Empathy for the Devil

I have a extra-sensory talent. Unfortunately it isn’t one that will get me my own TV show or even a guest appearance on the Montel Williams show. I’m empathic. Yeah, yeah, like Deanna Troi on Star Trek: TNG. Only not as sexy and less useful.

Instead of being able to assist Picard and Riker in relationships with foreign entities and thus furthering Starfleet’s prime directive, my kind of empath just feels the emotions surrounding them and if not careful gets overwhelmed in social situations. Shopping malls, especially during busy, high stress times like holidays are the bane of our existence. All that frantic, exhausted energy tinged with a sense of disappointment hits us in the gut and drains us. There is a positive side to this that happens rarely but is pretty cool. In situations where we are surrounded by positive, good energy is almost mind blowing. I’ve been at church services, concerts, public gatherings and on stage where the good feelings took me to another place both inside and outside of myself that was incredible. Not surprising, lots of actors are empathic. That is why a lot of actors are also depressed, alcoholics and can’t hold steady employment or relationships outside of the theater, but that’s a post for another day.

What also happens is that we get our feelings easily hurt and can get resentful. This happens because we assume that everyone else feels the same way we do and can sense our emotions and can tune into what we are feeling and desiring. Guess what fellow empathics, they can’t and it has nothing to do with us. I firmly believe that most people who are accused of being passive-aggressive are really just empathic. They don’t realize that the other people in their life don’t sense what they are putting out and they get angry and resentful. But because an empathic person is so hyper aware of hurting other’s feeling they would never come right out with their desires or demands and instead continue to “put it out there” passively hoping that their non-empathic loved one will care enough to pick up on it and change. But that isn’t how it works in the non-empathic world and it isn’t because our non-empathic friends and family don’t care, they just don’t see and feel the world the way we do.

How can you help yourself live more comfortably in this world if you are empathic? First of all you need to realize that you are empathic and also that most people you meet are not. It wasn’t until very recently that I figured this out, I’m 45 and a slow learner I guess. Back in middle school I had regular appointments with the school counselor because “they” were worried about me. I was super emotional all the time (more than the average middle schooler???) and I think my teacher thought I was being abused at home or was depressed or something. (She was kind of right, this was about when I started showing the first classic signs of depression.) I don’t think this counseling really did me any good but at least I did get some attention and an attempt at help with dealing with my emotions. One thing I can tell other empaths NOT to do is what my counselor tried to do with me. That is to bury and hide what you are feeling. She actually bribed me to try to go one week without crying in public or losing my cool and she’d take me out for pizza and soda for lunch or some such shit. I fell for it (empaths are natural people pleasers, it hurts us to not do what others ask us to do) and for a week I swallowed (sometimes literally) my emotions all day at school and on the school bus and didn’t cry once. What I did do was totally lose my shit as soon as I could get alone in my bedroom.

This was my take away lesson from this experience. I’m still really good at hiding when someone hurts me and then obsessing for hours, days, weeks, YEARS over every little word, look or breath the other person took that I interpreted as a slight. I’m also really good at crying myself to sleep and to sobbing in the shower so no one hears me. What I am really bad at is standing up for myself and worse at confrontation. By the time a situation gets to the point that confrontation is the only answer or when I’m faced with someone who calls me out, I’ve been burying my feelings for so long that they are like those snakes-in-a-can jokes and I just break down and can’t form a comprehensible sentence or make a point. I just cry and try to make amends as quickly as possible so it can just be over.

As an empathic person you need to realize that it isn’t always all about you. The non-empath will read this and think empaths are narcissists, not at all. What we are is hyper-sensitive and take on the feelings of others as our own. When faced with over-powering emotions coming from another person that we can’t control or handle we need to remember that these emotions aren’t being directed at us even though we are taking them on full force. We aren’t the intended target and we need to duck or get out of the way. Leave the situation if possible. If you can, tell the other person that they are putting off some strong ju-ju and you are having a hard time with it. Cultivate relationships with people who understand and who allow you to unload all this emotional psychic baggage.

What if you aren’t empathic but are pretty sure that someone you live with, are in love with or work with is and you want to know how to deal with them better? Here are some suggestions.

