I’m a positive person—I see the bright side of situations and the good in everyone. However, sometimes my days consist of me shaking with intense emotion, and texting close friends asking if they’re okay, because someone is having a bad day, and I can feel it.

Other days, I’m at the grocery store, and I’ll pass a woman picking out her canned corn, and I will become extremely upset and irritated for no reason. Even though these emotions aren’t mine, I feel them as if they are.

This is just the day in the life of an empath.

Empaths have the ability to perceive others and are impacted by other people’s energy. You can feel the positive and negative auras and emotions of those around you, without being told—it’s almost like a superpower.

It feels so good to help someone work out their feelings, and that’s easy to do when you feel them, too. Empaths make good listeners because of that, and can easily become close with everyone on an emotional level. It also makes you neutral in many situations, because you can understand both sides.

On the other hand, when someone is incredibly furious or upset, those emotions latch onto you, even if you feel on top of the world. Being an empath makes it easy to put your own feelings aside to help others with theirs, mostly because sacrificing your own feelings is often uncontrollable.

It isn’t just about knowing when people are happy or sad. It’s feeling the deep emotions surrounding you—emotions you might not even be able to explain. The ability to feel can hurt you by engulfing you in too many intense, negative emotions at once, leading to anxiety or depression.

When you walk into a room, you get a flood of emotions. If you’re not in the mood to deal with them, you can try to ignore them. But most of the time, you end up picking them apart and attempting to help. Something as simple as watching the news can also be a challenge because you feel as though you’re right there in the center of a disaster. This makes you very compassionate, but often you’re too involved in situations you aren’t even a part of.

It takes time to learn how to switch off this power because going anywhere or hearing anything becomes extremely exhausting. For this reason, empaths typically enjoy the outdoors or quiet environments, taking time to reset. You need to learn how to separate the emotions of others from your own emotions for your own sanity. It’s not always easy to get out of someone else’s head.

Empaths are strong individuals with large, open hearts, and everyone could follow in their footsteps and add more empathy to their practice of giving and receiving love.