Feeling without letting it in

There's a difference between feeling something and having that something inside me.

For a long time those were the same thing. If I felt it, it had already come in.

Where I am now

I can't do this yet. It's recent and I'm learning.

I've taken the first step: recognising that not everything I feel is mine. That changed a lot, because I stopped searching inside myself for the origin of things that didn't start there.

The second step is being able to clear afterwards. I notice I've got mixed up, I recognise that it isn't mine, and I give it back.

The third I still can't do. It's not getting mixed up in the first place.

That doesn't mean I'll always manage it. But right now almost the opposite happens: I go in, I get mixed up, and only then do I notice.

What it would look like

Being with a group of accelerated people and not accelerating. Or accelerating a little and being able to step out, rather than staying.

Diving into a book and, when I close it, coming back out.

Feeling everything just the same, whatever's needed, without it coming in.

It isn't about feeling less. It's about the information arriving without settling.

The part nobody mentions

There's another layer to this, and it's the one that weighs on me most.

When I go in, when I feel what the other person is feeling, the idea appears immediately that I have to do something. Hold it. Support. Fix. Stay there.

As if having empathy for someone automatically created an obligation.

And this has a consequence I was slow to see: it makes me move away. I don't deepen certain relationships, I isolate myself more, I take thirty steps back, to avoid it happening.

Which means the thing that looks like too much empathy ends up working as distance.

What I'm taking apart

I already know this rationally. It isn't integrated yet.

I can have empathy for someone and do nothing.

I can know I'm able to help and choose not to.

I can disappoint someone. People can be disappointed and it won't destroy me or them.

I can do something twice or three times, have the person expect a fourth and a fifth, and not do the fourth and fifth.

None of this is comfortable yet. But it's closer.

Without awareness there was no chance

What strikes me in all of this is that it was in front of me for years and I couldn't see it.

And I understand why: however much clearing you do, if you don't know where the leak is, you're patching blindly.

That's why none of it ever resolved. It wasn't lack of practice. It was not knowing where the hole was.

And if it stays this way, that's fine too

One thing I notice is that there's no struggle inside me about this.

I'm not wishing I were different. If I learn, good. If it takes time, also good.

And if it stays this way forever, that's fine as well. With the difference that now I know.