Hey Stimuli subscribers. In today's video, I'm going to talk to you about empathy and emotional intelligence. Now, this is a subject I'm really interested in generally, as I come across a lot of people in the therapy room, who struggle with boundaries around what they give to others and how they feel towards others. And there is some links towards high levels of empathy in people with ADHD, though, again, that's not exclusive too. And it's not always seen by others because of that misconception that can arise in ADHD where people might seem quite self-centered or egocentric, because of the amount they might talk about themselves, or, or feel the need to just sort of dominate a conversation generally.

But it is very common for people with ADHD to have high levels of empathy, meaning they're able to feel the suffering of others. There's a term I became familiar with only a couple of years ago, actually, which is that of an empath. And the definition of an empath is somebody that feels empathy towards others on a level which can be burdensome. So empaths tend to struggle more with that, I find and often, this can lead to poor boundaries around helping others. Now, this is really common in people who have perhaps, grown up in a difficult family system, where either emotion was threatening or negative emotions should I say were threatening perhaps, I don't know, whether dad was angry, so one needed to learn to read mood very carefully. But more commonly, where perhaps there was a parent or caregiver, or both, who perhaps struggled with their own mental health. And the family system in some way, needed somebody to take some level of responsibility.

Typically, there is a sibling who might be more avoidant to that and a sibling who tends to take more responsibility. And of course, what can happen when that transpires in a family system, which is nearly always complex, as I'm sure you know, is that this child who takes responsibility can become what we call parentified. Now, parentification is often quite a damaging process, an unseen process which can bring with it some gifts, which I'll speak about in a moment, but also cause people some quite significant distress in relationships. So, you know, if somebody in the family system starts to take the responsibility, the family starts to expect, it needs somebody in that family to do so usually, it's not exclusive to people with very high levels of empathy, but I feel it's worth mentioning, as ADHD is is common, where there is a family story of mental health difficulties and struggles.

Now, a parentified child or just a child that took more responsibility, than perhaps they needed to growing up can bring these defences and these difficulties into adulthood. So if you have these high levels of empathy, where you've learned to read mood, to appease, to make people feel better, to you know, to calm down a parent or to soothe a parent or even a sibling with high needs that can happen too. Then what it means is that we tend to feel other people's distress very acutely, we can sense it across the room. And there's often a sort of almost an urgency or an anxiety to take it away, to make it better. And this can lead to us putting too much into relationships and noticing perhaps that we're not getting back what we're putting in and that can cause pain and suffering. Or it just means that we can develop very poor boundaries for trying to rescue everyone or being drawn to broken people or entering into perhaps relationships with people that can't give back.

Also, again, conversely, it might mean that we put in very high levels of care, which cannot be replicated by the partner because of the type of partner we might be attracted to for some of these reasons, thus leaving us feeling that we're getting less out of a relationship, be that friendship or partnership in some way. And that can all lead to distress and yeah, feeling overlooked, dismissed, that kind of thing.

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