Brazil learns how to stop exhaustion from others needs

For years, a woman identified as a highly sensitive person felt drained by the emotions and needs of those around her. She believed she was an “empath,” a term that describes someone deeply attuned to the feelings of others. This label provided relief, offering an explanation for her constant exhaustion and her tendency to attract people in crisis.

However, she now rejects that definition. Instead of seeing herself as permanently stuck in this role, she found a new understanding that allowed her to change her responses to other people’s emotions. She no longer manages her life according to their feelings.

The shift began when she discovered the concept of “appeasing.” This is a survival response, similar to fight, flight, or freeze, that activates when emotions or situations feel overwhelming. She realized that as a child, she learned to feel safest by anticipating and supporting the emotions of those around her. This pattern continued into adulthood, where she found a sense of safety and belonging by being the supporter, listener, and helper, while minimizing her own emotional needs.

This behavior was not driven by genuine desire but by a need for safety, acceptance, and love. Unraveling this response required immense awareness. She had to learn to attend to her own emotions and build a sense of safety within her nervous system. She recognized that other people’s emotions felt scary and uncomfortable, and that sharing her own feelings did not come naturally due to these learned patterns.

With the right tools, she learned to walk a path toward authenticity. She can now be herself in the world, surrounded by other people’s emotions without being overtaken by them as she once was. She also learned that her old way of supporting people—by fixing, smoothing things over, and endlessly listening—was not the kind of emotional support that helps others change. True support, she states, should not come at an emotional cost to the person offering it.

Steps to Change

Awareness is the first step. She advises noticing what happens in the body when around emotional people. Does a sense of urgency or a need to fix things arise? This feeling of urgency is a sign that a survival response has been triggered.

Create a sense of felt safety in the body. One way to do this is through an “orienting” exercise. This involves slowly scanning the room, looking at objects as collections of color and shape, and looking to the horizon line if possible. This tells the nervous system there is no threat, bringing a sense of safety. Doing this for a minute or two can create a noticeable change in breathing and physical sensation.

Create a pause. In daily life, when requests are made, it is important to pause before reacting. This pause allows the individual to step out of the habitual survival response and choose a different course of action.

The writer concludes that being an empath felt like a lifelong sentence, but she now sees it as a learned response that can be unlearned. With awareness and the right tools, it is possible to support the nervous system activation that comes from being aware of other people’s emotions.