• Verbalize your feelings. Yes, we can feel your emotions but if you come home angry at traffic, your boss or because your favorite team didn’t make the playoffs, we don’t know that, all we know is that you are angry and we’ll assume it is at something we did unless you tell us otherwise. We are empathic, not psychic.
• Show appreciation. Like I said before, empaths are natural people pleasers. We will do things for others that we think they will appreciate until it exhausts us. We want everyone to be happy and content because then we are surrounded by feelings of happiness and contentment. Win-win. We will continue to try to do this until someone stops us. The best (and nicest) way to do that is to say thank you. You may not even realize that your empathic loved one is doing all this for you because you never asked for it or expected it. Take notice of these things and say thanks.
• Try to tune into our feelings and needs. Empaths often start to take on the emotions of their surroundings. They also have a hard time separating their emotions from those they’ve taken on externally. It can make us a little cray-cray! We spend a lot of our energy tuning into other people and trying to make them feel better and to please them it leaves very little left for ourselves. Sometimes just a little acknowledgement of the struggle is all that is needed.
• Remember that most empaths take things very personally. Like I said before, if someone we’re with is angry, we’ll assume they are angry with us unless we’re told otherwise (oh, and we can tell when you’re lying!) If people are in the corner at a party whispering and laughing we’ll assume they are laughing at us. Sometimes this borders on the ridiculous. I’ve been known to feel personally responsible when there are too many mosquitoes at a backyard party.

So that dear readers is my psychology lesson for today. Hope that it either helped you understand why you are feeling crazy all the time or why someone you love is making you crazy all the time. Have a good day, please!

“Chill the *&#$! out Mrs. Frank”

I’ve been having to tell myself that a lot this week. It comes from when I portrayed Edith Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank last year at the Albright Theater. I found myself getting so caught up in my character and the lives of these people we were playing that I was stressing myself out. As you can imagine this was a very intense show for all of us. Anne and Margo reminded me so much of my own two daughters that I found myself forgetting at times that we were only acting and this wasn’t real. My cast mates and friends would just tell me, “Calm the #$%! down Mrs. Frank” to remind me that I didn’t need to be so intense all the time.

I am not by any means comparing my day to day life with that of Edith Frank, I definitely have “First World Problems” and not anything meriting the stress she was under. Instead I’m just reminding myself that my reality isn’t her reality and I just need to keep some perspective.

Things that are frustrating me right now:

• Not having enough space in the kitchen cabinets for everything to be organized neatly.
• Too much crap we don’t use in the mudroom cabinets so I can’t put other things away in there.
• Not having enough energy to keep the house as clean as I’d like.
• Not having as much help keeping the house as clean as I’d like.
• Trying to figure out what window treatments to make for the kitchen.
• The bedroom drapes.
• The cheap living room end tables.
• The disorganization and ugliness of my sewing room.
• The mess in the unfinished side of the basement.
• The orange cat situation.
• Emma’s unfinished bathroom.
• The dogs sleeping on our bed so the sheets are always gross and not giving me enough room so I can sleep well.
• Being fat and not having the time or energy to do anything about it.
• Being the only one that notices and seems to care and want or know how to do anything about all of these things.

Last weeks’ painting job really brought this into focus. I had to practically empty out half the first floor. There were so many cobwebs and dust bison behind everything I was embarrassed. I have been slowly returning things to their places and washing everything down before putting it back. Some things have overstayed their welcome and are being sent packing. Other things are better appreciated now that I have a chance to give them the honor they deserve.

For so long now I just haven’t had the motivation or energy to put toward doing these household things. It frustrates me. Yesterday and today I spent more time outside working and left the inside work for another day. Over the last 15 years I’ve put a lot of time and energy (and money) into the yard here and barely feel like I’ve accomplished anything. Problem is that if I ignore it or let it go for even half a growing season it goes to hell and I have to start over. Today I decided to try to appreciate it and look at it through different eyes.

Garden May 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I’m looking at what I have accomplished and appreciating it. There will always be more to do. I will continue to get too tired to finish it all and my body will ache at the end of the day. But that is okay. I’m grateful that I have a beautiful yard to work in and a fairly healthy body to work with on this gorgeous day.

