An Empath Learning Boundaries

Setting boundaries with others as an Empath can be a daunting task, and it can be hard to not feel like you are hurting others feelings by doing so. Let’s learn how to set healthy boundaries for ourselves so that we aren’t neglecting our well-being while being a hypersensitive person.

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Hey, everyone, you're back here with Chels and this is Under the Rugs. 

Caring about others and being there for others that we care about and, you know, being that lending hand and being understanding are kind of all traits that every human possesses, right? We are aware of how other people are feeling, we're aware of how our behaviour has an effect on others around us. We have that sense of empathy. But what happens when we are so hypersensitive to other people's emotions that it becomes more like a chore? Where it becomes more like an obligation to make the other person feel better and an obligation to solve their problems? This is what it's like being an empath. And for an empath, we find that it's really difficult to set those boundaries of when I'm becoming too drained, that I can't offer anymore. And when we have to kind of put up that wall and say, what other people are going through is not an obligation of me to soak up, and it's not an obligation for me to solve. 

I didn't realize for the longest time that I was an empath or that I was hypersensitive until probably around my last, my last serious relationship, where I kind of fell into this terrible habit of putting myself aside and putting, you know, how full my bucket was aside in order to keep filling it with what other people were going through and what my partner was feeling or bringing home from the day, or those stressors and kind of all of those negative emotions that came up in my partner, I was like a sponge to that. So I immediately soaked up as soon as he would step in the room. And this goes for not even my last relationship, but I find even, you know, in any situation where I can walk into a room and I automatically and immediately can read the tensions or read the emotions in the room and feel that energy. And as soon as I do that, I'm immediately taking it on. And I found that this was kind of, like I said, playing into my relationships, it was playing into my friendships, it was starting to affect how I behaved at work and felt at work. And it all had to do with that hypersensitivity to other people's emotions and not knowing what my boundaries were when it came to that. 

One of the things that is really for me difficult and still is difficult for me to do today is set those boundaries. And when I say set boundaries, what I mean is that as much as we care for others and we see how people are feeling and we can feel their feelings and, you know, as much as we want to be that shoulder for people, it can become very overwhelming and very draining. It can become. It can kind of even start to play into this negative self talk where we feel like we're not enough because we're doing everything we can, but we're not solving, quote unquote, solving their problem, we, or making them feel better in that moment. And it can cause a lot of overwhelm mentally, but also physically as well. And. And when we're not coming to the point where we're saying, I have a choice to either take this on or not take this on, when we're automatically taking on everyone else's bullshit or heavy moments or, you know, you know, all of those kind of sad emotions, it can very much take a toll on you as a person, mentally and physically. And it can become so overwhelming that we're then now forgetting ourselves. Right? We're putting ourselves on the back burner because we feel this obligation to help this person right away, or we're putting ourselves on the back burner even though we're so, you know, we had a stressful day at work and we're being a mom and we're doing all the things and there's all these other issues going on and we're trying to balance everything that's going on in our life. But as soon as someone negative walks in the room, we're taking that on. We're adding that to our bucket immediately. And it's amazing how easily we just allow this and don't even think about the object of the permission for ourselves to take that on. And when we are as an empath, as a hypersensitive person, we automatically feel this urge, or we automatically soak up these energies without even allowing ourselves to say, I have room for this. And that's when it becomes negative. 

And I don't want to sit here and talk to you guys about how being an empath is a negative thing. That's not what I'm trying to do. The point of this chat is that I want those who are an empath to understand and realise that, you know, you're a great person, you're someone that can be counted on, you care for people, you have this deep rooted connection with people. You can open up easily and sit and listen easily. Those are all great qualities of an empath. However, we also need to learn to set those boundaries and to be a person that's there for others, but also be a person that's there for us at the same time. Because in the end, what it comes down to is, as much as we want to be there for others, we can't be there for others unless we're there for ourselves first. And being selfish in that is not a bad thing. We need to remember how to be at our best self that we can before we start emptying ourselves and straining ourselves for others. It doesn't make sense to help someone else with an empty bucket where you're going home and feeling so dramatically overwhelmed and drained that you don't even know how to deal with the things that you were already dealing with before you started to connect with that person and before you started to give empathy to these people that might need you or not even need you, but to those people in your space and in your life. 

