Dispatching as an Empath
Written by Victoria Dowdal - August 11, 2020
Are you the type of person who can feel emotion when you walk into a room? Do you often take on those feelings and emotions as though they are your own. If you answer yes to either of these there is a good chance you are an empathetic person. We can all possess empathy and that assists us in doing our job so well, however, there are some who take empathy to a different level. When someone cries you cry, when someone is angry you can feel it to the point you almost feel like you were the one who is angry.
One day about 5 years ago I was working in retail and there was a woman I did not work with much until that day. She barely spoke, but the moment I was near her I felt this overwhelming sadness. It was this intense mixture of pain/heartache/confusion. Barely knowing her, I walked up and asked her what she was feeling. She was taken by surprise since I had not spoken to her other than in passing, but instantly started crying. She was going through a lot of really tough things in her personal life, and she felt like she had no escape and nobody to confide in. We became friends and she moved in with me thus solving a small portion of her problems. It was this woman who told me that she thought I was an empath.
If you think about it, it makes complete sense that dispatchers would be empaths. We care SO much about those around us that we are driven to help, problem solve, and console. Dispatching while being an empath is not an easy feat. For many of us it is exhausting and draining on both an emotional and physical level. There are days that I go home and I feel as though I have run a marathon. I drive home in silence because my heart and my brain can only seem to process the automatic reaction of driving the route home.
So how do we cope with this? How can we guard our emotions so as not to take on too much of the outside world. The key to this, and it is not faultless, is knowing your body and your mind. You are the only person who knows when enough is enough. We as dispatchers take responsibility for so much around us that we forget that we need help too. It takes time to really get to know your mind and soul. Part of this comes with time as we grow older, we learn more about ourselves and find what our limits are. It took me a long time to recognize how destructive my empathy could be to my mind and body. For years I suffered from wearing myself out to the point of complete exhaustion. As my father would say, I had a tendency to "burn the candle at both ends." Every person in my life who would come to me with a problem, I had to find a solution. No matter how hard it was or how much I had going on. I couldn't help myself. I would pile so much onto my plate that there was no room for anything else, but because I felt the pain of those problems so strongly I had to do something to fix it even when I had nothing left.
Overcoming the urge and desire to fix everything we come across is not easy, and I still struggle with it every day. I have to remind myself that the world will continue spinning even when I take a break. Listen to your body, it often will tell you there is a problem even when your brain thinks everything is okay. Take time each day to sit in silence and just breathe. Drink lots of water. Exercise and listen to music. Spend some time with yourself. We make time for everyone else in our lives, but we forget that we cannot fix problems when we are not at 100%. In a profession where someone's worst day is our everyday, we have to remember that all that pain cannot live within us. Find your release in a new hobby, or even an old hobby that you have forgotten. Remember that it is okay to not be okay, and if you are not okay then you should ask for help. Others ask us for help daily and we supply it, we are not exempt from needing help. As an empath, the emotions of others fill my existence, but through practice, patience, and self reflection I have learned my limits.