I'm not cranky, I'm an empath

But, no, not like Deanna Troi

Folks looking for help with query letters or first pages or editing or other writing services, I’m open for business. Check out my website, here, or DM me here or just respond to this e-mail.

Almost every summer, my husband and I spend a week with friends at their house in the North Carolina mountains, the perfect place to escape July in southern Indiana. Another couple comes to join us, which means for a whole week, all six of us stay in a relatively small house together. All of these friends are lovely people and, yet, somewhere around the middle of the week, I find I want to gouge my own eyes out. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve made it through the whole week without breaking down in tears at some point, to my husband’s great dismay and bafflement.

“What is wrong with me?” I sometimes asked myself over the course of these trips. “Why is staying in a house with five other people so difficult for me? Why do I get so anxious? So exhausted? So cranky?”

I understood that part of what made this trip difficult was the intense togetherness. The only alone time is in the bathroom and in bed at night. We eat breakfast together and lunch and dinner. We sit on the porch until bedtime and then repeat again each day. And most of it is wonderful. But also, it’s a lot.

These are a group of friends who have known each other for almost forty years now. There are complicated dynamics and as would happen with any group of people spending that much time together, tensions arise. One year, I had to explain to my husband that we needed to go to the grocery because even though one of our friends hadn’t said it out loud, she really wanted someone else to make dinner and she was annoyed at having to figure out what we’d all eat (which she had also not said), so we needed to go to the grocery and figure out some meal to make. He looked at me like I was crazy as I tried to explain all of this, but I knew I was right, that I was reading this situation correctly, even though my husband was oblivious.

A couple years ago, a light bulb finally went off. The problem wasn’t the people or the fact that I was the new person, having married into this friendship group. The problem was that in that sort of intense social situation, I could not shut out everyone else’s feelings. I couldn’t stop paying attention to all those complicated and sometimes stressful dynamics going on under the surface. Not only could I not ignore them, I also felt responsible for fixing them.

“Oh,” I said to my husband as we drove home, having survived another year. “I think I might be an empath.”

Even writing those words makes me cringe a little. I don’t think anyone who knows me would ever think, “Oh, yeah, Robyn’s totally an empath.” I’m too prickly. Entirely too cranky to be an empath. I don’t look like an empath. In my head, an empath wears flowy skirts and jewelry that makes tinkling noises. Empaths smile a lot and are always touching people gently at the exact right moment. Empaths are like Deanna Troi on Star Trek, whiny and in need of protection all the time. I am not Deanna Troi.

Still, when I look at lists of characteristics of empaths, most of them fit. I am a good listener. Seeing an injured animal is physically painful to me. I’m sensitive to loud sounds and icky smells. When someone I love is suffering, I get obsessed with fixing it for them. Part of this is because I don’t want to see people I love suffer, but it’s also because their suffering becomes my suffering. It hurts and I want it to stop. I like being with people, but I also have to have time alone to recover from it. I’ve always felt like I don’t fit in.¹ Conflict scares the crap out of me. I lavish affection on my cats in a way that more than one person in my life has felt was excessive, but it’s because my cats don’t need anything from me except to be fed and loved. They are so much easier than the humans with all their complicated emotions and needs.

On the other hand, most of my friends and family would agree on the fact that I’m a cranky person. I get irritated and sometimes I don’t make much of an effort to disguise it, which doesn’t seem very empath-ish. I’ve always been cranky, but it took some therapy to realize that a lot of the crankiness comes from emotional overload. Monitoring what’s happening psychologically and emotionally all the time is exhausting. I am cranky because I need people to leave me the fuck alone sometimes. But empaths also have a hard time establishing boundaries, so I struggle with telling people to leave me the fuck alone. Hence, the crankiness. I’m a cranky empath. We should have a club. I don’t think I’d find myself the only member.

Being an empath isn’t an official diagnosis or anything. I can’t prove to you definitively that I’m an empath. Also, why would I even feel the need to do that? But like so many labels, having a word to slap onto my experiences is helpful. Understanding the underlying problem allows me to formulate solutions. I have the ability to mostly shut out people’s emotions in some situations. A classroom full of students doesn’t overwhelm me. It’s a finite period of time and we have a specific goal we’re working toward. Their emotions aren’t unimportant to that, but their emotions aren’t as crucial to my life as what my husband or daughter is feeling. In that sense, my students’ emotions are manageable.

This is the picture that came up when I searched for “empath” and none of the photos of Deanna Troi would load, so consider this a cat version of Deanna Troie. Photo by Natalia Jones on Unsplash

For the mountain trip, I understand that I have to build in some alone time, whatever that looks like. A long walk. A trip to the coffee shop by myself. This is where writing comes in handy. It is an easy excuse for needing to spend time alone. It is no doubt a large part of what I love about writing. Reading is the same sort of outlet, in that pulling out a book gives me an excuse to ignore everything that’s happening around me. It’s a sort of escape.

It's also important to realize that other people’s feelings are not my responsibility. I really don’t have to go to the grocery and make dinner because I’ve sensed someone else’s annoyance. It took me so long to understand this, but adults say what they need and what they want. If you can’t speak your needs and wants out loud, you can’t possibly expect me to meet them. Period. There’s a nice boundary for you.

I can’t say that thinking of myself as an empath feels particularly comfortable. The word sounds entirely too touchy-feely for my sense of identity. In some settings, it also implies an ability that’s supernatural and, sure, maybe some people have that ability. But not me. I feel porous to the world in a way that is at times scratchy and annoying. But I can’t read minds.

Maybe it’s damn Deanna Troi that’s ruined the word empath for me. It’s probably not surprising that the person on Star Trek I did very much want to be was Data, the android who aspired to be able to experience human emotions. Even then some part of me sensed how relaxing that would be, to be oblivious to the emotions of people around me. What peace. What quiet. What bliss.

Questions:

1. Do you think you’re an empath?

2. Has anyone ever been disturbed by how much you love your pet?

3. Favorite Star Trek character, any franchise, but we all know TNG is the best.

4. Are you cranky? Are you sort of okay with it?

5. Yeah, okay, sure, are you going to see the eclipse?

What I loved this week:

• This post from

  Paul Crenshaw
  about writing and how unhappy it can make you. Yeah, sorry. But also, in small moments, it also can make you happy.

• Carlos Greaves
  ’s essay at Brevity about how to write humorous hermit crab essays.

• The Year of Living Danishly (the book) by

  Helen Russell
  , which our lovely friends Hilary and Joe sent us and which makes me wish we had clubs in the U.S. and also 2 years at 80% of the salary or our previous job if we QUIT, not if we were fired. Like, if I lived in Denmark, I could quit my job and still be paid for 2 years while I figured out what to do next. That on top of the working hours and the healthcare and, okay, yes, they burn witches in order to send them to Germany, but I can forgive. Anyway, enjoying the book very much.

• I finally watched Anatomy of a Fall and I have a lot to say, much of it which I probably should not share, but I do have to say for most people, including that husband, if you want to write, you’ll write. And if you don’t really want to write, you won’t. Which is okay. Writing is miserable. You shouldn’t want to do it. But don’t blame your fucking wife.

1. A recurring theme in my diaries starting in 5^th grade is the idea that I might be an alien, I felt so out of place.