So what I want to do now is kind of just break down just to bring more clarity. And maybe you're not sure if you're an empath or not. I'm going to break down some traits of an empath, some characteristics of an empath, just to see if that's something that fits with you. And I do this because, like I said, for the longest time, I kind of just assumed that the way that I cared for others and the way that I took on other people's emotions was normal. I really thought that that was just how humans functioned. And so when I wasn't, you know, getting that same attention to care or same awareness of my emotions from others, it was really impacting me negatively. And I now understand that there's a reason behind that. It's because I'm an empath, it's because I'm hypersensitive, and not everybody is. So because of that, I'm going to break down some characteristics. And if any of these kind of fall with you, you're more than likely an empath. 

Firstly, an empath, if we're going to put it in simple terms, is someone who has a very unique and profound ability to sense the feelings of others. So we're very intuitive, we're kind of extra aware and able to easily read the emotions of others without them even telling us what they're going through. 

Another one is that we wear our heart on our sleeves. So we are not as great at keeping our emotions to ourselves as much we, we might try to and we might try to hide what we're really going through. At the end of the day, you know, with an empath, you'll kind of always know exactly what they're going through because they're going to open up. So if you're a partner of an empath, you might find that your partner is more so communicative about how they're feeling their emotions, how they're affected by things. So again, wearing their heart on their sleeve might be another trait that you're an empath. 

Another thing you might notice is that we get overstimulated in crowded rooms. Now, I always thought that this had to do with my social anxiety, but now that I kind of am figuring out how to separate the two, I realise I might have a slight, I might slightly be socially overwhelmed for sure, and have that social anxiety. But I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that because I'm soaking up everyone's energies and I'm really hypersensitive to how people are feeling when I'm in a crowded room, it can be very overwhelming because it feels like I'm taking on everything all at once. 

Another positive trait of an empath is that they can give really good advice. So if you're someone who, even if it's hard for you to give the advice to yourself, which definitely, it always is, harder to take your own advices, but it can be kind of natural for you and easy for you to give advices to others or to be there for others, and you really feel better inside when you know that you are there for someone else. So with all of these traits, if you feel like you fall into any of these categories, you're more than likely an empath. 

And with that being said, we can utilise those hypersensitive acknowledgements of, of other people's feelings, and we can utilise all of these skills that we have to be there for others. But when does it come to a point where we're then disregarding our own emotions? 

We're disregarding our own selves and our own well being because we're so adapt to helping others and putting ourselves for others and being there and soaking up all the emotions and wanting to solve problems for those we care about. When do we draw the line? 

Now, for me, as I had mentioned before, I had to start drawing the line with that when it came to my past relationship. I found that I started to neglect myself a lot because I was always feeling like I was obligated to help the other person and to change my behaviours or change my interests or kind of chameleon to attune to the other person's needs. And for a while it felt like I was helping them and I was like, okay, you know what? This is natural. I'm here for you. I understand you. So I'm going to do everything I can to put myself out there for you and to give you all that I have. And it came to a point where I realised I had nothing left. I was dealing with so much internally that I was throwing it on the back burner because I was so empathically connected to this partner that I felt like I wasn't going to gain anything if I wasn't helping and I wasn't going to kind of, it felt as if I wasn't going to be able to be the partner that they needed if I wasn't constantly giving and being hypersensitive to how they were feeling and taking on everything that they brought home. And it just hit a wall where I was totally... I was so totally broken down that I had to say, enough is enough. And I'm not saying that you have to get to the point to being completely broken down to understand and to really have the awareness that you're giving too much and that you need to set boundaries. Hopefully, this little conversation and this little tidbit of information and experience will help you understand that you don't have to get to that point and that it's okay to say no. That it's okay to set boundaries, that it's okay to say, I'm sorry, I'm here and I care about you, but I don't have the emotional capacity to take on what you're going through right now. When I am at a place where I'm level again, you know, that I'll do, I'll do as much as I possibly can within my means and within my mental state, you know, and within what my bucket can hold in order to be there for you. And it doesn't mean that you aren't being a good person because you're telling them that you can't be there for them at that time. And it doesn't make you a horrible person or a bad empath to say, I don't have space to hold this right now. 

And, and one of the biggest challenges, even after I kind of hit that wall, I left that old relationship and I started to grow as a person and understand myself and, you know, do the therapy and do the self work. I really started to notice that putting up boundaries does not please everybody. And I think that it's because, and it's really easy at that time to blame others for, you know, not understanding what you're going through and saying, like losing friendships and stuff like that, or people being upset with you because you're saying no or because you need that time for yourself. It is easy to blame the other person and to be mad at them and say like, fuck you. It's bullshit that you are throwing me off. It's bullshit that you are cutting me off as a friend when I'm trying to do what's best for me. But not everybody understands that. And, you know, we got to face the facts that that's just, not everyone's going to understand. Not everyone's going to see that when you're stepping back, it doesn't mean that you don't care about them and that's just something that those people are going to have to work through and it doesn't say anything about you negatively. 

