- What is an Empath?
- Are you an Empath? Take the quiz!
- What kind of Empath are you? Impaired, Balanced or Professional?
- The Empath Survival Program FREE
- Elise’s Ph.D. Thesis on Empaths
- Elise’s Story: Growing up as an Empath
- Keep in touch
COPYRIGHT POLICY: You can quote this page as long as you have a LIVE link to it!
What is an Empath?
Hi, my name is Elise Lebeau and I’m an Empath.
An Empath is someone who can feel other people’s emotions as their own: we literally feel what other people feel.
Notice that this definition does not assume that you are aware of it nor that you know what to do with it. It simply describes that can experience someone else’s emotion, even if they are not in your physical presence.
Empaths find themselves in the tricky situation of being overwhelmed by the quantity of emotional information they receive. I can sense the emotions of everyone around me, even my next door neighbors. It comes to me like a scrambled radio station where I get bits and pieces from all those people. In its raw form, this emotional information is incoherent and even painful as we feel all the negative emotions from everyone around us.
The most problematic aspect of being an Empath is that most of us have no idea how to manage it. We don’t know how to turn it off. We don’t know how to use it effectively to accomplish something productive. Some of us don’t even know that we have it. We just think we’re weird and have random mood swings and tired spells.
Emotional Intelligence is defined as “the ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups” (Salovey and Mayer). Developing your Emotional Intelligence means that you know what to do with the emotional information you receive and it’s not just a burden you must bear anymore.
How does it work?
Although you probably have an intuitive understanding of your Empath skills, it’s also important to have intellectual knowledge as well. It’s easier for the brain to accept something that it can explain.
Physiology of a Thought
Everyone is born an Empath. We all have the physical equipment necessary to pick up on what other people are feeling. But, for most of us, this ability will slowly fade away from lack of use. To see how this works, let’s briefly look into the physiological processes involved.
When you think about something, it triggers electrical activity in your brain. Neurons (special cells that relay information in the body) get activated through a very mild electric current. These neurons then activate other neurons, creating a chain reaction.
Each thought follows a unique “pathway” in the brain, called a neuron pathway. Scientists already know that the neuron pathway varies, depending on the type of intellectual activity you’re doing. For example, when language is involved, Broca’s area (located behind your left temple) will get electrically stimulated.
All this electrical activity generates a magnetic field (which is true for all electrical currents). As Empaths, we are able to read and interpret this magnetic information. Our own brain translates these magnetic patterns into an emotion that we personally experience.
Think of it like having a portable MRI machine (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) in your brain. You can “take pictures” of magnetic waves and translate them into something meaningful. Doctors use MRI scans to differentiate between sick and healthy cells. We use it to differentiate between emotional states.
Reading Magnetic Information
Let’s take an example to make this more concrete: When someone is angry, there’s all kind of electrical and chemical reactions happening in their body (sweating, getting flustered, faster heart beat). All these changes trigger mild electrical currents that create a magnetic field around their physical body.
As an Empath, you are able to scan this magnetic information to “read” their state of mind: this person is angry. Although the pattern changes from one person to the next, Empaths are able to interpret it and translate it. Interpreting the magnetic patterns associated with strong emotions is the most basic form of Empathy. With professional training,
you can start to interpret more complex magnetic patterns (such as memories or conscious thoughts).
A few notes about human magnetic waves
- They can go through solids (such as bones and walls) with very little loss. Which means that you can read people even if they are far away.
- They are very very very weak and are often called “Subtle Energies”. They cannot harm you in anyway.
Processing Emotional Information
Although we are all born Empaths, most of us learn to ignore the information we pick up from other people through their magnetic field. And there’s a very good reason for that…imagine for a moment: every thought, every emotion, from every one on earth is currently generating magnetic information.
As an Empath, you can pick up on all of this! The sheer volume of information is staggering.
Early on, adaptive mechanisms are created so you can deal with this deluge of information. But without some basic education (and I’m pretty sure your mom did NOT have a talk with you when you were little about being an Empath!), most Empath will resort to destructive or energy consuming mechanisms to deal with the situation. That can lead to depression, mood altering addictions (drugs, alcohol) or anything else that can drown other people’s emotions.
Are you an Empath? Take the Quiz!
These are common Empath skills:
- Can you feel what other people are feeling, even if they’re not in your physical presence?
- Do you spontaneously know what people need to hear/do to feel better?
- Do people find it easy to confide in you?
