Can being empathic cause any physical manifestations?

[CanisFirebrand]

Not sure if this fits here or another... but here goes.

I hadn't really put the connection together until recently when I looked back at timing.

I've always been able to feel others emotions and have been very sensetive sometimes feeling overwhelmed if someone is in a particualarly strong mood.

I have been to New York City twice in my lifetime.

The first time was 2-3 weeks before 9/11.

The second was in Feb after 9/11.

While there the second time, I had an almost anxious feeling the whole time like I was feeling a lot of emotions all at once.

On the day before I was scheduled to go home, I went to Ground Zero to observe and see the site for myself. It was like nothing I had ever seen or felt before. I could just sense/feel so much at that site that I couldn't stay very long.

Not long after that, maybe a few hours, I had a very sharp pain in my abdomen. It was hard to get through that day and the night as well as the 11 hour drive back to Michigan.

I was so bad that once I was back to MI, my friend drove straight to the ER. After a 17 hour stay in the ER, since I wasn't showing typical signs of an appendix problem even though it was inflammed and irritated, I was scheduled to have it removed.

At the time, I never thought much of it, but after talking with a friend about it and looking back at the timing, I wonder if there was indeed some connection between the two events.

At least, it is a good topic of converstation.

[nomadicdragon]

Being an empath myself, i would have to say yes... there can be physical manifestations... The mind is very powerful.. if you feel something strongly it can affect your entire body.

[witchsmacked]

Definite yes from me, too. The past month or so has really been a test on my emotions and my mental state. I sat with a friend at the hospital with her dying mother and felt my lungs ache when her mom tried to breathe (she had pneumonia), felt weak, as though I had not eaten, even though I had (she also had diabetes and her sugar was skyrocketing). I could feal her fear and my friend's fear. With that, our friend who was vicitimzed by a terrible man--her pain (physical and emotional), her shame, her fear, and her anger. When the first friend's mom died, the funeral was a major wave of emotions for me, too. Her siblings are all at odds with one another with her thrown in the middle and I could feel every bit of anger, sadness, resentment, and pain in the room. I was physically drained after that. Instead of closing down my "channel", I opened it, and it flooded over.

The only other time I've felt physical pain empathically was a friend who was burned in an accident this summer. My face and hands hurt and I couldn't understand why. My eyes felt swollen and my vision blurred. My skin was sensitive, and I felt sick. Understand he is over 1,000 miles away, but we have been friends for five years. When I did a ritual for healing, I found myself willing his pain away, and it hit me like a huge wave. I was so physically exhausted after, I had to lay on the floor for close to an hour and a half.

My channel is still open--the past couple of weeks have been a real bad time for me. Imagine being ultra sensitive and having to sit in an auditorium of 300+ people for a class. Random emotions and ailments bouncing off me. I nearly went insane one day and had to literally walk out. Thankfully I sit close to the door at the top. Work has been even worse.

Now that I've babbled... :hehehehe:

[Rockprincess]

Actually, they just released a scientific study on this, and yes, emotional pain (or emotional joy) manifests as physical symptoms - which is why our hearts ACTUALLY hurt when love goes wrong. As an empath, I can only assume that this occurs to a greater degree.

[Pesha]

Oh absolutly. I have had to really clear myself out alot of times due to the things I pick up as an empath. After 9/11, I had a headache for a week. I felt all the people in the planes and it was just awful. So I would say yes you can have physical manifistaions and the best way to help with those is to make sure you send all the energies you absorb back out to the universe for it to send back into the Void.

BB
DS.

[Lunacie]

I think I was feeling physical symptoms of emotions I was picking up empathically for a long time before I began to practice psychic healing techniques. Then I would begin to feel what the other person was feeling. A friend would tell me that their shoulder was hurting and I could tell them whether it was their left or right shoulder because I felt the same pain in my own shoulder. Although this is a helpful diagnostic tool, I do have to remind myself that the feelings I'm picking up aren't my own, they don't belong to me. If I haven't been asked for healing energy I have to give the feelings or pain back to that person (perhaps they have a lesson to learn from it, eh?). If I am using healing energy it generally relieves the pain and any feelings that I pick up I release to the Universe to transform and be sent to whatever place they are needed.

[FeatherGoblinglimmer]

I usually get a headache when i am around people who are particularly stressed out. There have been times when i have had stomach aches as well.

[Epona44]

I used to have a black cat, Tasha. She and I were very close, and I was quite aware of things going on with her.

One day I was standing in my kitchen and I caught a taste of something, well, foul, in my mouth, and had a sharp pain in my jaw. I reached for the cat, and I'm not sure why, and I started stroking her neck. She had a lump, which turned out to be an abcess on her neck near her jaw. I took her to the vet for treatment and she was fine in a few days.

But the incident was strange.

[schadenfreude]

Yup .. just imagine what power stress can have over the physical body. Stress is something created by the mentality part of you. Yet .. it can go as far as to kill people. Nerves are quite sensitive and such.