Welcome to Pierfield Radio, a spiritual podcast committed to assisting you on your journey of awakening.

Your host is Josephine Hardman, a second-generation intuitive healer in English Ph.D.

Who left the academic world to pursue her spiritual calling.

To learn more, visit www.purefieldhealing.com.

Now, on to the show.

Happy New Year, dear friends and listeners.

I'm so happy to be back with you on this new episode of Purefield Radio on empathy and sensitivity.

I'm an empath, and you probably are one too. That's why you're here

listening to this episode. So let's just get right onto the show. What is empathy? What does it

mean to be an empath? And are you sure that you are indeed an empath? Let's investigate these

questions first. Empaths are emotional sponges who absorb

both the stress and the joy of the world. This is a definition that I took from

psychologist Dr. Judith Orloff's book, The Empaths Survival Guide, which I highly recommend,

and I will have a link to that book in the show

notes, so you can check it out. So we are emotional sponges that absorb the stress and the joy

of the world. As empaths, we have extremely reactive neurological systems, and we lack the filters

that other people have to block out stimulation. So typically,

as an empath in the world, these are some of the feelings that you might have experienced

growing up as a child and now as a young adult or as an adult. So you feel almost raw and vulnerable in a way that it seems

like other people don't feel that way, but it just feels like the world is too much.

You feel things so deeply. You've always felt things deeply. People in your life have always told you to grow a thicker skin,

to not take things so personally, to not be so sensitive, right? So if you can relate to that,

...