Empathy or Hypervigilance?

What if the way you “read a room” isn’t always empathy?

In this episode of The Energy Xchange, I unpack the often-blurred line between empathy and hypervigilance and why sensitivity isn’t a personality trait, but a spectrum that shifts based on how safe and grounded you feel in your body.

This episode is about understanding sensitivity as a spectrum, unpacking why hypervigilance develops, and learning how to work with your awareness instead of letting it run your life.

This Episode Dives Into:

• The backlash around the word "empath"
• The difference between empathy and hypervigilance
• How hypervigilance develops as a survival response
• Why scanning other people’s energy isn’t always about care
• How nervous system safety changes the way awareness shows up
• Simple ways to signal safety to your nervous system in real time

Who This Episode Is For:

• Highly sensitive people, empaths, and deep feelers
• Introverts and quiet leaders who notice everything
• People who feel drained by constantly reading others
• Anyone who struggles with fight or flight in social or work settings
• Those learning to trust themselves and their bodies again
• Sensitive professionals who want to stay grounded without hardening

Links & Resources For This Episode:

• Subscribe to my Weekly Newsletter
• Visit My Website
• Get the Book: The Empath Detox
• The Empath Detox Oracle Deck

Transcript

Speaker 0:03

Welcome to the Energy Xchange, a podcast for deep feelers and quiet leaders. Here, we explore what happens when we start working with our natural energy in both our business and personal lives. I'm Colleen Wolak. I'm a highly sensitive professional who spent years untangling patterns of overthinking, people-pleasing, and playing small just to feel safe. Now, I help others like me step more fully into their power without losing the superpower of their softness. We don't have to be allowed to be seen, and we don't have to push to be powerful. Everything is energy. Let's start this exchange. Welcome into this week's episode of the Energy Xchange. Today I'm diving into something I've wanted to talk about for a really long time, but every time I try to write about it, I don't know, it just seems too complicated or too nuanced for an Instagram post. So now I've got this space where I feel like we can really drag it out a bit more and let it be what it is. So let's dive in. I feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding about the word empath, what it really means, why it gets a bad rap. And I do want to say up front, you know, I've really gotten away from using that word in my work because there is just a lot of misunderstanding and kind of a lot of flack around it. If you say you're an empath, sometimes people hear, oh, so you think you're a healer, or you think you're better than everyone else, or you must think you're a really good person. And that's just not the case. To be very clear, being empathetic does not mean you're a good person. Like your natural inclination to scan a room, pick up on other people's feelings, you know, their stuff, that does not mean that you're doing it for their benefit. In fact, what a lot of people think of as being traits of an empath is actually hypervigilance. Your ability to read a room, to pick up on other people's feelings and energy, that exists on a spectrum. And where you fall on that spectrum really depends a lot on how you're feeling in life at that moment. How grounded you feel, how solid you feel in your body, how confident you are, how regulated your nervous system is. Even your motivation for scanning a room changes based on where you are on that spectrum. So the fact that you're picking up on what's happening for other people doesn't mean that you're doing it from some higher giving place. It's often not about those other people at all. Often our really extreme sensitivity shows up as hypervigilance. And when we dip into that, what we're picking up on is different. It's less about how someone else is feeling and more about how you're perceiving them in relation to you. So it's not just, oh, is this person upset? It's, are they upset with me? Did I do something? Did I say something wrong? We're still scanning, but it's a completely different kind of scanning. So this isn't, you know, watching a sad movie or seeing a commercial about a pet adoption and losing it. In that situation, that has nothing to do with you. You're just feeling deeply for something outside of yourself. Like that's act of empathy. Hypervigilance is not that. So I want to dive into the difference between empathy and hypervigilance. And I don't think this is an either-or situation. It's not like, oh, you're an empathetic person or you're a hyper-vigilant person. It shows up at different times in your life, different times in your day, even. As a kid in those early school settings, at home, later in my, you know, early workplace settings, I was absolutely high on that hyper-vigilant end of the spectrum. I was not taking in other people's feelings or thoughts and emotions for their benefit. I was doing it for my safety. I wanted to know what situation I was in so I would know how to cope. That was my natural state back then. Now, not so much. Maybe at certain periods of time, certain, you know, you move to a new city, you enter a new workplace, you're really in a more uncertain state. Sometimes that'll pop up for me, but that's not my natural state. As we get more comfortable in ourselves, when we feel grounded, we've got experience under our belt, when we've been in a lot of situations and trust ourselves more, we might still be aware of how we're showing up