Provided by Dr. Ramya from Self Life Hacks
There are various personalities around us and one of the most beautiful personalities is “The-helping personality”. These people can feel the pain of others and their distress, take a responsibility for the welfare of others and act to help them and keep them happy.
If these characters match with yours then you are probably the empathetic personality or helping personality. If yes! Are you working to make people be comfortable and thrive to make them feel happy always around you then there are few things you have to know about yourself. It is great to be a person with an empathy and feel the pain of others around you but some times this is not a good idea when coming to taking care of yourself.
The people whom you care, people whom you work with or even the strangers gain belief from your helpful nature and that is good thing !! But some times this nature of yours can attract the people of counter personalities like the toxic or narcissistic personality( the selfish and hard hearted personalities).
No doubt that the world need empathetic people around us !! But some times this empathetic behavior doesn’t motivate the healthy helping because their emotional experience can some times be a lot painful .
The empaths are so motivated to reduce the pain that some times they don’t realize that it would be a bad idea to show excess empathy. Empathy can lead to impulsive rescuing when rescuing is not the good idea. It can lead to unhealthy helping of others in ways that compromise your integrity. This unhealthy helping can lead to poor performance or irresponsibility.
So how can we get way from this unhealthy helping?
If you are an empath that easily experience others distress then – This is high time you should keep boundaries for yourselves.
Keep a note: keeping boundaries doesn’t mean that you are selfish or self centered.
This would be very hard for a empath to keep a boundary especially in initial stages of the self realization. These few things helps you to know about yourself and make you think whether your empathy is a strength or a weakness.
1. Don’t take immediate decisions
For the empaths the decision making can be a intense and their desire to help and ease others would be so strong and impulsive. It will not put one in danger or anything immediately.
This helpfulness can sometimes enable another immaturity, addiction or irresponsibility. One should think whether physically, emotional or even financial putting yourself at risk is rationally done or not.
If you feel empathy towards others that doesn’t mean you should take the responsibility or need to fix the situation of others. if you decided to help , it should be the type of help that it should be healthy for all parties involved.
2. Take the mask of empathy
When you set a boundary to yourself- you might think that how far my boundary is justifiable. You might see the boundary from the other person perceptive. Its feels hard to say NO to the people and again you might go back into the empathy spin.
Reminding about yourself about why you have kept the boundary can help you to stop going back into the spin. This also motivates the assertiveness. This helps to vanish the persistent smooth talkers before they ware you down.
Seeking the help from the family and friends can help you in setting the boundaries that you might be needed or you might not be acknowledging.
3. Learn self love
Empathetic people go so far that they forget to love them self. They don’t treat themselves, the way they treat others. They extend themselves physically, emotionally sometimes financially to a peak.
Try to learn compassion to yourselves and practice self love. This is done by setting helping boundaries to yourselves without a guilt,. Everyone needs love, even you!
Conclusion
Being empathetic is very good personality but sometimes it can become curse to oneself. This can lead to putting yourself in extreme leaves of physical, mental strain and stress to ease others from their distress or pain. This empathetic personality behaviour some times can attract wrong people to you and can lead to disappointment and pain.
Practicing self love and setting boundaries can help to stop your empathy to manipulate you. An unhealthy helping can lead to both physical and mental stress and helping to realize your self can be the best part of the well being.