780. What Every Empath Needs To Know About Finding Love (So You Don't Lose You)

0:13Hello and welcome to Almost 30 podcast. I am Krista and I'm your host. I do Almost 30 with my best friend, but we like to do some solo episodes where we dig into topics that we like to talk about that our audience asks us about or is in conversation with us about, and really just share vulnerably and authentically what we're going through with hopes to support you in your process. So Almost 30 was born when we were almost 30 many moons ago. It has now turned into a book, a movement, a community. We have over 800 episodes. And if you're new here, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I can't wait to be with you.

0:51I can't wait to sit with you. I can't wait to share some things that are deep and near and dear to my heart and hopefully help you, especially if you're an empath in the dating scene. So let's get into the solo episode with me on how to survive and thrive as an empath in dating.

1:14So let me start with a little bit of a story. I am someone that never really liked the term empath. I found it to be annoying. I found to be, I didn't really understand it. And as soon as I realized that all the patterns in my life had been because I was a deep feeler and I was someone that was very sensitive, I realized that the term empath was something that I was. So as annoyed as I was with the term, it's really what I was. And an empath is someone that feels things to a level that may be considered abnormal or out of the normal range. So you may feel a situation more deeply. You may feel things really deeply and more resonantly in your body.

1:55You may hold on to things. You're attuning to other people's needs, thoughts, and emotions. You're using your psychic gifts and abilities to make other people comfortable. You're someone that has the five senses of sight, taste, touch, smell, sound to a level that is sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes really beautiful. So an example would be someone that is an empath would be so deeply impacted by a song or music, that they feel it to a really intense level, almost cellularly, where someone else just might be like, yeah, this is a cool song. An empath is like, this is a song that's hitting me in a way that I don't even know how to describe.

2:33Oftentimes, more often than not, women are empaths. Women are usually the deep feelers, the very sensitive ones, but that doesn't mean that men or even kids can't be sensitives and empaths either. It's just one of those things that because of the texture of women that we came in to be communal, connective, sensitive, soft, all of these things, most of the time, women are empaths. And I've talked a bit about my empath journey on the podcast, and I've done episodes on being an empath throughout my time. And it's been something that the more I've become conscious of the ways in which I negotiate my authenticity for attachment, the better my life has become.

3:14So oftentimes when you're someone that is either codependent or you're an empath, sometimes they kind of interchange. You are someone that will give up who you are for the comfort and safety of someone else. So as an example, I was someone in life that I'd be talking to someone and I'd be, of course, asking them a hundred questions, so curious about their life, facilitating this whole conversation with them. And then they'd eventually maybe ask me how I was and I wouldn't even know what they were talking about. I'd be like, who am I? I would look at my body and be like, oh my God, I have a body here.

3:48And I would almost be caught off guard because I didn't even know what you were talking about as far as what it meant to be me. I left my body so much for other people and their experience. I self-erased so much that I didn't even know who I was when they asked me. In a lot of ways, this was something that was really beautiful. It really supported me in life to be someone that was holding space for others, that was a safe space, that was emotionally attuning to people, that was reading people's minds, that was doing all of these things. There's a really beautiful element to empaths. But on the other side, when you're doing that all unconsciously for safety, you really aren't living out your own experience.

4:24You aren't having your own life. And so often for women, we can negotiate having our own lives and our own experiences, our own preferences, our own opinions for the safety and the preferences of other people. So for so many women, you are choosing to have the attachment over your authenticity, over your safety, over your peace. And I see this so much in dating. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what it's like to be an empath in dating. There was a situation this past weekend that kind of just got the idea for me that I'll tell you guys about. I was somewhere out and I was with someone that I'm dating.

5:01And I had this experience where we were kind of hanging out talking, like being very touchy and cuddly. I'm so cuddly. Catch me being cuddle bug number one. I'm so cuddly and lovey. And then he left and I went my way for the night. He went his way. I went to do something. He went to do something else. And I felt myself leaving and I felt myself so dysregulated in my body because my body is so sensitive. So when I get in the field with someone that I'm into and I get into the chemistry with someone that I'm into, I feel immediately dysregulated when I leave their presence because I'm just like going into their energy unconsciously.

5:43So in this case, we were touchy and lovey. My energy is merging with his energy unconsciously, and I'm just getting caught up and swept up in the chemistry. And then when I leave him, it almost feels dysregulating for me where I have to kind of refine my footing and refine my grounding. This can happen so much for people when you get into the feeling and experience of having chemistry with someone because of that energy between you. And you guys know that I think chemistry is oftentimes a karmic relationship. It's like this energy that's trying to bring you together for your greatest good. Sometimes that doesn't always look beautiful.

