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.
So, for a lot of years, I felt like this abnormal creature who just didn’t belong anywhere in the world. I felt especially out of place in “mainstream” settings like my corporate office, and whenever I was forced to be in one of these settings, I tended to retreat into myself in order to appear as normal as possible. I thought this was just the way of the world and things would probably be like this forever.
Then, I became a writing coach, and I started blogging about writing and the INFJ and INFP personality types, and suddenly there was an influx of INFJ and INFP people into my life. I started talking with other people who were also empaths, and highly intuitive, and highly creative, and imaginative, and introverted, and I didn’t feel so alone anymore. In fact, after I made enough of these new intuitive friends, I felt like I could handle the “normal” world much better.
This is why it’s so important for empaths and intuitives to meet other people who share our same gifts. Because most of us feel so alone out there, and this causes a negative effect on our mental health, whether slight or severe. Once we find our people, everything changes. I talk more about this in the video below:
I’m teaching a live class this August called AWAKEN, and it’s the perfect place to meet other empaths and intuitives. I’m offering a private Facebook group as part of the class, and the group will stay open even after the class ends. I’ve had a lot of success creating little communities of empathic, intuitive people with my Facebook groups and I expect this one will be a lot of fun too. If you’d like to join us and make new friends, this is the class for you.
