The Art of Empathy (27 page)

Everything we're looking at suggests that good sleep is vital for your health, your emotional balance, your cognitive abilities, and your well-being. So my questions are: How sleep-smart is your lifestyle? And how sleep-supportive is your bedroom?

As you observe your bedroom again, look at it in terms of protecting your sleeping body from light, noise, extremes in temperature, and commotion. If there's a lot going on when you're sleeping, your body will still have to be in a receptive mode, and that means you won't have a sensory break or a chance to fully relax at night. That's a problem, but it's a problem you can address with good sleep hygiene. Creating darkness with the use of blackout curtains is pretty easy, but what if some of the light sources emanate from within your bedroom itself? If you have a TV or computer in your bedroom, Dement would tell you to take them out (most sleep researchers suggest that your bedroom should be focused on sleep and sex, and nothing else). But if that's not workable, at the very least, cover your electronics at night so that none of the lights shine on you while you sleep. Also, if you have a glowing clock, turn it to the wall or cover it.

Noise is somewhat harder to deal with, but earplugs can help, as can moving your bed away from windows, doors, or walls that you share with noise sources. However, if one of the noise sources is your snoring mate, know that snoring is often a sign of sleep problems in itself, and it can interfere with sleep for both of you. In his 2012 book
Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep,
journalist David K. Randall reports that many married couples who sleep
separately report feeling better because they no longer have to spend uncomfortable nights struggling with mismatched sleep patterns, snoring, kicking, or blanket-and-pillow requirements that simply don't mesh. Randall reports that there is some loss of intimacy when couples sleep apart—men reported feeling lonelier about nighttime privacy than women did (these were heterosexual couples). Some counselors suggest that partners who sleep apart should set aside time for cuddling, skin-to-skin contact, chatting, and lying down together to reconnect, because even if their shared sleeping times were miserable for both of them, cosleeping can be very important for intimacy and empathy.

Commotion in the bedroom will also be an issue if you have young children (who often love to spend a part of each night in their parents' bed, flailing their limbs around and heating up the entire bedroom) or if you allow your pets to sleep with you. Sleeping with children is an important bonding experience, and every parent has his or her own boundaries around cosleeping. I simply ask you to look at the quality of your sleep. If it's not good, perhaps find a way for your child to sleep in a bed near yours rather than in your bed with you. It's not the same, but it may help both of you get much-needed sleep. It's the same with pets. Some people feel more relaxed with their pets in the bed, even if their sleep is regularly disturbed.

As you consider your sleep needs, know that you can choose to make your bed into a social gathering space, but that will probably reduce the quality of your sleep. If that trade-off is worthwhile for you, then I support you in making it. However, empath to empath, I would ask whether the trade-off is
truly
something you have chosen. If it is—if a bed full of pets or kids or a snoring, kicking mate is necessary for your happiness—then no matter how much sleep you lose, I'm all for it. But if the social nature of your bed is a function of runaway healing and hyperempathy—where you can't say no to the needs of others, and you wouldn't dream of turning off your receptivity, even when you sleep—then I'm going to raise a red flag and ask you to look at this situation very carefully. We'll focus on the often swashbuckling and self-abandoning nature of empathic relationships in the next chapter, but for now, remember that
self-care and concern for others must and should coexist.
Your sleep quality, your privacy, and your comfort have direct effects on all six aspects of your empathic capacities and all six dimensions of your emotional style. Sleep is a magical healing balm, and your bedroom can be a nightly recharging station for your body and your well-being; so please take your sleep hygiene seriously. Thank you!

WHEN HEALTHY EATING GOES WRONG

In the area of self-care, many of us can be pretty unfocused about our relaxation practices, our art practices, our mindfulness practices, our exercise, and our sleep hygiene. This lack of self-care is a fairly common tendency that's not restricted to empaths—pretty much everyone could do a better job with self-care practices. However, in the area of diet and eating behaviors, I've noticed that highly empathic people can sometimes swing in the opposite direction. For many sensitive and hyperempathic people, an overly focused and rigidly ideal dieting behavior called
orthorexia
is almost an occupational hazard.

Your diet and nutrition are vital aspects of your health, your self-care, and your ability to greet each day with energy and focus. Eating a healthy and varied diet is a wonderful way to take care of yourself. However, there's a form of obsessive, super-healthy eating that Dr. Steven Bratman saw among his patients and half-jokingly named
orthorexia nervosa.
⁴³
Bratman was making a connection between the intense health-food obsessions he saw in his patients and the intense food obsession-and-avoidance behaviors that characterize the eating disorder
anorexia nervosa.

The idea of orthorexia caught on and is a very helpful concept, especially for sensitive and empathic people who don't currently have many other self-care skills beyond controlling their diets. In the empathy inventory in the first chapter, I included a question about the effects that food and changes in diet have on you, because I notice that highly empathic people are often deeply food sensitive. Foods affect some people very strongly, and it's natural to be careful with and choosy about which foods you eat. But for empaths, food often gets valenced into distinct camps, where some foods are toxic, addictive, and frankly evil, while other foods are exquisite, restorative, and miraculous. As a former orthorexic, I've seen that extreme healthy eating can be a way to create strong boundaries around food that may act as a kind of surrogate protection from problems that don't have anything to do with food at all.

We all use comfort food to soothe ourselves after a rotten day, or when we're lonely, or when we're anxious or angry or bored. Food is delightful, and it can be a surrogate for just about anything—love, happiness, friendship, emotional regulation, relaxation, freedom . . . anything. What I notice in extreme healthy eating is that food can become not just a comfort but also a kind of magical talisman that creates order, structure, and the appearance that you're managing your life and taking top-notch care of yourself. The problem is that orthorexia isn't self-care; it's an obsession. The way you can
tell the difference is to look at the rest of your life. If your eating behaviors are standing in for other forms of self-care or if they're taking a tremendous chunk of your time, just stand back and take an empathic look at your kitchen, your medicine cabinet, and your refrigerator.