6:17It doesn't always look comfortable, but it's an energy that's trying to bring you together for your growth. And so when we get in that chemistry feeling, especially as an empath, it can be so dysregulating. I will tell you what, It took me 20 minutes to regulate back in my body, to ground my nervous system, to feel my feet on the ground, to feel myself being held by the earth, to put my hand on my heart, to start deep breathing. And I'm sounding like I was having a full meltdown. This was all just in my mind's eye. This was all something I'm doing on my own. It's nothing crazy. But I just really, really was reminded how powerful it is to be in the experience of chemistry, to be in the experience of dating, and how unique the experience of being an empath in dating is.

7:02Where someone else, maybe like him in this case, he left and he's like, oh yeah, that was great. I'm going to dinner. This is all good. We're having fun. I am like, oh my God, I cellularly feel his cells leaving my body. and I'm having this almost emotional experience of being with someone that I feel really safe and comfortable with and then being without them. So in my case, my attachment was sort of leaving and I'm feeling a little bit dysregulated. People that are really deeply impacted by the five senses by touch. In this case, I'm very impacted by touch. I'm kind of like, okay, whoa, I'm feeling really deeply this touch.

7:35People are really impacted by light. People are really impacted by smell, sight, sound. So you could even be impacted so deeply by someone that you're dating smell and not even really be clocking how impacted this experience of being caught up and swept up by their smell is. And in this experience of having to be in my car and regulate a little bit with a friend almost where I was like, whoa, I was like caught up in the chemistry. I was caught up in this moment. And now I'm having to reground and come back into my body. I was just like, wow, I forgot what being a sensitive empath is in dating and being someone that feels so much.

8:13And especially as I've become more and more feminine and I've stepped more into the feminine than ever before, which I've talked about on the podcast. I did an episode recently about four feminine hacks to get you into your feminine frequency that you can listen to. So the more I've stepped into my feminine, the more I've been impacted by this, the more my heart is open, kind of the more I've been impacted by this. So it's so important that we're being mindful of how we're getting swept up and of who we're allowing to sweep us up when we're empaths. And there's a lot of science actually about being an empath and dating that I want to bring through to you because I think it's important for us not to only talk about what an empath is from the feeling level.

8:53All of us feelers and all my girlies know it's like, I'm all feelings, no facts, baby. I could just rip on my thoughts, opinions, perspectives all day. Don't really always care about the facts, but I think it's been really helpful for me to understand what it means to be an empath from a scientific level because then I can really sort of see the things happening as they're happening, and then I can explain to myself why. So a few of those things. So an empath isn't someone that's just emotionally sensitive. It's not someone that's just crying all the time. It's not someone that's just doing watercolors all day or is complaining.

9:29They often have things that are happening in their body scientifically that can lead them to have a more deep or intense experience. So you have highly active mirror neurons, you have a more receptive nervous system, and you have a stronger limbic resonance, which means that your emotional system will sync with other people. So this means that in relationships, especially new or intimate ones that you're having, you may feel people's stress. You may feel their sadness. You may feel their excitement as if it's their own. So this means that when someone comes in and they're dating you, they could really like you and be interested in you.

10:09And you could be like, I really like them. I'm interested in them. But you actually aren't. You're just mirroring their feelings and emotions or you're feeling their excitement as if it's their own. So often in my dating, I've had this experience where men will feel a certain way about me and I will feel that way back and I have to leave the date or the experience to feel in my body if that's true. I will have to be out of their energy field to be like, am I attracted to them? Do I find them like whatever? And I actually have to check if I'm running their energy or my own. So you may also have trouble separating your emotions from theirs.

10:51So again, if they're excited about you, if they're in love, you might be like, I'm excited, I'm in love, but you actually haven't checked in with yourself. You're just feeling what they're feeling. This could also mean that if they're feeling turned off or disengaged or whatever, you could also feel the same thing. And so checking in with yourself as an empath is going to be even more important. This could also mean that you get overwhelmed quickly, even by good chemistry. This is where I get caught up in the sauce, catch me in some chemistry, and I am swept all the way up. You couldn't inject chemistry in my veins fast enough.

