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Discovering the “Empath”…And the World that Is Inside Us
I met a new word recently.
Empath.
You most likely know a related word — empathy, that is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Empath is so much more; a personality type that goes far beyond empathy.
Veronica Zambon writes in Medical News Today, “An empath is someone who feels more empathy than the average person. These people are usually more accurate in recognizing emotions by looking at another person’s face. They are also more likely to recognize emotions earlier than other people and rate those emotions as being more intense.”
We live in a world of feelings. If you want proof, just look at your “emoji” library. There they are: happy, lovely, excited, sad, blessed, grateful, crazy, and so on. So many ways to say how we feel.
But, apart from the momentary feelings that enter our lives, what kind of “feeling” person are we? And what about the intensity with which we absorb the feelings of other people and our environment that can be a two-sided coin.
For some people, like painter Vincent van Gogh, the sunflowers and the stars are always brighter. You can stand in the Modern Museum of Art in New York City and study van Gogh’s highly regarded painting, Starry…