In your anthropological observation of your kitchen, I asked: Are your cupboards and refrigerator filled with foods you love, or is there more of a mishmash of things you
should
eat but don't actually like? Does your kitchen nourish and support the real lives of the people who live in and gather at the house? If not, why not? When I consult with people, I ask about their eating, their exercise, their sleep, their emotions, their art practice, the quality of their relationships, their work life, and their social justice work. We focus on areas where there is trouble or confusion. In many cases, people report trouble in every area but their eating, which leans into an orthorexic condition that they actually view with pride. It's almost as if they're saying, “The trouble in the rest of my life is clearly an aberration, because look how perfectly I'm eating!”

I don't usually address the eating first, because it's often a lifeline and a surrogate. I address the rest of the situations and help the person develop skills, set boundaries, regulate emotions, find an art practice, and support his or her health with sleep and gentle exercise. When orthorexia is active, I suspect that I'm looking at a life in turmoil. Here in this book, empath to empath, we can talk about this frankly, but I want you to be very careful if you discover orthorexia in yourself or others. If you see extreme healthy eating; magical foods (that change regularly); endless herbs, vitamins, tinctures, potions, remedies, cleansing and purging practices; and unusual healing modalities, please put your anthropologist's hat back on. Look around and identify whether this obsessive dietary behavior is standing in for healthy sleep, self-care, self-love, love from others, healthy relationships, a happy family, meaningful work, safety, empathic skills, healthy exercise, an art practice, Emotional Regulation skills, stability, or hope itself. If orthorexia
is
acting as a surrogate, let the dietary behavior be as you work on those other things.

Sometimes, orthorexia might exist in a person whose life is otherwise healthy. It could be a situation ignited by true food sensitivities that get intensified by peer pressure and the hypnotic quality of compulsive health seeking itself. Once you get into miracle foods, for instance, you could spend years in search of the perfect berry or the perfect herb. Orthorexia is often a socially learned obsessive-compulsive behavior, and it is possible for it to exist
in an otherwise healthy life. (I haven't seen that situation yet, but I'm still looking, and I don't want to rule it out.) If you find orthorexia in yourself or others, and you empathically study the conditions that surround it and
don't
find trouble, then fine. Let it be. If you're the orthorexic person, gently focus your Einfühlung capacities on your eating and ask yourself what's going on. If you have an otherwise balanced orthorexic in your life, you can practice grounding and refocusing yourself when your orthorexic friend starts extolling the virtues of special Andean mold tinctures, magic water, and massive quantities of this year's miraculous leafy greens.

I grew up in the 1970s in the alternative healing culture of Northern California, where orthorexia was and still is a required social behavior. A lot of people outside the culture laugh, criticize, or mock the people within it, but as an insider, I can tell you that most of my peers were highly sensitive people, outsiders, and hyperempaths who were never comfortable in the conventional world. In many cases, these unusual people found their first sense of belonging, their first true relief from their symptoms and hypersensitivities, and their first sense of hope in the outsider beliefs and orthorexic extremes of the alternative healing culture. And nowadays, many orthorexic practices have moved into the mainstream, where this year's magical food gets inserted into chips and sodas (acai berry coconut water, anyone?), and people at the grocery store talk casually about fasting and cleansing. The benefits of orthorexia, which give people some sense of control over their bodies and hence their lives, can be valuable for just about anyone.

When I challenged my own orthorexia, I swung to the opposite pole—and I absolutely do not suggest that anyone follow my lead. I burnt all of my health and diet books on a pyre (this is huge; I revere books and don't ever write in them or even bend their pages); I stopped taking all of my vitamins, herbs, and tinctures; and I stopped fretting over the perfection of my meals. And nothing happened. Nothing at all. I didn't feel worse; I didn't feel better—my digestion didn't change, my skin didn't change, my sleep didn't change. Nothing happened. But I did soon become aware of the multiple sources of misery in my life, which I had ingeniously hidden from myself with obsessive decades of extreme health behaviors. Orthorexia is awesome for hiding painful issues from yourself!

So be gentle if you discover orthorexia in yourself or others. It may be a surrogate for any number of currently uncontrollable or seemingly unobtainable (yet vital) aspects of a truly healthy life. It may also be a specific
response to hyperempathy, and for people with few empathy-moderating skills, orthorexia may be a lifesaver. When orthorexia is active, gentleness, empathy, and compassion are called for.

DEVELOPING BODILY SOURCES OF STABILITY, COMFORT, AND EMPOWERMENT

I support any practice that helps sensitive and empathic people feel comfortable and empowered, which is why I don't challenge orthorexia in people who consult with me. If it's helping, I say let it help. However, when empathic people are able to ground themselves and focus on their inner lives, on their own emotions, and on their empathic skills, they'll often become able to question any obsessive or compulsive practices they may have. This is great, but because obsessive and compulsive practices exist for a reason, suddenly halting them can be a shock to the system. This is especially true with physical practices that stand in for things like Emotion Regulation, grounding, boundary setting, relaxation, self-love, healthy relationships, meaningful work, or hope. Simply ceasing a practice like this is rarely a good idea, and it can actually make your body feel stripped of its defenses and resources.

Luckily, there's a wonderful and simple practice that I derived from the Somatic Experiencing therapy, created by trauma-healing expert Dr. Peter Levine.
⁴⁴
This practice can help you find healing resources inside yourself. You can perform this practice anywhere, and you can complete it in less than a minute—or you can extend it into a luxurious practice and take as long as you like. It's called
resourcing.