The Reluctant Empath – Part III

To invoke the standard cliché, it was as if a storm cloud was hanging over the entire building, and everyone in it. I almost turned around and went home, but I needed to pay my rent, so in I went. Her vacation hadn’t improved her demeanor one bit; if anything, she was actually worse. I began to entertain hopes of her leaving the company for one of those higher paying jobs she claimed to have turned down. However, as the weeks went by, it became clear that she was enjoying her role as the company martyr too much, and had no plans to relinquish it in the near future. I needed to figure out a way to function in that environment, at least until I could find other employment.

This was not the first time in my life that I had been affected this way. All through my childhood and teenage years, I had been told that I was far too sensitive, and blew things way out of proportion. The funny thing was that I was right about people most of the time, even as a child. The only time I wasn’t was when it had to do with how someone felt about me. As I grew up I had developed a “thicker skin”, and had seen enough life to have removed the proverbial rose colored glasses – which was why the current situation was so troubling. I thought I was past all of that drama.

The way I coped with the situation was to approach it the same way I would if I were on the midway at a fair, or on a commercial break. When I’m at a fair, I’m not interested in those games where you pay twelve tickets to throw three balls to try and win a giant stuffed animal, and I don’t like the way the carnies try to lure people. So, I’ve gotten very good at blotting them from my landscape. Thus, I decided to pretend that our public relations person was hawking a rigged ring toss game, and simply excised anything non-verbal coming from her. As for the emotions of my fellow staffers, I tuned them out the way I had learned to tune out those television and radio commercials that like to prey on your insecurities. It was clumsy, but it worked – for a while.

Eventually, her malevolence and the staff’s anger grew so “loud” that I could neither ignore them nor tune them out. Luckily for me, I found a new job shortly thereafter. One month after I left, the boss discovered that she had been using our company’s equipment and resources to moonlight for a larger company. Needless to say, she was fired.

When I relayed this saga to an older friend of mine, the immediate response was, “You’re an Empath with a serious need for basic shielding.” I had no idea that being an Empath was even a thing, so I did some research and, lo and behold, my friend was right! All those years of thinking I was just oversensitive, or was projecting, or had an overactive imagination, when it turns out I was some sort of human antenna. It was such a relief to read about the experiences of others like me! I began to study different approaches to shielding, and what I learned will likely be the subject of another article.