Can you feel what others around you are feeling? Are you sensitive to your surroundings? When you lay your hands on someone, do your hands know right where to go to help that person? Perhaps you are an empath. If you are an empathetic person, you've likely known for some time that you are different from most of the people around you. You've probably been accused of being too sensitive or overly emotional your whole life. Here are 11 things I've known to ring true about my sensitivity:

1. We need our alone time.

We care so much about how others feel, but these are the few quiet moments we have when finally there are no one else's feelings to worry about but our own. They're the moments we have to ourselves when we try to understand exactly what it is we're feeling and why. We're not trying to be distant or push you away, we're trying to prevent ourselves from becoming overwhelmed by how we feel.

2. We feel others' pain more than we feel our own.

We suffer when we see the people we love suffer. Their pain becomes our pain. We can't stand to see them upset and we'll do anything to make it better. When those around us are happy, we're happy. The emotions we're surrounded by are contagious; we catch your sadness like we catch a cold, which is exactly why your well-being is so important to us.

3. We hate when people tell us we're taking something personally.

We put our whole heart into things that matter to us, and the things that matter to us also matter to those we care about. We make ourselves feel good by doing things for you. We don't measure importance in the amount of time and energy it took for us to do something. What's important to us is how the things we do make you feel. So when we do something in an effort to make you feel amazing, and you provide negative criticism in return, it makes us feel like shit, so yes we take it personally.

4. Our passion often blinds us to logic.

Sometimes we do things impulsively because we're listening to our hearts and not our heads, but we'd rather live life passionately than logically. Logic to us is something that attempts to quiet our excitement.

5. We react to things strongly.

Our reactions are a very straight-forward and overt reflection of our feelings. If we're upset, you'll know. If we're happy, you'll know that too. We smile from ear-to-ear and laugh until we can't breathe, but we also cry until our eyes become swollen and there are no Kleenex left. We're not "over-reacting," we're reacting in the only way we know how.

6. We're believers.

We hope and believe that everything happens to us and those around us for a reason. This is often how we find comfort in the tragic things that inexplicably happen, but it is also how we find bliss in the wonderful things. We don't attempt to figure out why, we just believe it happened for the best, because the best is what we continuously hope for.

7. We try to communicate our feelings, but you might not understand them.

You know we have feelings, but you don't know just how many we have, and it's difficult for us to communicate all of them. We can talk about what we're feeling, but when you ask why, that's when we fail to answer. Know that we're trying, it's just hard.

8. We love to help you with your problems, but we aren't the best at solving our own.

When it comes to your problems, we're all ears and will always have advice to give, but our own problems are something we don't like to talk about. It's partly because we don't want our problems to be your burden, but we also don't want to hear the truth about what we have to do to fix them. We are often open to listen and advise your misgivings simply to avoid dealing with our own.

9. The little things matter.

We pay attention to the details you might overlook. Call it "over-thinking," but we see it as observant. We pick up on small behaviors that show us how others are feeling. When someone is quieter than usual, we don't think "Oh, they're just tired." We think something is wrong, and will do what we can to figure out what it is, and how to make it right.

10. Our sensitivity is not weakness.

The extent to which we feel our emotions does not make us incapable of recognizing when those emotions are being manipulated or taken advantage of. We're not pushovers. We don't think to make others unhappy or see others be unhappy, but we are completely capable of understanding when others' actions are the cause of our unhappiness, and we're not scared to walk away when they do. Our sensitivity has a lot to do with the strength we have to remove ourselves from unhealthy situations.

11. We will love you with everything we have.

Everything we do in life we do with our whole hearts, and our relationships are no exception. You will never feel a love that is half-empty; we make sure you feel a love that's full.