These are common Empath side effects if you cannot control (yet!) your Empath skills:
- Feeling emotionally or physically overwhelmed in crowds
- Feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders
- Having random mood swing (angry, sad, scared, etc) that have nothing to do with your life
- Have a hard time falling asleep before midnight or procrastinate going to bed
- Have physical symptoms that related to hearing (ringing, popping, itching in the ear canal)
- Feel emotionally uncomfortable when having sex (anxious, no sex drive, angry)
Disclaimer: This checklist is not a diagnostic or treatment tool. I am not a doctor nor a mental health professional. Some of the characteristics of Empaths can be diagnosed as ADD, agoraphobia or clinical depression. Contact your health care professional if you have any questions, need diagnostic or treatment for a mental health issue.
What kind of Empath are you?
This is a basic categorization of Empaths:
- Impaired Empaths might have some basic filters but can easily get overwhelmed, especially in a crowded venue or during emotional turmoil. They tend to experience emotional distress (i.e. feeling the weight of the world) and physical symptoms (i.e. exhaustion, headaches, depression)
- Balanced Empaths are able to control the flow of emotional information so that it is comfortable and doesn’t overwhelm them.
- Professional Empaths are able to interpret complex emotional information accurately and use it for specific purposes (such as healing work).
- Everyone else:I believe that everyone is born with the ability to be an empath. However, most people shut this down and use other cues to get emotional information (such as verbal and non-verbal indicators). Over time, they completely lose their Empath abilities.
The Empath Survival Program
Reclaim your emotional sanity!
Are you an Empath?
Do you feel overrun by your Empath skills (also known as being an Impaired Empath)?
Learn 7 life changing techniques that I personally used to reclaim my emotional sanity!
As an Empath, I’ve tried a lot of different tools.
I finally narrowed it down to some basic techniques that get the job done quickly and efficiently.
Are you ready? Let’s get started!
- Technique 1: Turning down the volume
- Technique 2: Moving through crowds
- Technique 3: Creating healthy boundaries with family and friends
- Technique 4: Holding your emotional space in a romantic relationship
- Technique 5: Grounding technique for Empath Children
- Technique 6: Claiming your emotional space at work
- Technique 7: Feeling safe as an Empath
- Bonus!: Grounding Techniques for Empaths
Finally and most importantly: Get Support!
- Join our Empath Community and post your questions
- Keep in touch on Facebook
Lost? Stuck? Confused? Ask Elise!
Everyone is intuitive. But we all run into dark corners where we need a little help finding clarity. As a professional intuitive, I can serve as a conduit for intuitive answers that are having a hard time coming through to you.
I can help if you are an struggling with emotional overload (Impaired Empath), stuck in a difficult situation or confused about your spiritual journey.
Schedule a session
Audio Consultations ($29)
I love audio consultations because we don’t need to worry about time zone, schedules and long distance phone calls!
Just fill out a form describing your question and I will email you an audio session containing my intuitive insights about your situation. You can listen to it online or on your smartphone.
Disclaimer: I am not a medical or mental health care provider. I do not offer diagnostics or cures for physical or mental illnesses. By scheduling an appointment with me, you acknowledge that what you are receiving from me is only my intuitive opinion and that you assume responsibility for your own decisions and actions.
back to top
Elise’s Ph.D. thesis on Empaths
As I developed the tools described in the Empath Survival Program, I also found myself wanting to dive more deeply towards a better understanding of what I started to call the “Empath experience”.
When the time came to select a topic for my Ph.D. thesis in Metaphysics, it was an obvious choice!
It took me 4 years to complete this research. It allowed me to succinctly (well, in 30 pages) describe the different facets of the Empath experience as I had witnessed them in myself, my clients and my friends on the Empath Community.
It brought me great inner peace to finally be able to write about my research on such a misunderstood topic.
It is my wish that others may find comfort in reading it.
“A Review of the Biological, Psychological and Spiritual Basis of the Empath Experience” by Elise Lebeau, Ph.D.
Elise’s Story: Growing up as Empath
I grew up as an Empath, not knowing what that was. No one knew what an Empath was back then, actually. So I was left confused, alone and oftentimes in dire emotional and physical pain. /p>
My parents thought I was an unusually quiet child. But I was more in a state of paralysis, feeling completely overwhelmed by what other people were feeling and thinking. This situation left me with very little energy to interact with people. Every conversation was mentally and emotionally exhausting. It just seemed like even more “noise”.
I also had some extremely weird habits, such as falling into a trance-like state while putting on my socks. My mom would have to prompt me several times with “Elise, finish getting dressed” before I would snap out of it. My brain would just drifting away, trying to find some peace before having to brave the outside world.