I’m trying really hard to take all this positive energy to heart but I still feel a bit of bitterness and frustration. What is that saying? “Fake it until you make it?” Some days I just end up feeling like a big old faker and think I’m just lying to myself and everyone around me. Will I ever be satisfied? When I say I don’t give a shit and let it go I feel momentarily better but later when I now have more work to do because I let it go I get frustrated again and the vicious circle begins again. How do other people deal with this? How do other people both delegate work and not get annoyed when it isn’t done the way they’d like or find a way to instruct the delegate to do it without sounding like a bitch?

I don’t like being such a Negative Nellie. I read a lot of blogs that are all sunshine and rainbows (even when it rains) and I find them beautiful, inspiring and like a little vacation in my blog reader. But I can’t help but wonder if they ever have a bad day? Do they ever get weeds in their gardens? Do their dogs ever shed and make a mess all over the house? Do their cats poop on the hall floor just because they are being dicks? Or is it all a sham and an artifice and they have the same frustrations and set backs that I have but just don’t air it out for the world to see?  I guess if I were just funny it wouldn’t matter.

May Day! May Day!

There has been no sewing or crafting going on around here this week. We have started the monumental job of preparing for Sarah’s graduation party next  month. Last week we had all but the living room on the first floor repainted. Boy, was that a big job even though we hired professionals to do the actual painting. My house still isn’t completely put back together but it is getting there. I’m really happy with the colors I chose and having pros do it was the best choice I’ve made in a long time. They did a great job preparing everything and the finished work is so much nicer than what we would’ve done.

This is the den/office. I found this rug at Lowes Friday. I obviously need to move more furniture back in there and hang some stuff on the walls. But not as much stuff as we had before. I do think my Eiffel Tower photo will really pop against this blue though.

I ordered some fabric for drapes last week during the Joann Home Dec 50% off sale. Hopefully it will be in soon so I can get those done and up.

We had shelves on the walls in this corner before but we took them down and I don’t plan to put them back up. Once Sarah is off to college I’m not sure this desk will stay here. I used to use it a lot before I got my new laptop but now it just collects mail, dust and evidently a pair of my shoes. We also had two printers on it that I haven’t put back yet and I’m not sure both are going to go back. One is a scanner/printer and the other is a wireless printer that we all can use from our respective laptops from anywhere in the house. But they take up most of the desktop and look really messy. I’d like to find room for the scanner upstairs in my sewing room and some kind of printer cart or cabinet for under the desk for the other one.

Sunday was spent reupholstering the dining room chairs. I also found this fabric at the Joann sale and really love it because is brings together all the colors from all the rooms.

I’m going to wait to show you the kitchen colors but you might be able to get a good idea from my fabric choice. It’s a BOLD statement for sure.

This weekend was also Sarah’s Senior Prom. I don’t have as many beautiful pictures of her this year as I took last year. We were rushed and disorganized and the kids were in a hurry to get to the official photo house. So I snapped a few quick ones and let them go. Then when we got to the “photo house” we started taking group shots and I forgot to have her stand alone for any. Plus I haven’t been happy with the photos my SLR has been taking lately. The exposures are off and everything looks foggy. I think I need to take it in for a good cleaning and maybe see if the sensors are messed up or something.

That’s her on the left with the corsage the size of a small shrubbery.

Her date was her friend Chris who she’s known since 2nd grade.  He graduated a year early and started college up in Milwaukee this fall. She was worried she wouldn’t have a date this year and then one night she came home to find our front lawn “forked”. (This is when pranksters cover your lawn with plastic forks stuck all over it.) This time (yes he’s done it to us before!) the forks spelled out “PROM?” She knew immediately who had done it (because she knew he was home from school for the weekend.) and called him up to check if he was serious or if it was just a cruel prank. I guess he realized that this was actually also his Sr. Prom in a way and thought it would be nice to do something with his high school friends one last time.

Of course this all just means that the snowball that is the final month of Senior year is swiftly rolling down the mountain and I’m feeling like I’m going to get knocked over by it any minute.

