Do you have strong intuition? Do you experience deep emotions? Do you often feel pulled to deep emotional reactions to other people's experiences? 160 million people have this unique characteristic? You may be an empath. A lot of empaths will have this set of extra sensory abilities. Some people are like, I see energy, I read energy, I feel energy. It's like, what? How am I feeling something that someone else is? Is your life being controlled by a dark empath? A dark empath is someone who uses cognitive empathy for personal gain. They can be vindictive, manipulative.

They often use love bombing, gaslighting, ghosting.

That person that you're describing is a very dangerous person. You think that there's a high level of understanding there, but really what's happening is... Shhh! Hi, I'm Iambialic.

I'm Jonathan Cohen.

Welcome to our breakdown.

Today, we're going to be talking about something that affects hundreds of millions of people. Hi, I'm YMB, Elic. I'm Jonathan Cohen. Welcome to our breakdown.

Today we're going to be talking about something that affects hundreds of millions of people.

160 million people have this very specific, unique characteristic.

And if you have it and are interacting with people who don't have it, there can be

a real significant divide. Are you the person that everyone confides in? Do you regularly feel burnt out? Do you regularly experience emotions and you don't know why? Do you often feel pulled to deep emotional reactions to other people's experiences. If so, you might be exactly the person that we're talking about. You may be an empath. And you may have heard, oh, you're empathic. You're too sensitive. You're so sensitive. But what are the superpowers of being an empath? What are the different types of empaths? What happens with the dark side of being an empath and if you're not an empathic person, is this something you can build? We've got all of the answers to that and a lot more today. One of the most fascinating parts for me was the dark side of empathy. We cover that later in the episode, but it is so terrifying because usually you think, well, empathy is great. It helps people feel seen and felt and there's a connection that is, that grows through that bond. And we are going to cover scientific basis for the benefits of being and pathic, but it can be used against you in a way that can be manipulative. You have to know where the connection is coming from and our tactics being used to manipulate you as well. If you are highly empathic, this touches on some of the extra sensory highly sensitive people episode that we did a few weeks ago. And there's some overlap here where if you are an empath, one of the ways that you can protect yourself, keep yourself emotionally, your emotional reserves charged in order to make sure that you're showing up in the world the way you want to. We're going to be breaking down the science of empathy. Is there really something different going on in the brains of people who are highly empathic? And we're gonna talk about low empaths. What does it mean if you're a person who doesn't seem to be able to feel what other people are feeling? Have you been accused of being isolated emotionally? Shut off emotionally. We're gonna talk about what those interactions mean and specifically how the brain responds to different kinds of calculations that we have to do socially. What's interesting about the low empathy quotient, some people will say, is empathy helpful? Does it get in the way of getting ahead in this capitalist cutthroat world? Or is it actually really a superpower to help you build teams, build alliances, and get people all on the same page moving forward? We're gonna explore. All right, let's get into some generic signs that you might be an empath. And also I wanted to distinguish between empathy, which is the feeling of being an empathetic person, and someone who is an empath. So we're talking about someone being an empath. Do you feel drained when exposed to intense emotions? Do you avoid emotionally impactful media? Are you the person that everyone naturally confides in? Do you feel compelled to practice compassion in everyday life? Do you have strong intuition? Is your intuition often correct? Do you dislike crowds? Do you experience deep emotions, like even crying in response to somebody else's experience? Experiencing emotions without knowing why and often feeling burned out because of these things. So these are signs that you might be an empath. Now, you might be thinking that sounds an awful lot like being a highly sensitive person. So I'm going to make this distinction very clear, as clear as I can. I would say, and this is a non-clinical diagnostic measure, all highly sensitive people are empaths, not all empaths are highly sensitive people. So being empathic and being labeled an empath is often something that happens with highly sensitive people. Highly sensitive people tend to have more emotional and physiological reactivity to stimuli, whereas people who are empaths may have some, but it's not, let's say, disturbing or upsetting or need to have them kind of

removed from situations in the same way as people who are highly sensitive. So highly sensitive people tend to have, you know, sound, smell, taste, auditory, overstimulation. That's not necessarily true of empaths, but there's definitely some crossover here. What was fascinating about a lot of the feedback and we got so many comments in the YouTube channel in the comments section from people who watched and listened to our episode on highly sensitive people. People were giving us their scores and we're gonna encourage you to do that for this episode too. There is a quiz coming, hold your hats, wait for it. But people were posting in the comments what their scores were for the highly sensitive people quiz. And what was fascinating is the number of them that said, Oh, I'm also intuitive. Oh, I have extra sensory abilities. And those extra sensory abilities come in all different shapes and sizes. Some Some people are like, I have dreams, some people are like, oh, I see energy, I read energy, I feel energy. So what I think the significant differences here is highly sensitive people may have an increase in the likelihood that they have extra sensory abilities. This level of sensitivity, when we call it sensitivity, what we're saying is that there's something else that they're processing, feeling, being aware of. Empathy is an extra feeling. And so when you say they have a visceral response, the empath will have a visceral response. That is a level of information that they're processing

