“Empath” is a colloquial rather than clinical term, but it is useful. For people who grew up in an abusive household with unsafe parents, being hyper-attuned to their parent’s emotions was an important survival skill, as being able to make yourself scarce at appropriate times can save you a beating. People give off all sorts of cues to their emotional state, including facial microexpressions, vocal tonality, body language, etc., and children raised in these environments have honed their ability to inutit emotional states from scant external cues, usually without realizing that they’re even doing it. Unfortunately, most tend to disregard the “gut” feeling they get when doing it, because their abuse profile also typically includes emotional invalidation, which has taught them that their emotions are “wrong”. So the cruel irony is that most “Empaths” don’t trust their intuition, and tend to associate with abusive people like their parents, which feels comfortably like “home”.
I grew up in an environment like this and developed these skills. I certainly don’t consider myself an “empath,” but didn’t even realize I had these traits until I met my wife who was working on her Masters in clinical counseling.
You may technically be “reading” emotions, but you’re not doing it on a conscious level, and the way it tends to surface in you is through emotional mirroring - i.e., you feel the emotion the other person is feeling.
To illustrate, someone I know has significant social anxiety, and I saw her in a social situation standing alone. Her facial expression and body language immediately kicked in my own discomfort, so I went over and talked with her and her face lit up. I could feel her relief as plain as I could feel her discomfort before. It’s easier with people you know, as you have a lot of baseline data, but even total strangers give off the cues you pick up subconsciously. What is interesting is that I’ve found that some highly manipulative people are fairly adept at masking their external emotional cues, especially facial microexpressions. I would guess that professional poker players are highly adept at not only intuitively reading microexpressions, but also at concealing their own.
“Empath” is a colloquial rather than clinical term, but it is useful. For people who grew up in an abusive household with unsafe parents, being hyper-attuned to their parent’s emotions was an important survival skill, as being able to make yourself scarce at appropriate times can save you a beating. People give off all sorts of cues to their emotional state, including facial microexpressions, vocal tonality, body language, etc., and children raised in these environments have honed their ability to inutit emotional states from scant external cues, usually without realizing that they’re even doing it. Unfortunately, most tend to disregard the “gut” feeling they get when doing it, because their abuse profile also typically includes emotional invalidation, which has taught them that their emotions are “wrong”. So the cruel irony is that most “Empaths” don’t trust their intuition, and tend to associate with abusive people like their parents, which feels comfortably like “home”.
I grew up in an environment like this and developed these skills. I certainly don’t consider myself an “empath,” but didn’t even realize I had these traits until I met my wife who was working on her Masters in clinical counseling.
You just described abilities within the normal range of interpersonal skills: reading emotions. That doesn’t imply feeling them.
OP was ridiculing the projection of emotions people don’t necessarily have but that the subject arrogantly assumes they do.
You may technically be “reading” emotions, but you’re not doing it on a conscious level, and the way it tends to surface in you is through emotional mirroring - i.e., you feel the emotion the other person is feeling.
To illustrate, someone I know has significant social anxiety, and I saw her in a social situation standing alone. Her facial expression and body language immediately kicked in my own discomfort, so I went over and talked with her and her face lit up. I could feel her relief as plain as I could feel her discomfort before. It’s easier with people you know, as you have a lot of baseline data, but even total strangers give off the cues you pick up subconsciously. What is interesting is that I’ve found that some highly manipulative people are fairly adept at masking their external emotional cues, especially facial microexpressions. I would guess that professional poker players are highly adept at not only intuitively reading microexpressions, but also at concealing their own.
That’s still pretty normal. People (think they) feel how others do. It takes effort & practice to dissociate and try not to feel.
You can just work in clinical psych, social work, or be an ER doc to eventually not be able to feel.