(This is what happy looks and feels like...)
Every feeling and every emotion have kinesthetic cues. There is a multitude of biological, chemical, respiratory and muscular reactions coursing through our nervous systems in response to every experienced feeling. Fear, for instance, can increase the heart rate, create a cold feeling in the pit of the stomach, shorten the breath, heighten the hearing and cloud the vision.
You can actually choose which system of your body you wish to explore. For instance, you could decide to see how each feeling affects your breathing or how your muscular system reacts to various feelings. These are your personal, subjective cues. They have a particular signature that is always specific to you.
If you become intimately familiar with your own cues, you will always be able to tell the difference between your fear and someone else's. ( or any other feeling).
When one feels another person's feelings and emotions, there is also always an added piece, that can feel like an extra weight, confusion, repulsion or contraction, a feeling of being attacked or of wanting to pull away from something that seems to smother you.
If each day you begin to gently catalog how you feel in your body as you experience your own emotions and feelings, you will begin to recognize your own kinesthetic cues and you will know without a doubt when you are feeling or absorbing someone else's feeling.
A simple list can help:
What does fear feel like in my body?
What does joy feel like in my body?
What does anger feel like in my body?
What does resistance feel like in my body?
What does blame feel like in my body?
What does love feel like in my body?
What does hope feel like in my body?
What does shame feel like in my body?
The trick is to not get distracted by your own story in this exploration, but to simply observe as many feelings as possible as you build up your own reference library of kinesthetic awarenesses to support knowing " what is mine and what is their's".
Hi Kate! Thanks again for another interesting angle to being an Empath. Are there differences in how it works when an Empath feels the physical pain or discomfort of another person, rather than the emotion or feeling? Or is it the same thing really? Thanks!
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