Read more: The Art of Feeling Deeply

Yes – it really is that deep.

The air is heavy right now. Mercury is downshifting, retrograding, while a full moon shifts uncomfortably in Capricorn. Cancer lurks in the background, its warm summer waters forcing emotion into everything. The breeze carries a heartbeat; the cloud-covered sun coos a rainy sentiment. Everything seems to pause, lift, and shift at the same time. It feels like we’re children waiting outside the principal’s office as we peer up at the full moon through chastened side glances.

Full moons are periods of release. In the days leading up to today, I’ve felt heavy. My body is bloated. I woke up today feeling half-grounded in reality, and half floating in deep recollection: earth and water warring for peace in a tumultuous turnstile of tangled emotions. The kind of emotions that jar you awake with their demands; that turn your head under the eager exclamation of waving limbs: “Me! Me! Me!” they scream.

On a normal day, I’d send them to that proverbial principal’s office. I’d tell them to sit and wait until I could reach them. I would prepare a lecture, a plan, and a solution before coming out to greet them.

But not today.

Today, I meet them outside the door and lower myself onto the old, rickety bench beside them. I follow their gazes to the sky – to the vast star-strewn tapestries of feelings strung there – and sigh.

At first glance, most don’t take me as emotional. I’m (proudly) a Capricorn Rising, after all. I hold, and I build, and I lead with a steady determination that brings my shoulders to lift like a soldier’s.

I am an earth sign: grounded, steady, stubborn. I always get the job done – but not without a healthy dose of questions and deep understanding of how things work. Fundamental to that understanding is an exploration of emotions.

And emotions? Messy. No easy conclusion. To get to the most “upstream” problem that emotions carry, you must shoulder your way into their messy middle. You must connect with them intimately. In the process, you find yourself elbow-deep in everyone’s traumas. But you understand those traumas. You see them.  

But you also feel them. Deeply, intuitively. As though they were your own. Every comment, slight, and interaction seems to reach inside of you and burrow, and fester, until it threatens that strong foundation you’ve worked so long, hard to create. Even boundaries fall prey to this endless erosion of empathy.

The arduous nature of it all drew me to think it was a terrible burden. I ask myself, repeatedly: “Why can’t you just accept how people are, and move on?”

Because there is no “this is just how people are.” That’s the beauty of feeling deeply: even the most stereotyped behavior has unique roots. It’s like a puzzle that keeps rearranging itself in new bodies, new faces, and new souls. Each pattern of behavior is attributable to a different root cause that deserves its own “airing,” its own attention. For every emotion you understand, you begin to watch and collect information. . That information reveals a pattern. When someone continuously allows their insecurities to lash out at others, or treat someone poorly, you stop. An itchy unease builds beneath your collar. If I can see how they’re acting, don’t they, too?

This is where the art becomes messy. The information you collect? It’s not yours to apply. Often, you can’t provide feedback to a person for fear of breaching their boundaries or receiving greater fall out. So you harbor it, you try to understand it to such a degree that it becomes a insurmountable weight upon you.

In a prior environment, I was surrounded by people with heavy energy.  Unprocessed emotions swirled with such ferocity that it was difficult to see past them. There were outbursts and shunning; locked doors and gossip. The people in this environment approached people in an endless state of defense. Never curiosity. Never kindly. It became so prevalent, that I found myself constantly analyzing their behavior to understand it. Because, surely, people didn’t just act so callously because they could. There had to be reasons.

So, I watched. I information gathered. I sat like an owl on the olive branches of compromise and watched the slow unfolding of individual narratives. My final assessment? I was in a hot bed of insecurity. Of people who perceived themselves as figures of authority after years of abuse from themselves and others.

But I couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t act. Couldn’t fix the issues. Couldn’t force anyone to think differently.

Instead, the weight of their behaviors became untenable. Every word and act they took against me chaffed more than before. Because I understood it, which meant that, hell, didn’t they, too? Couldn’t they feel how their insecurities were affecting me and others? Didn’t they care?

The short answer? No.

Because not everyone can feel so deeply.

I don’t say this from a place of superiority. Feeling deeply sucks. There’s no way eloquent way to dress that truth up. Feeling deeply means consciously understanding how your emotions affect others. Regardless of what they are – joy, anger, pain, insecurity — you are responsible for managing them in a benign way. In a way that doesn’t beat people down or make them feel smaller.

You are responsible for acknowledging the brunt of your emotions and steering their fury away from other people.No matter what you’ve been through, no matter who has wronged you: you are responsible for kindness and civility. For controlling how your energy and emotions affect you and others.

You are the catalyst for your own emotional reckoning.

You.

Those of us who feel preternaturally deeply, understand this. Because we have seen the devastation wreaked by insecure people. We feel every demeaning comment, directive, and snipe as though it came from our own souls.

We see. We feel. We wished others would, too. Yet, when they do not, we don’t abandon our deep understanding of the world. We bow into it, we still strive to understand others and the impact of their ways; even if they do not extend the same to us.

And such is the art of feeling deeply: to willfully suffer within the lines of a rhapsodic emotional whirlwind, in the hope others will join you, while accepting that most cannot.

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