Before I even begin, let me clarify one thing — there is a difference between being empathetic and being an empath. Many people can empathize with someone because they perhaps went through the same situation. They’ll say “I know how you feel”. Unfortunately, many of these people think that that makes them an empath.

But imagine empathy on steroids, where you don’t just know how someone feels, you feel how they feel as if you were experiencing it with them with the same intensity, good or bad. That’s what an empath is.

Several years ago, after feeling misunderstood my whole life and wondering why I couldn’t get out of my own head, I heard about the Myers-Briggs personality test. It seemed to have a lot of credibility, so I took it, only to find that I am an INFJ — the rarest personality type in the world making up only 1.1% of the population; a walking paradox and natural empath. It explained so much.

Being both an emotional and intuitive empath, not only do I go through the same emotions as others, but I see situations coming before anyone else does and I read energy as if it were an invisible teleprompter. 

Ask my best friend, she’ll tell you.

So what did it mean for 2020? Well, for starters, I sensed that something big was coming back around September 2019. I didn’t know what, but I felt an energy shift on a big scale that I couldn’t explain. I had never felt something on that kind of a scale before and I was excited about it. Little did I know that it was a pandemic and that the whole world was going to be affected. My excitement was short-lived.

I don’t need to explain what people went through and are still going through, but imagine feeling double the emotions you are feeling all day, every day, because of what the people around you were feeling? As the year went by, that was what I endured more and more.

See, INFJs are natural counselors, and our unique insight and empathic traits mean that people come to us for guidance and advice because we’re able to see both their potential and underlying insecurities without them actually telling them to us. While we are deep feelers, we think logically. This is a great combination because it means we can help others, but it can actually be detrimental to our own health if we’re not careful.

While I was going through my own internal battle with things going on in my life, a number of people, some whom I’ve never met, came to me with their problems. One is battling terminal cancer and has been given less than a year to live. Another goes in and out of depression because she constantly thinks she isn’t living up to her extremely high profile family’s reputation and society’s expectations. And another is borderline suicidal and is suffering from PTSD and depression from unresolved childhood trauma and an emotionally abusive partner. Add the pandemic to all of that.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not at all complaining. Helping these people makes me feel good because I care about all of them and I know I can help pull them out of their own heads. 

The problem with being an empath, however, is that I take on the energy and emotion of those I interact with on top of feeling the World’s general energy. Everything runs in parallel, and sometimes it feels like I’m going down a rabbit hole trying to manage everyone else’s feelings while bottling up my own. It’s funny, I can help people pull themselves out of their own head, but I need someone else to help me pull myself out of my own. Fortunately, I have at least one person who can do that, another who is also an INFJ that I only need to speak half-sentences to cos they just “get it”, and one who can calm me down with just a single sentence.

The pandemic has made me feel as though I am bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders. And the funny thing is, even though I have my bad days, I know that there’s people out there who trust me enough to call me when they think there’s no one else to call.

What I want to say to people who I haven’t interacted with yet that may be going through a hard time right now is this: You are not alone. There are people you can talk to, and if you don’t know anyone, reach out to me. All you need is a good listener. 

Trust me, I know.