Judith Orloff

Now's the time where I share a tidbit of evidence-based advice for how we over thinkers can get out of our own heads this week.

This one comes from a psychiatrist named Dr. Judith Orloff, who is the author of a book called The Genius of Empathy.

It's a really simple tip for how to interrupt ruminative thought spirals, but I thought it was really sweet.

She shares this tip in her book and also in an article that I found on Psychology Today called How to Combat Overthinking.

But I think that – but to your point, like he's right though, right? Like we have to be able to discern.

I would point people to Judith Orloff's work and she did a wonderful book called The Empath Survival Guide.

She's a psychiatrist and an empath, and she has this wonderful book that helps people sort of gauge when the empathy might be becoming pathological and some of the somatic things that we can pay attention to.

And, you know, Dr. Romney's talked about this, too, and I completely agree with the fact that – That overextension of empathy is often a trauma symptom because a healthy development to the self, meaning that we learned early on how to discern between self-protection and when it's safe to be empathic, that never really gets developed.

We can be compassionate.

I can sit beside you, Mark, and hold space for you without going inside you emotionally and sort of carrying that with you.

And I think for people who have that trauma there, it's like they don't know how to as Judith Orloff talks about, kind of untether from that person's baggage.

So it becomes this really messy self-abandonment that happens.

And we will end this episode.

So a little angel affirmation and I'm going to do another empath empowerment card from Dr. Judith Orloff.

She's an empath

doctor.

And there's nothing I love geeking out about more than... my relationships and dissecting them like almost like anthropologically like almost like from like a like a sociological lens where it's like okay and you grew up in this way and i grew up in this way and then we connected like it's it's just intoxicating to me so thank you for taking this tangent with me because i think that it's i think it's important for people listening as well who may be identifying in either of those identities or somewhere along the spectrum to to understand relationship and what relationships can look like and feel like.

Like we'd recently had Judith Orloff on the show.

Um, I don't know if you're familiar with Judith Orloff, but she's a, um, a psychiatrist and an empath and her work revolves around like supporting yourself as an empath.

And

she basically said like, by the way, like you don't actually have to be in a relationship.

I'm listening to The Empath's Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People.

This is by Judith Orloff, and the difference between having empathy, which means you feel for people, like a friend calls you and says, "I broke my toe," for example.

You say, "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that," versus being an empath.

Being an empath means you actually feel people's energy and people's emotions and their physical things.

That's Emily.'" So thank you, friend.

I started listening to it.

Judith Orloff narrates.

She's doing a great job.

And I should

introduce them to Dr. Judith Orloff.

I've had her on my podcast, but she is a New York Times bestselling author, but she is a clinical psychiatrist who uses intuition in her practice as well.

So she'd be a great resource for those people.

They did.

They both validated the concept of hyper-selectivity, they both explored the empath connection, and they even both referenced Judith Orloff's psychological work on highly sensitive people.

So the intellectual destination was identical.

But the texture of the journey was radically different.