11:31I love being in some chemistry, the magic, the wonder, the excitement, the vitality, the life, all these things. But that means for me, I have to be even more mindful because what's happening is a body-based experience where the sensitivity of my body is being caught up in chemistry. And then my mind will try and make sense of the chemistry and be like, actually, it's amazing. Actually, he's perfect. Actually, I love that he's unemployed. Oh my God, that's actually crazy that he talks that way about women. Oh, that's okay. And that's when you're sort of negotiating the red flags because you're caught up in that.

12:03So empaths can have an even more susceptibility to red flags because you could be so sensitive to the good feelings of the chemistry and you could be mirroring their experience rather than being in touch and in tune with your own.

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14:36So sign up and get 10 % off at betterhelp.com slash almost 30. You can also confuse connection with intensity. This is another place I can get caught up. So a real, true, longstanding connection might feel like the slow burn. It might feel like something that doesn't shock your system. For empaths, it's even more important that you go slow. It's even more important that you go slow because you do not want to overwhelm and overexcite your system. And if someone's coming in and they're giving a shockwave to your system, that is not always a good thing. I have not yet had an experience where I have that intense chemistry that has been good.

15:25And everything is good in dating. Everything is good. I learn a lot, but you know what I mean? Like something that's been like, this is my king. So I've even had to learn that. And you guys know in my process, I'm talking about, I love chemistry. I'm like, I don't want to give up chemistry, but I have to be truthful that I can get caught up in chemistry and then I can start to negotiate the red flags because the feeling of chemistry feels good for me. And as an empath, it feels even better because I'm feeling it cellularly, physically, emotionally, emotionally, spiritually. I'm feeling so much more than someone else might be.

15:56And I'm so sensitive. My body is so attuned and sensitive to the feeling of connection. There was someone that I met recently that we had a really intense connection. It was really intense, so much chemistry, just caught up in the whirlwind and the vortex of chemistry. And what I'll say is that firstly, as an empath and someone that's sensitive, you need to be mindful of people that can run chemistry very quickly and very intensely. So some men will use their ability to run chemistry quickly and intensely to hook women. They're so used to being in that first initial hit of intensity and chemistry that they can start to run that energy in their body.

16:39And then you'll just start to be running that energy in your body too, because you're an open channel, you're an open vessel, and you just start to run chemistry energy with them. And you get caught up in that feeling. Your brain is starting to make sense of that feeling and think about, oh, this is this, this is good, this is all these things. But it's really just someone running chemistry energy with you and you just picking up on it and running it yourself and believing that that's the experience that you're having. So in this, just to note, in this experience of me teaching about this with you, some of this is like 201 level, 301 level nuance of energetics.

17:13So if you're not understanding it, and I'm not saying that patronizingly, but if you're not understanding it, that's okay. Just take what resonates and leave the rest. But there are levels to the depth of understanding of what I'm talking about. To be someone that's checking in and saying, whose energy am I running? Is this my truth or is this theirs? You have to first understand what your own truth is and you have to understand what it feels like in your organic attunement, your divine soul blueprint, what that naturally feels like. And then you'll have to be able to discern if that's your energy or theirs.

17:44So a lot of the process of being an empath and dating and being in your truth and having the most successful dating experience is to find out your own truth and be in it. So the science behind these experiences, so the mirror neurons, which is neuroscience, basically your brain has specialized cells that mimic others' emotions and actions. So this is a lot of how we've evolved over time. We have these mirror neurons that mimic others' emotions and actions. So get an example of this. If someone is sitting across from you for dinner and then they cross their arms, it's very likely that you will cross your arms as well.

18:25If someone leans in and puts their head on their palm, it's very likely that they do this as well. This is actually a sign of when someone is more able to be manipulated. Some people in NLP trainings or different types of trainings can see if someone's more able to be manipulated or hypnotized because they can see if they're attuning to their emotions and their actions because their mirror neurons are more active. So empaths have been shown to have a greater mirror neuron system activity, which is why they absorb other people's emotions in the room. You don't just understand the feelings of other people, you actually feel them.

19:05So someone else, if you're like, man, I'm really feeling heartbreak right now, I really feel grief about something. My experience, previous experience before I was conscious would be to feel that grief and to be, I could get emotional right now thinking about it. My eyes are watering. Like I could feel the pain and grief of someone else. And so much of my life was just being in other people's experience and emotions. But you are going to be someone, if you are in a relationship or in a dating experience, if you are with someone that's sharing something very vulnerably, sometimes our guard can be down and those mirror neurons can be very, very activated because we're looking to get that connection of that relationship.