Setting boundaries is probably one of the healthiest things that you can do for yourself, especially as an empath, because we need to understand that the way that we allow ourselves to take on other people's baggage and the way that we care so deeply about other how other people feel, we also need to care that deeply about ourselves as well. And when we're forgetting about ourselves and we're putting ourselves last, what type of person and what type of empath would we be and what type of friend would we be, what type of partner would we be? Sister, brother, father, mother? What type of partner would we be to those who matter to us? If we're not modelling and showing that we're taking care of ourselves first. 

And I really want you to have the awareness that you're not a bad person and it doesn't mean you don't care to say no, we have a choice. 

As soon as we walk into a room and we see that something negative is going on with someone else, we immediately need to say, I have a choice. Am I gonna take this on? Am I gonna allow this person's negativity to soak into me like a sponge and, you know, completely ruin how I'm feeling today and ruin my outlook on my day because of this one person? Or am I going to say, I understand that you're having a hard time, I'm sorry that you're having a hard time, truly. I'm here if you'd like to talk and then move on.

 It's not up to you to soak up that person's emotions. And I'm gonna put this into context just so that you kind of understand what I mean by soak up. 

So, for example, I'm having a great morning, right? I get up early, I have breakfast, I'm with my kids. It's a great morning. I'm getting ready for work, drop the kids off at school, I get to work and there's that one staff member or that one coworker or, you know, whatever it is that just is in the worst mood possible; is very heavy and you can feel that heaviness as soon as they walk in. They don't talk to you, they don't acknowledge you, you know, and that can be really hard, especially when you're in this, when you have this positivity and you've been having a great day, as soon as that would happen or as soon as a coworker would say something passive aggressive or negative, I immediately would shut down. I immediately, without even giving myself permission, like we said before, I would immediately take on how they were feeling. And it's like their feelings would just transmit into my body. 

And I immediately also felt heavy and also felt negative and also had this fuck you attitude because I'm so hypersensitive to other people's emotions that it started to affect my behaviour. It's like I was being puppeted a lot of the time. 

And so that's what I mean when I say, don't allow yourself to get to that point. You can see that person come in, you say good morning to them and they don't say shit to you or they're bitching about their weekend and, you know, they're angry and they're this, and they're that you can say to yourself, I'm not dealing with this. I've had a great morning and I'm not going to allow this person to, to transmit their negative energies onto me. 

So this is what I mean when I say it's okay to put up the wall to say, I'm not going to take this on. 

And this also goes for, if you are interacting or someone is going through something really, really heavy, someone that you care about is going through something really heavy, they're having a really bad day. They just need to vent and it's okay also, even in that moment to say, you know, I'm here for you, I see that you're struggling. I love you so much and I, you know that I'm a shoulder if you need one. But you don't have to take on all of that. 

You don't have to take what they're going through and feel that same heaviness to kind of prove or to try to gain some sort of satisfaction of solving the problem. 

Because I feel like people care a lot more about if you are there to see them, to allow them to be vulnerable, then they care about you actually solving the problem. Right. 

And we see this in relationships as well. 

A lot of the time when there's struggles in relationships or conflict in romantic relationships, a lot of the time for women and for men as well, it comes from this place of not feeling like they're there for you and not feeling like they're present in what you're going through. It has nothing to do with them trying to solve the problem and, you know, fix things. A lot of the time, that's not what we need. More often than not, people aren gunna care and be appreciative of you a lot more. If you are just there and, and present and not allowing as an empath, you know, to take on everything that they're going through and then going home feeling just as heavy. 

I really want you to practice, and I have to still practice this too, is separating, you know, having empathy and being an empath from feeling like it's an obligation to solve problems. 

And I think as soon as we understand that there's that difference between the two and that we don't have to soak up how other people are feeling and soak up those negative emotions, that we don't have to solve the problem - We can be a caring person and be present and still tell ourselves that we don't have it in us to, you know, take on all of those heavy things. That's okay too. 

So I'm just going to go over three or four different ways that we can set healthy, loving boundaries. And hopefully this kind of gives you enough information to be able to practice this in the real world and then to eventually understand and find ways to respect yourself in terms of being an empath and taking on what you can and saying no when you can't. 

So the first thing that we can do is identify our own needs. So we see that empathic people can especially benefit from boundaries that put limits around the amount of time or energy that they give to others. Because without these limits, then our needs are going to be met last or not at all. 

