The Windows Behind Your Eyes

Have you ever met someone who seemed to be so caring, who could look you in the eye and you knew that they saw past your mask? They seem so focused and in tune to how your feeling yet when you look at their lives, you can tell they seem to neglect themselves and probably seem a little unhinged?

Chances are you’ve met an impath. To clarify, I’m just going to assume you have no idea what that word means. An impath is someone who not only empathizes with people who are struggling but they sympathize to a point where they can put themselves in that emotional state even if they’ve never been in such a position. They can tell you exactly how you’re feeling and what thoughts are racing through your mind.

You may think, “how can this person know so much?!?” They probably make you a little nervous because these are the vulnerable parts of yourself you thought were well hidden from the world. Impaths are like the Sherlocks of emotion. They can read the smallest facial expression, the windows in your eyes, the way you twitch your pinkie finger when you’re nervous, and how you say you’re fine but you can tell that they know you’re lying. It may even make you sick.

I want to shed some light on impaths and give some insight if you are friends or even lovers with one. We are all different so I will try to use broad brush strokes that I hope will encapsulate most of us. Firstly, impaths not only can tell what your going through, they go through it with you. We can’t help it. We feed off of your emotions. This is how we can understand even if we haven’t experienced what you’re going through. We put ourselves there. We’re like emotional camelions that change color to whatever emotion you’re permeating, even if you are unaware.

You may see us as unhinged but in reality, in a given day, we’ve been through a miriad of emotions depending on who we’ve come in contact with and we end each day utterly exhausted. 

I’d say we’re quite hinged considering what we experience emotionally on a given day. Another thing to understand is that an impath can process others’ emotions with expert precision but we struggle at processing our own. We take a very long time to understand why we’re angry or depressed or frustrated. The emotion may not even be our own. It may be left over from someone we’ve encountered that we haven’t sluffed off yet.

Lastly, the impath is really good at understanding but we’re not always the best at encouraging, though we swear we try! But because we feel what you feel, we can fall into your funk fairly easily if we don’t check ourselves. I know I’ve fallen to this too many times to count. 

So, if you have an impath in your life, don’t be afraid. Most of the time we are fiercely loyal and will not betray your trust. Give us grace when we read too deeply. We’re not trying to be intrusive. We just absorb your energy. And if you feel you need to confront your impath friend, just be up front and honest. We can tell when you’re lying but will pretend we can’t because we cherish the relationship more than we cherish even our own integrity. We will fall on our sword over and over for you because that is how much we want you to avoid harm.

I am your ally. I wish to be understood. I hope this helps.