in relation to other people, but it's not that fight or flight mode. And you do get to a place where you can recognize when you're dipping into that. Now you can ask yourself, you know, why am I scanning? How does this situation feel in my body? And how much is this impacting me? And again, it's all relative and it's all very highly tied into our nervous system and how we're managing that, which I am gonna dive into in a few minutes. But first, I want to talk about the empath backlash, what that word actually means. I think, especially with social media, we are hearing that word a lot more. When I was first starting out, I leaned really hard into that word empath. And then I included introverts into that to be more inclusive. And it did fit a lot of the coaching work I was doing and the clients that I was attracting. But there's so much misunderstanding around that word now. Like people hear the word empath, especially if you say you are one, and it's oh, okay, you think you're kinder than other people, or you know, you're morally superior, you're a healer, okay, you're positioning yourself as a victim to narcissist. So there are lots of layers and nuance to how people kind of take in that word and what it means. And all of those things can be true sometimes, but they're not the default. It's that's not what it means to be an empath. Being an empath really speaks more to a natural ability to tap into what's happening around you. It does not mean that you're going to do nice things with it. It doesn't even mean that that's your intention, but your natural state is on, I hate to use the word alert, but but it is kind of on alert to be paying attention to what's going on. And again, how you feel about yourself will impact what you do with that information. And I think we're all born with that. I mean, I think that's the factory setting that we come into the world with. It's not whether it exists, it's how deeply it impacts you and affects you and how deeply you're dipping into that throughout your day. And I don't have any stats on this, but I would think that a lot of people who would even use that word empath now to describe themselves have spent some time in hypervigilance, probably as a kid. You know, that state, that fight or flight kind of pushes that skill set onto you out of necessity. So that sensitivity, that empathy for others does exist on a spectrum. On one end, you've got your emotional openness, your deep feeling for others without it being about you. And then on the far end, our hyper-vigilant state, that's your fight or flight. That's you scanning a situation for safety, and that's reading people in relation to you. What does it mean for your life right now? So, again, just because you're picking up on other people's stuff doesn't mean you're doing it for their benefit. It can be for survival. And I know that's a dramatic word, but your nervous system does not really know the difference between actual danger and perceived threat. A lot of highly sensitive people developed this hypervigilance early on. I definitely did. Our family systems, schools, friend groups, neighborhoods, all with different rules, different vibes, right? Different expectations. And there's no roadmap for how to be sensitive in those kind of chaotic environments. And if those systems were wildly different, it just amplifies everything. And how you cope will depend on your internal wiring, the support you had, and what you learned worked in order to keep you safe. That's where hypervigilance gets wired into us. And over time that will shift. Like for me at least, once I did gain more experience and confidence and just felt more grounded in myself and my body, I developed a faster recognition of when I start to shift into that state. And as I got to really learn more about myself and how I show up, that's when I got really interested in energy management. And I know when we talk about that, that word energy, a lot of people think of, you know, the woo stuff, Reiki, meditation, all of those things. But a lot of energy management is actually just nervous system management. It's about feeling safe in your body, you know, creating more alignment between your thoughts and what's going on for you physically, and then reducing that fight or flight state. We are not constantly in danger, right? And of course, with energy, there is that bigger perspective piece, you know, that idea that there's something larger than us, that energetic spiritual realm. And that certainly helped me. You know, when I'm stressed about something that feels huge in the moment, being able to zoom out can soften that. It can help you step outside of that black and white thinking, that constant threat assessment. And it it kind of gives you room to breathe inside situations that might have swallowed you before. But there are a lot of really practical, down-to-earth things we can do to support energy management. We don't have to be in the woo state if you don't want to be. If you're new to this space and maybe discovering this stuff for yourself, I did write a book several years ago, The Empath Detox, which covers a lot of those really practical tools, and then of course a few like woo things in there. I also have an Oracle deck to go with that, which is definitely more woo. There are 44 cards in that deck, and again, it is a mix of the practical things, some mindset work, and then a few spiritual things. I'll add those links to the description box for this episode if you are interested in that. All right, so let's go back. I will say that the worst state in the world for a highly sensitive person, especially one in that hyper-vigilant end of the