[Ginger]

Mariamma wrote:

Giving yourself space is vitally important to your homeostasis. Because you feel what others feel, many will like to dump with you. They feel heard (which is what we all want, to be understood). Love and respect yourself by holding space for you, setting limits when you need to.


I took in a sharp breath of air when I read this.

I'm always told what a good listener I am, and it's true—but I have a hard time not becoming like a sponge for other people's words, and sometimes I feel saturated and lose my own voice.

Likewise—and I think this comes from the same place—on the rare times when a thoughtful, focused person draws me out, I get wound up and can't stop. It's like I'm afraid it will be the last time I'm ever listened to.

A highly regulated childhood put some of the anxiety in place that has resulted in these behaviors, but I don't blame those early years; I blame myself and my reluctance to regulate my interactions in a healthier way, a reluctance based on the fear that my empathy is in large part, what keeps my interactions going.

I think it's my physical and intellectual energy that first attracts people to me, and I'm not talking about lovers, but all people. Then, it's my empathy that makes them want to stay close. It also enables me to write, in my fine arts life and in my commercial writing, in which I interview strangers and construct a story about them. It's the reason I sometimes blurt out truths about people I barely know, things they seem stunned by, observations that come from empathy and make them latch on to me—but I want to do the latching, too. I want to be noticed and heard.

That's why I love the Listening Thread. It isn't that I need so badly for others to listen to me; I need to listen to myself. If I don't listen to myself, why should anyone else?

This might sound odd but even as a poet I don't write about myself, or not often. I'm so drawn to the dynamics of the world, the texture of the world, I can't wrest my focus off that, long enough to tell my own story. Turning that much empathy inward feels overwhelming, but I've been working on that one.

Like most people who have a lot of empathy, I'm keenly aware of others and how they are feeling, and it's not that I can't converse—I love conversation. I'm not a shy or socially awkward person; in fact I consider myself a high-functioning introvert who is often mistaken as being buoyant and outgoing.

If I weren't so empathetic, I wouldn't see people so clearly—which is both good and bad. At first, they love me for seeing them in a deeper way, feeling what they're feeling. But I also see things they'd rather keep invisible, and sometimes that makes a person feel exposed. I'm learning to be more careful, more quiet about what I see, sometimes.

And I'm learning to set limits, and say, It's my turn. Like now, here I am; Me, Me, Me. Feeling what is me.

You seem to understand these things so well, Mariamma, and your biochemical take on emotions and behavior is fascinating to me.