So really take the time to think about your needs. 

You can ask yourself things like how much space or solitude do I need? What genuinely refreshes or recharges me, what drains me, what people tend to drain me more than others? When do I feel my best? My worst? Kind of setting these boundaries and creating these responses can be a way to regularly check in with yourself to see where you are on the spectrum in terms of being able to give or not give.

Another thing you can do is pause before saying yes. So this is especially important because I find as an empath, we definitely feel this automatic response to say yes when people ask us favours or ask us to be there for them or need us in some way, and then later on we can kind of regret that and then feel worse because we have to put ourselves out there because we had this obligation that we set right. 

So when someone asked us to do something instead of just blurting out, yes, of course, no problem without even thinking, you can avoid a really awkward situation later when you sit with yourself, you pause. You find if you do have the space and if you don't, it's okay to say things like, you know, "I'm not sure right now I'm going to need some time to think about it. I'll check my schedule and let you know. I'm going through a lot right now, but once I have the energy back, I have no problem reconnecting with you." Those types of things can be a great way to let people know that you're still there and not giving that automatic yes response when people are asking things of you, right? Because then we find when you are constantly giving those automatic yes responses, it can be really easy to then be taken advantage of as well. So we need to make sure that we're giving ourselves that same level of respect. 

The third thing we can do is shift our perspective on things. So when we want or need to say no, we need to then think about how we would want someone to decline the request for us. 

To have the expectation that everyone's going to say yes to us all the time is not realistic and we don't want other people thinking that as well. So one way that we can do that is to be able to really understand how we would want to be declined a request. And ways that we can do that in a loving way is saying things like, "I know you're hurting and I really want to be there for you, but the truth is that I'm really struggling right now too." "I'm, you know, I'm looking forward to supporting you once I'm back on my feet and back on my energy levels and I'm more level headed emotionally."

Saying things like that to those who are asking requests of you and, you know, kind of lovingly declining. We don't always have to be rude, and saying no doesn't have to be a negative thing. You can still let that person know that you're going to be there for them once you're back where you need to be. 

And lastly, see reactions from others as valuable signs. So when I say this, I mean pay attention to how others react when you decline offers or when you set boundaries. I find that we spend too much time being hurt by the way that they reacted instead of seeing it as a sign of, okay, you know what? This person doesn't really respect me, right? Because if they did respect me they would say, you know, I totally understand. I totally get that you need your solitude, your you time, that you don't have time for this. That's okay, you know, get back to me when you have the time. 

Those types of people are gunna be the ones that you need to pay more attention to and those that you see that they take your boundaries more seriously and in a more loving way than those who push back or push you away or give back negative comments, those sort of things. So it can be really helpful in your relationships when you utilize those boundary moments to kind of paint a picture of who you need to give your energy to and who you might not want to be giving your energy to. 

So I hope that those four little points to how to set boundaries can help you understand that saying no is okay and it doesn't have to be a negative thing. And really giving yourself that space, that solitude, pausing before you're saying yes, really reading yourself just as much as you have the capacity to read others, read yourself as well. Put yourself first in that moment just to make sure that you are where you need to be, to be able to give and to be able to be there and to be able to help. Because we cannot be there for others at full capacity when we are neglecting ourselves and we're hurting our own well being because we're not learning how to set healthy, loving boundaries with those around us. 

So all in all, thank you for listening. I appreciate you tuning in. I hope that whether you are an empath or you have an empath as a partner, or you notice you have that friend who's always saying yes and always being there for you, pay attention to that. 

And for those who are an empath, I want you to hopefully be able to use these tools to practise understanding and recognising your needs as well, more than the needs of others, and understanding what you have space for so that you can be that loving, caring partner, that loving, caring friend, that loving, caring mother, father, whatever it is, but also not draining yourself to the point where you're not there for you. 

And if you are a friend of an empath or a partner of an empath, I encourage you to really look at your understanding and your communication with them, to really understand that if they don't have the capacity, it doesn't mean they don't love you. It doesn't mean they don't care. 

It just means that they're also going through things. 

And you know, as long as those who are empaths and those who know empaths can work together and understand what that looks like and understand what loving boundaries looks like, I think that we can come to a place where the empath is not feeling overwhelmed and drained and obligated and more so understood and heard and validated just as much as that empath wants to make you feel those things as well. 

So again, thank you so much for listening. I hope that you gained some insight on this episode and I look forward to tuning in with you guys next week. See you later.