I had a constant stream of ear infections which left me practically deaf by the time I was 5 years old. But I was so quiet that it took a while for people to notice. My teachers figured I just wasn’t paying attention when in fact I couldn’t hear them speak. My mom realized what was going on when we were both in a sound proof room and I would not turn to her when she called me, even though she was only a few feet away. I just could not hear her. I had surgery and my hearing reluctantly returned.
Also from a young age, I had vividly realistic nightmares where people were constantly trying to talk to me in my sleep. The setting for these dreams was always the room I was in, making it even spookier. The people in my dreams always spoke so softly that I could never quite hear them properly. I would wake up scared, still trying to hear their voices more clearly.
And, of course, the debilitating migraines. I had them constantly throughout my childhood, teens and early adult life. They would leave me curl up in pain, often times for several days in a row, having to stay in a dark room or wearing sun glasses because of the extreme light sensitivity they induced. Doctors all of kinds of specialties were baffled by them, unable to find a root cause of them.
But as it turns out, this was a great way to shut down my Empath skills. It seems that you don’t hear anything when you’re in excruciating pain. Pain is louder than anything else… So it’s was a quick fix when all else failed.
I never told anyone that I could feel what they felt simply because I had no idea this was unusual. I thought everyone felt like this. But the confusion it generated in me was quite overwhelming. I became socially withdrawn. Not interested in parties or any kind of group activities since it was impossible for me to focus on my own thoughts. It came across as shyness (and still does to this day).
Then came the teenage years where I started to attempt to “do something” with all this emotional information. Being an Empath doesn’t mean you know what to do with what you feel. It just means you feel it. So I kept trying to use what I felt in very ineffective ways. I was mildly suicidal from my late teens to my mid-twenties.
Then I finally found a way to start using my skills: psychology! I started studying in this field in college and was unusually good at it, even though I did not know why. But I felt more empowered, having learned how to inspire and support change through the counseling process. My Empath skills finally had an outlet!
While I was pregnant with my son, I woke up one day with fully awakened intuitive skills. Intuition is primarily a source of information. It can provide guidance even when we don’t have clear facts to rely on. From that day on, information started pouring out of my brain and it hasn’t stopped to this day!
That how I first heard the term “Empath”. It just popped in my head one day. I tried to google it but, at the time, there was only references to famous characters from TV shows (“Star Trek” and “Charmed”). And yet I knew there was something real in that term… Every day, more information would come to me. Specifically, I started to get ideas on ways to manage my Empath skills so they would not be so painful. That’s where the Empath Survival Program came from. It really came “through” me as opposed to “from” me. But either way, I was glad to use these techniques to find much needed relief.
I would frequently received emails from people who had found my web site and were reading up on Empaths. But it struck me how often people would tell me how much they felt alone and had no one to talk to about their experience. And so the Empath Community web site was born! It has now become an amazing circle of Empath friends who wonder, cry and laugh together!
In my later years, specifically after I developed the Empath Survival Program, I finally learned to manage my Empath skills, as opposed to be paralyzed by them….and the migraines are gone now 
I have been where you are…you are not alone!
back to top
Keep in touch!
- Stay connected on Facebook
Empath Survival Program
- The Empath Community web site I have created a free web site dedicated to Empaths.Join our lively community and start posting on your own blog or talk in the forum about your experiences!
Visit Empath Community - Read my blog posts on Empaths
Lost? Stuck? Confused? Ask Elise!
You can now ask me a question online! YES!!! I just created a new format that allows me to be available to more people, keep it affordable and…
New empath self care products in the store!
Empaths can easily pick up the emotional burden of others. A regular self care routine is essential to prevent crumbling under the weight of…
Being true to yourself is enough
For Empaths, being able to accept who you truly are is enough. You don't have to explain it to others. You don't have to convince them. You…
Lost? Stuck? Confused? Ask Elise!
Everyone is intuitive. But we all run into dark corners where we need a little help finding clarity. As a professional intuitive, I can serve as a conduit for intuitive answers that are having a hard time coming through to you.
I can help if you are an struggling with emotional overload (Impaired Empath), stuck in a difficult situation or confused about your spiritual journey.
Schedule a session
Audio Consultations ($29)
I love audio consultations because we don’t need to worry about time zone, schedules and long distance phone calls!
Just fill out a form describing your question and I will email you an audio session containing my intuitive insights about your situation. You can listen to it online or on your smartphone.
Disclaimer: I am not a medical or mental health care provider. I do not offer diagnostics or cures for physical or mental illnesses. By scheduling an appointment with me, you acknowledge that what you are receiving from me is only my intuitive opinion and that you assume responsibility for your own decisions and actions.
in love,
Elise