19:48And then you could be physically feeling feelings that might not be yours. So an example of this would be you're on a date with someone you're excited about and you're attuning to them, which is healthy. Attunement is healthy, but you're attuning to them so much so that when they tell you about how they didn't get the promotion at work, you and your body feel literally ill. You feel unwell. You feel so sad. You want to fix it. You want to help them. You want to do something about it. So you've basically, because of your mirror neurons, have absorbed their experience and made it your own. When the more healthy way to be is to check in, okay, is this something I want to take on?

20:28No, it's not mine. I can hold space for them and I can be kind and loving to them, but I can be protective of my own energy. It actually isn't proving my worth to absorb other people's energy. So for so many of us, we lived our lives proving our worthiness by absorbing other people's emotions, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. That was my whole life. Proving my worthiness by completely self-erasing and by proving how valuable I was by absorbing everyone else's experience. And I had the belief that I could transmute their energy, I could make them feel better, that I had to feel what they were feeling.

21:05So remembering that you don't just understand how someone feels, you physically feel it. so if some man is coming to you and he's running really sexual energy with you you're not just going to understand that you're going to feel that feeling in your body of like oh my god am i really attracted to this person what is going on here i am fully like obsessed again that might not be your energy you could be mirror neuroning and just reading and sort of feeling into the feeling that he's having and taking it on as your own. So as it relates to the nervous system sensitivity, empaths have a highly sensitive autonomic nervous system, especially the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the rest, digest, and connection.

21:52So this basically means you might become overstimulated in chaotic environments or highly emotional environments. your body will take longer to return to baseline after emotional interactions. So this could mean that in high emotion environments, you know, you could be on a date and maybe it's the first time you're, you guys are talking about something important where you're defining the relationship and you are going to really maybe lose the plot. You're like, oh my God, I'm so nervous. I'm so stressed. Are we going to do this? Are we not? I'm afraid of commitment. I don't know if he's the one.

22:28I don't know if he's going to want to do this. And that overstimulation can really cause you to lose the plot more than someone else. So you might just really kind of like lose yourself, lose the truth of how you feel, not be able to stay grounded. And oftentimes what can happen in that situation, say you're defining their relationship, you will completely disassociate or leave your body and just kind of caretake or go with whatever they want. So maybe he's like, you know, I've been thinking about this and I'm not ready. And you could be like, yeah, you know what? I'm not ready either. It's all good.

23:01You know, I don't, I feel fine. And you're just agreeing with them because you're so fearful of the dysregulation in your system of the truth. So the more powerful thing is, you know, oh, I don't, he's saying, I don't know. I'm not, I don't know if I'm ready. Taking a pause, checking in with your body, taking a breath. Yeah, I feel ready. I feel ready for a relationship and I honor where you're at in your process, but what I want right now is commitment. Giving it another pause. You staying in your own experience and your own nervous system is really the key thing. So when you know that you have a high nervous system sensitivity, it's going to be harder for you to stay regulated when you're dating, when you want that attachment.

23:55And it will take longer for your body to return to baseline after emotional interactions. So the example, again, when I'm out with that guy, for him, he's not an empath. And so for him, he can leave and be like, oh, cool. That was great. And I'm leaving and I'm like, I need 15 minutes to regulate after intense chemistry is running through my body. I need to put my feet in the ground. I need to relax and rest. And again, this doesn't need to be something that's controlling my life or taking over my life, but it's the felt sense experience that I'm noticing and witnessing and that I'm regulating in that moment.

24:31The nervous system sensitivity also is so important for you all to think about as it relates to sex and intimacy. So if you are someone that is an empath and that is deeply sensitive, when you are intimate with someone, it's making me emotional to think about this because it's so important. When you are intimate with someone, it is so much deeper than maybe someone else is experiencing. sake. I am available for whatever feels good for you guys as far as your timeline of having sex or being intimate with someone. But what I want to say is that you should feel ready for the experience of what it's like as a sensitive to have sex with someone and the repercussions of what that means.

25:18That means you're going to be attached much more easily. That means you're going to feel it so much more in your nervous system. That means you may be overstimulated if if you don't get taken care of after, if there's not a text the next day, if there's not connection after, if you don't spend the night, the feeling in your body is so much more intense and touch is so much more sensitive to you. Connection is more sensitive to you. Smell, sight is all so much more sensitive to you because of the mirror neurons and because of your nervous system sensitivity and because of the limbic resonance that the experience will be more intense for you.