Grati-Tuesday (on Wednesday)

There is a meme going around the blogosphere this week about the ten things you are grateful for and I thought it was a nice idea to try to do it. Problem I’m having this week is finding time to sit down and type out the ten things I am most grateful for right now. I started this post on Tuesday (and stole the title from my friend Marsha who posts “Grati-Tuesday” statuses on Facebook) but now it is late Wednesday afternoon and this is as far as I’ve gotten. It took me a half an hour this morning to write one short email. I just keep getting distracted and interrupted. (Like just now, I got up to go take a shower and came back to find Emma using my laptop.) Anyway here we go:

1. Roadside garbage pick up. Come on think about it, how much would life suck if we didn’t have that garbage truck coming to the house once a week to take all our crap away? As you all probably know, I grew up on a farm and we didn’t have garbage pick up. What we had was a “burn barrel” and a big barrel that we tossed metal cans into and all “organic” waste went into a bucket on the kitchen counter and was tossed over the fence to the pigs after dinner. (I have told you about my award winning pig call haven’t I?) Everything else had to be collected and eventually taken to the dump. Of course back then we didn’t buy as much prepackaged “convenience” foods and things so we produced a lot less garbage. Anyway, I’m eternally grateful for those two big rolling cans in my garage that take our garbage, dirty cat litter, and recyclables away  every Monday morning. Without it I’m afraid my house would look even more like an episode of Hoarders.

2. My Dyson vacuum cleaner. Much like my appreciation for garbage men, my love for my Dyson stems from my fear of appearing to be a hoarder. The amount of dirt, dog hair and other grit and grime it sucks up every week would overwhelm this house in a matter of weeks.

3. The internet. Kind of goes without saying that my life would suck without the internet. I’ve made friends that I can’t imagine life without, reconnected with old friends and family, and am vastly entertained and inspired by things on the internet everyday. What kind of world would it be without Honey Badger, George Takei, Nerdfighters, Wil Wheaton and the Bloggess coming into my home every day? A sucky kind of world that’s what kind.

4. My etsy shop. I’m still working off the debt from the store and I would be so far behind without the income from my etsy shop. I have great customers that appreciate the quality fabrics and fast service I provide. Now it has gotten to the point where it practically runs itself. In the future I’d like to add to it and expand it and maybe get back into selling handmade items instead of only supplies. But for now it is providing just what I need.

5. The Albright Theater. I auditioned for The Laramie Project at the Albright in 2009 and it kind of changed my life. I’ve made friends that have become more like family. I’ve stretched myself creatively and broken out of my “suburban Mom” box. I have more self confidence now than I’ve ever had in my life. And I get to play dress up and make believe at least once a year if I’m lucky.

6. My bed. I love a good night’s sleep. When my house is overcome by garbage and dog hair I’m going to retire to my bed and never leave until the tv crews show up.

7. Lilacs. They are the perfect shade of well, lilac and the scent is heavenly. They remind me of my childhood. Right now I’m sitting on the couch and the scent of a small Korean lilac bush in full bloom is wafting in through the open window. What’s not to be grateful for here?

8. Antibiotics. (But not penicillin, that makes my hands and feet get all hot and itchy and feel like they are going to blow up and someday if I take it by accident again may just kill me.) But the other kinds of antibiotics are pretty awesome when taken only when needed and through their full course as prescribed. Without them there’d be a lot more dead people and lot fewer successful surgeries.

9. The aboriginal man or woman who first tamed the wolf. I say this after yelling at Maizey for counter surfing the last little bit of Brie I had heated up for part of my dinner, that’s how much I love my dogs. My life would be so much simpler, cleaner and I’d have so much more money if I didn’t have them but I can’t imagine life without a dog in it.

10. Steve, Sarah and Emma. Yep, I went there and closed the list with the gimme answer. Sue me. Just like with the dogs, my life would be simpler and cleaner without them in it, but oh so empty. (I wouldn’t be richer because Steve makes all the moolah around here with Sarah at a close second, babysitting pays better than retail.) There was a time I was sure I’d never get pregnant and never have a baby. Sometimes those days feel like a lifetime ago and other times it still seems like yesterday. Being a mother has been how I’ve defined myself for 18+ years. I’ve been a wife for almost 23 years. We got married pretty young. It didn’t seem like it at the time but looking back now 22 & 24 was pretty damn young to make a life long decision. It hasn’t always been easy but it has been worth it. We got a pretty good thing going here and I’m very grateful for it.

How about you? What are you grateful for? Will it take you two days to type your list? (By the way, it is now almost 7pm, I started this around 4pm. It’s been one of those days.)