As an empath and an INFJ, my relationships with other people have always been out of the ordinary. In my last two articles I talked about how I always attracted energy vampires in my life (Do You Always Attract Energy Vampires? This Is the Reason Why…), and how even my most well-intentioned friends still managed to drain me to the point that I felt like I couldn’t have close friendships with people (Are You an Empath Who Struggles with Relationships that Always Take Too Much? Here’s One Way to Break the Cycle).
These experiences only exacerbated the feeling of loneliness that I already had in the world. From the time I was very young, I knew that I was different, and I knew it was a difference that other people couldn’t understand. What really hurt though, was that I could understand other people so incredibly well. So, I was left feeling like, even though I could fully see, hear, acknowledge and appreciate the depths of another person, no one could do the same for me.
On top of this, I noticed early on that other people did not seem to be interested in the same things I was interested in. I wanted to explore my inner landscape and the psychological terrain of others. I wanted to talk about topics like spirituality, metaphysics, history, philosophy, stories, and dreams. Whenever I brought anything like this up in a conversation, people either gave me blank or puzzled stares, or said something snarky to let me know what a weirdo they thought I was.