spectrum, is the victim state. When you are there, remember you're already scanning everything for safety. And when you are there, everything feels like proof. Every interaction confirms your story, and you are constantly collecting evidence from everyone around you. So if you're looking for evidence of being harmed or in danger, you're gonna find it. If you don't believe you can shift, you will not. You know, awareness without agency really does become that trap unless some kind of magic intervenes. So that's why awareness alone isn't enough. You need that agency to do something with that. And when you're in that state, it can be really difficult to distinguish between when you are in high alert fight or flight mode, that hypervigilance, or you are just in a deeply resonating, picking up on other people's energy kind of state. What helps is if you can recognize that contrast, if you can think about those periods of life where you were in fight or flight versus those times when you felt really grounded. There was a time in my life where I felt very deeply grounded. I was living in Fort Lauderdale, and this was after a breakup, after leaving my corporate job. Life just felt good though. My energy was really high. I was living right by the beach, I had a tan, everything was great. And I have this specific memory that I think about all the time. I was walking at night alone, kind of on a side road. I was in a sundress, flip-flops. That was kind of my uniform at the time. Walking past a 7-Eleven, and there was this man sitting on a bench out front. He had this hat with like a big feather in it. He had, you know, a couple backpacks. He he definitely, whatever his situation was, I definitely knew like I think this is a homeless man, right? And I just walked past him, kind of minding my own business, and something told me to turn around. So I went back, asked him if he needed anything, ran into 7-Eleven, got it for him. And I sat with him on the bench and talked for like an hour. Like I remember it being fun. We were laughing and having a good time. And I think about that a lot because it's such a contrast to how I would typically move through the world. I was still scanning energy, but it wasn't feeling like a threat to me. Where I think that a lot of times that situation would feel like a little bit of a threat. But in that contrast, empathy for the sake of others, that is my default when I feel safe. And it feels very different from when I'm in that fight or flight mode. So it was just a really memorable contrast for me. And that's the set point I really am always trying to reach for. So when I shift up the spectrum towards fight or flight, I know that I need to do some energy work to really get back into my body and make sure that my body feels safe. So as a deeply feeling person, it is important to learn your own signals and really be aware of where you're sitting on that spectrum. Empathy does get painted with such a broad stroke, and that's kind of why I wanted to talk about this. It's not about being a good person necessarily. It's not about being a healer necessarily. It's it's about understanding why you're scanning and how it's affecting you. What does your body feel like in this moment? And once you know that difference, that's really useful information. It's it's a tool that allows you to work with your sensitivity instead of against it. So maybe just notice where you are on that spectrum this week. And if you feel like you're in more of that hyper-vigilant fight or flight state, it's just information. Your nervous system is going to respond better to clarity versus judgment, right? So we don't have to feel some kind of way about that. But the moment we name that, we create a little bit of distance between ourselves and the state we're in. We can look at it from an observer standpoint and really take some actions to fix it. And what you do with that, I think, is is a whole separate episode. And I should probably have an actual expert speak on that. But how you address that is asking what would help me feel safer right now? Not necessarily what will fix the situation long term, not what will solve everything, just what's that one thing I can do right in this moment that makes a difference? So depending on the situation, it could be as quick and easy as taking a few deep breaths. Sometimes it's putting your feet on the floor or stepping outside for a few minutes. And sometimes it is actually taking a small contained action. If you're stressed about finances, that doesn't mean we need to stop everything we're doing and overhaul our entire money system right now. It might mean opening your banking app and just looking, seeing where you stand. It could mean paying a bill, opening the pile of mail that you've been afraid to open because you don't know what's in there. The goal isn't necessarily to make the stressful thing disappear. What we want to do is signal safety to our nervous system, to show ourselves that we're not helpless, that we're here, that we have agency, and that we can work towards solving this. When your body feels safer, your thinking will get clearer. And from that place, you can decide what comes next instead of reacting from panic or avoidance, which is a big one. So I think I'm gonna close it out here. I would love to know your thoughts on this topic. Please send me a DM at the.energy.exchange. That's with an X. I'd love to hear from you there. And if you are vibing with this podcast, I would love a review. It just helps other like minded people find this space, and I would be really grateful for that. All right, guys, thanks for listening, and I will chat with you next week.