that is additional to what someone else might be processing. And so where I'm going here is that

a lot of empaths will have this set of extra sensory abilities. Now how they integrate it,

understand it, utilize that skill or integrate that skill, I think is a huge factor in whether or not it sort of overwhelms them and shuts them down and they feel over like disoriented by it versus can you make sense of it? We're going to be breaking down the science of what actually is going on in the brain that might indicate that people who are empaths might have an opening into other kinds of understanding. But I think we should talk a little bit more about the specifics of empaths. What is this energy that Jonathan's talking about? What are you actually picking up? That can sound a little bit like it's floating in the air. Let's bring it down to the ground. So there are three main types of empaths. And there's lots of different ways to categorize this But for our purposes today we're going to talk about cognitive empathy Emotional empathy and compassionate empathy. So cognitive empathy is the ability to cognitively identify what someone else is feeling so believe it or not That's its own kind of. Like some people look at other people and they're like, I don't know what they're feeling. Other people like me get a whiff of someone's pinky from around the corner and I'm like, I know exactly what that person's feeling. That's cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy is the ability to feel someone else's emotions. So again, for those of you who are listening,

it might be like, of course, I can feel someone else's emotions. Of course, I can experience that. Other people might be like, that person is experiencing something, but I don't feel anything. So that's emotional empathy. And just to touch on that, there are people out there who are like, someone is crying, someone is doing their thing, and they're totally oblivious. oblivious. They're like watching the game where they're doing their dishes, they're cooking,

and like they're not impacted at all by other people's experiences. The third type is a compassionate empath. So we have a cognitive, emotional, and compassionate. Compassionate is wanting to help someone who is in need, meaning feeling a desire or a pull to actually be helpful. So some people may experience what someone else is feeling. They may feel it. They may not feel like they need to help. A full empath, a full empath has developed skills in all three of these categories. So for those of you out there who are like, I feel what other people feel. If you don't also identify it accurately and have a desire to help them, you may not be a full empath. It's super awesome to be empathic in any of these ways. It's amazing to be a cognitive empath. It's amazing to be an emotional empath or a compassionate empath. But are you a full empath? Like certified. Certified with the diploma. Michelin star. You have a Michelin star empath. If you've developed skills in all three categories. So what does that look like? What does it look like to be a full empath? It means that you are interacting with people and animals in many cases. And you can identify accurately what they're feeling. You feel it yourself, and then there is a subsequent helping or assisting of the other person from a place of compassion. That's kind of the full empath experience. Now, you might be wondering, are there other types of empaths? Yes, there are. And I just gave you a hint. We have listed here 12 other types of empaths. There's an animal empath. Jonathan, what's an animal empath? People who are empathic animals. That's right. Amazing. Gold star. The other types of empaths are psychic empaths, pre-cognitive empaths, indigo empaths. If you haven't checked out our indigo child episode, you can learn more about that. There are dream empaths. There are psychometric empaths. What is that? A psychometric empath is someone who senses energy with objects or places. We actually have a crazy story about that from Elizabeth Cron who was one of our most viewed episodes on the Neorath experience topic area of this podcast where she had an experience with an object, the necklace. She felt like inexplicably drawn to purchase from a store that had no idea where it came from, how it got into the jewelry case or or how much to charge her for it. She insisted on purchasing this necklace and it ended up foretelling a lot of very strange things. She tried to get rid of it. It kept ending up on her doorstep. She buried it in the yard. It showed up again. Eventually it showed up under the front seat of her car.

She thought she had gotten rid of it and when she went to sell the car, it was underneath her seat. She has no idea how it got there. So we have a quiz here that we're going to link to. It is 20 questions that Jonathan is going to administer to me. I have not looked at them. And it's a yes or no.

So keep track.

How many yeses do you have?

And we know that you're an HSP.

So we're assuming you're an empath. But we don't know because you may feel things but not want to do anything about them. Mine be Alex Breakdown is supported by by optimizers. You know, I struggled to get good quality sleep and I just assumed it was stress. But as I learned during paramanopause and men menopause, your hormones shift in a way that affect your magnesium levels. And low magnesium, it makes everything harder, not just sleep, focus, mood, your tolerance for stress. That's why I have added magnesium breakthrough by by optimizers to my nightly routine. It's a blend of seven different forms of magnesium designed to support relaxation and overall sleep quality. Try it, see if you wake up more rest and refreshed. You've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Bi optimizers offers a 365 day. No questions asked money back guarantee. Magnesium breakthrough is a huge breakthrough to improve hormonal balance to help with focus, decrease brain fog, improve sleep hygiene overall. Bi optimizers makes it very easy. Jump in, what do they get when they go to bioptimizers.com slash breaker and use the code breaker? You get 15% off your entire order and a free bottle of massimes. Bioptimizers best selling digestive enzyme. That'll be added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code. That's a $20 product free on top of your discount already.

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