Do you ever find yourself feeling angry and you don't know why?
I watched a news show last night. One of the guests on the show was extremely angry. He spoke emphatically, thrusting his head to emphasize his points. He had a fierce look in his eyes, and he spit his words like poison darts. He was clearly very politically passionate, and the recent events that he discussed had impacted him dramatically, perhaps even traumatically.
As an HSP (highly sensitive person), my senses went into overload while watching him. My eyes winced at his every micro-expression. My ears startled with his use of sharp tone and pointed language. I could even smell and taste the change in hormones and pheromones of the other people in the room with me.
As an Empath, I felt his anger spew out of the television and all over the room. I even called it out loud. More than once. I said, "wow, I wouldn't want to be his wife when he's mad at her." A few minutes later I said, "I certainly wouldn't want him pissed off at me." And one more time, a few minutes after that, I said, "his opponents picked the wrong person to aggravate." I think my comments were more than just observations of his energy. In hindsight, I think they were verbal shields I used to prevent his anger from penetrating my energy and taking over my hormones.
If I hadn't called it out loud, I think his energy would've easily penetrated my system and triggered the anger inside me. My verbal statements were saying "that energy coming out of you is yours, not mine. And I don't want it...you can share it, but I don't have to hold it."
As an Empath, this is often not the case. Often, the feelings I witness out of others trigger deep feelings of my own.
It happens to me often. I witness some kind of anger or rage, and not too long later, I am feeling anger and rage inside myself...but not about the same things I witnessed. Rather, my anger and rage becomes about something completely different. Usually it is about some kind of irritation I have put up with, or aggravation I have ignored, or anger that I boxed up because it wasn't appropriate to express at the time. Then, all those corked up bottles pop like shaken-up champagne bottles and varying levels of rage going spewing everywhere.
This man on the television, he intended to anger people with his anger. His purpose in his presentation was to activate action. He specifically said that for too long he had sat on his hands trying to stay out of the situation, until something happened that dramatically (and traumatically) impacted his life on a deeply personal level. He said that too many other people were still sitting on their hands doing nothing about something that needs to change. His hope was to incite the anger in them, to get them to DO something. To change something.
You see, emotions are contagious. We do absorb them into our systems, and they trigger similar energies inside us. But just like a contagious virus, while the general symptoms will be similar, how each human responds to the energies will be different, and how each person expresses those emotions from themselves will also be different.
As Empaths, we have a choice. We can let ourselves be triggered, without even realizing it or knowing why, and react unconsciously, and likely negatively. Or, we can be careful and selective in what we absorb, mindful about how we are triggered, and clear in how we put it back out into the world.
I've said this before, and I'll say it many times over again. As Empaths we can easily run around the world mindlessly absorbing others emotions and being triggered by them. When we do that, we often spill more of the same energies out into the world. OR, we can be mindful of the emotions around us, and use our super powers of sensitivity to clearly identify the energies and work to TRANSFORM them into GOOD in the world.
In this case, I recognize this man's anger and rage. I was mindful in that his intended purpose was for the overall good of the community, but his level of rage was over the top. I was able to identify his energies before they triggered my own and made me react in mindless rage so that I could respond in mindful kindness.
Read the Membership Blog - How to Manage Contagious Anger & Rage to learn how to be more mindful of the anger and rage emotions you absorb, how you respond to them, and how to use them for bettering the world around you.
If you find yourself feeling angry and you don't know why, you are likely an Empath who is absorbing feels from others that are then triggering your own feels. Book a Mentoring Appointment with me to learn how to be mindful of what moods are yours and what moods are triggered by others and how to manage them effectively through mindfulness.