Yes, all empaths are sensitives, not all sensitive people are empaths, though.
Crowds are...difficult.
Most people try to downplay what they are feeling. Not just to others, but even to themselves. We all, with a very few exceptions, actually feel things very strongly. Many learn very early on to minimize those feelings. That doesn't eliminate them, it means that they have learned to hide from them, basically.
Empaths literally feel what others are feeling...even when those people have learned to hide from their own feelings. So when I am somewhere there are a lot of people, I may feel a multitude of (often conflicting) emotions from others. Even those who do not acknowledge those feelings themselves. That is, indeed, overwhelming.
But that can be true if I am with one person who feels something deeply themselves, or a couple who are fighting, say...I will literally feel both sides of their argument and hurts. As a kid, I would agonize over my parents' arguments. My brothers would roll over and go to sleep, my folks would each have their bitch and then they'd go to sleep. I would not sleep. I couldn't set aside the genuine pain/anger/whatever I felt from each, and I could usually see things from both sides, too...something most cannot when they are arguing. Even when I couldn't see it from both sides, I could feel it.
In a crowd, there are random feelings picked up from strangers and there is no background as to the whys of those feelings, just the raw emotion. Multiply that by however many are there...
Excellent explanation! I wonder how much of that happens on an auric level? Well, probably all of it, I guess. Anton Mesmer (the man whose experiments led to James Braid's development of hypnotism) used what he called "animal magnetism" to heal. I've experienced it to some extent myself. Your original answer brought it very much to mind. Thanks for sharing.
I think of auras as the colors some say they can see surrounding people. All I know is what I feel, or things I see or know before they happen.
I had to look him up...interesting...he is where we get the word mesmerise from.We do have an electrical system in our bodies, so magnetism would come into play. How it all works, I don't know. I kill watches, affect electrical and electronic devices and have even affected street lights. But, as I said, I don't know how it all works.
There's been quite a bit of research of late that contradicts the 'classical' view - that emotions are like brute responses and that without rationality humans are merely emotional, reactive, uncontrollable entities: one of the great narratives of western civilisation, you know how it goes.
But the research has not shown any consistent or physical fingerprint for any emotion. Nor is there uniformity in how people react to emotional triggers like anger or fear, and that they are not universal but differ from culture to culture. They are not triggered; you create them. They emerge as a combination of the physical properties of your body, a flexible brain that wires itself to whatever environment it develops in, and your culture and upbringing.
I've become more positively emotional in recent years & for good reasons, so yes they lift me. But I believe our emotions are fed by our state of mind, surroundings & experiences, of course there all linked. Thanks to a previous life, I learnt that I can completely turn my emotions off in order to survive. In saying that I paid the price for it & it eventually did come back to bite me.
Benedict Arnold 