiments include 2 conditions: one in which the participant is exposed to a stimulus that activates an emotion, and one in which the participant witnesses someone else experience that feeling.

For example, we can apply a moderate electroshock to the hand of a participant to see what brain areas are associated with feeling pain. The core brain area that activates is the anterior cingulate cortex. Most people with damage in this area no longer feel the emotional agony we associate with pain, and this region is therefore thought to be the hub of our psychological pain.

Surprisingly, if you let the individual witness another person get such a shock, participants trigger brain regions involved in vision, but in addition, they also activate their cingulate cortex, just as if they were suffering themselves. That the exact same brain area is involved in pain and in experiencing the pain of others resulted in the speculation that it could contain pain mirror nerve cells-- nerve cells that map the pain of others on our own sense of pain. Discomfort mirror nerve cells remained theoretical speculation, a kind of Higgs boson of emotional empathy-- much speculated about but unseen.

By recording from individual neurons in the same brain regions of rats, the existence of pain mirror neurons has now been verified. In the rat cingulate cortex, many nerve cells responded when the rat felt pain itself but not when it was only scared by a tone. These nerve cells thus seems to be firmly linked to the animal's own sense of pain. Most of those pain nerve cells, however, also responded when the rat witnessed another rat in pain, and did so within less than a tenth of a second. Like the speculations on pain mirror neurons had forecasted, the rat's cingulate cortex therefore includes afferent neuron that translate the witnessed pain of another into the substrate of the observer's own sufferance.

That the rodent's own pain nerve cells got recruited so swiftly is telling in that it makes the sharing of pain more comparable to a fast reflex instead of to a purposeful, reflective act of mental perspective taking. That this happens in the cingulate cortex, the really place in which people activate their brain while they witness the pain of others, shows that rats and people appear to share the standard biology of feeling sharing. We do not only share the ability to participate in the agony of others with rodents: We do so by using the same brain systems, the exact same fruits of social evolution. Empathy has routes that run deep in the tree of development and connect us with our fellow mammals.

You might really wonder: How do we know that these nerve cells truly do make us share the pain of others? To answer that question, the activity of the cingulate cortex was suppressed by injecting a drug into the really brain area where the pain mirror nerve cells were found. Now the rats that observed the pain of other rats no longer revealed signs of sharing that agony. Altering activity in the cingulate sufficed to alter emotion sharing.

Demented criminals do terrible things to people without feeling the real moral shackles of remorse and empathy. Intriguingly, just as the rats with pharmacologically suppressed cingulate activity, such psychopaths show minimized activity in their own pain regions while seeing the pain of others. An animal model in which feeling sharing can be changed offers some hope for unlocking the development of drugs to stabilize empathy in clients who struggle with abnormal empathy.

Though it remains hard to truly know what animals feel, the similarity across species in the brain mechanisms that are at play is striking. Perhaps the instinct we have that animals are endowed with empathy is not as irrational as some once thought.

Chapter 2: How to Know If You Are an Empath

An empath is a psychological sponge who soaks up both the positivity and the tension of other people in the world. Empaths need to learn strategies to keep their energy high and stop taking on other individuals' distress.

To find out if you're an empath, take the following twenty question self-assessment, addressing mainly yes or mostly no to each question.

Empath Test

Have I been labeled as extremely sensitive, shy, or introverted?

Do I regularly get overwhelmed or anxious?

Do arguments or yelling make me ill?

Do I often feel like I don't fit in?

Am I drained by crowds and really need alone time to restore myself?

Am I overstimulated by noise, smells, or non-stop talkers?

Do I have chemical sensitivities or can't endure scratchy clothes?

Do I prefer taking my own automobile places so I can leave early if I need to?

Do I overindulge to handle stress?

Am I scared of becoming suffocated by intimate relationships?

Do I get startled easily?

Do I react strongly to caffeine or medications?

Do I have a low pain threshold?

Do I tend to socially separate?

Do I soak up other individuals' tension, emotions, or signs?

Am

Reviews for Empath

[Darlene Sommer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The primary message of this publication spoke to me. A number of the chapters were more intriguing than other ones, naturally. So, yes, I was satisfied. And so, with that being mentioned, I do recommend it.

[Miriam Green · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The information in this manual was amazing. There was so much to it that I don't have an idea where to start. People who do not love this, must be insane. Therefore, with that being mentioned, I do strongly recommend it.