10 Signs You Became An Empath After Growing Up In A Chaotic Home
Being an empath is a coping mechanism, one that you use to manage the instability that surrounds you.
ChrisGhinda | Shutterstock Empathy can be defined as sharing and understanding the emotional experiences of others. It allows us to look at other people's experiences with compassion, even when their lives are vastly different from our own.
Having empathy is an essential part of connecting with other people and creating lasting relationships. It translates into having higher quality friendships, stronger social skills, and overall life satisfaction, yet sometimes, an enhanced sense of empathy can bring negative consequences.
While they're not always obvious, the signs you became an empath after growing up in a chaotic home present themselves in the way you relate to others and interpret your own emotional well-being. Being raised in a chaotic household often leads people to become empaths as a survival skill.
Here are 10 signs you became an empath after growing up in a chaotic home
1. You're hyper-vigilant about your surroundings
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As a child, you learned to navigate instability by predicting your parents' emotional state. You paid close attention to non-verbal cues, like if your dad's shoulders were tense or if your mom was sighing more than usual. These little indicators let you know whether or not they were in an emotionally stable place.
Living in a hyper-vigilant state as an empath means you can quickly parse out someone's emotions, even if their words don't match their actions. Your heightened emotional awareness often means you're always on alert, making it hard to relax or decompress, even when you're not in danger. If you were raised in a chaotic environment, it means you couldn't rely on your parents to meet your emotional or practical needs.
Childhood trauma therapist Patrick Teahan revealed that being raised in a chaotic family system deeply affects people long after they've left their childhood homes. He shared that kids from chaotic homes often become adults who are "emotionally in transit," meaning that they have a hard time recognizing and attending to their own feelings. Teahan noted that processing what they've lost and grieving the lack of consistency and stability is a crucial part of healing from growing up in a chaotic home.
2. You try to fix people
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You feel responsible for everyone else's well-being and think you have to make others happy to maintain a sense of peace. You believe that fixing other people's brokenness is your job, and once you fix them, they'll be able to give you the love you crave.
Yet the truth is, we can't be responsible for anyone's feelings but our own. If someone isn't willing or able to do the work to heal, they won't show up for you the way you want them to, no matter how hard you try to make them better.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula asked Teahan, "What do you consider to be the definitive symptom of childhood trauma?" The answer Teahan gave was direct yet heartbreaking. "It's about trying to get a difficult person to be good to us," he said.
"So many people... tried to get the parent to love them," Dr. Ramani explained. "[And] then went to a series of relationships in adulthood where the entire relationship was about getting that dysfunctional, harmful, difficult, toxic person to be good to them."
Sadly, taking on the role of the "fixer" in your relationships will leave you feeling alone and unloved. Yet Teahan shared that the answer to fixing people lies within yourself.
"The missing ingredient is our own goodness and our own power," he concluded. Letting go of what you can't control (other people's emotions) gives you back your power. It builds up your sense of agency, so that you get to be the one to decide whether you stay in a relationship that doesn't serve you, or whether you move on to something better.
3. You need a lot of time alone
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If you need a lot of time to yourself, you likely became an empath after growing up in a chaotic home. You tend to feel emotionally drained in crowded places, since you're taking on the emotions of people around you. As a result, you require extensive solitude to reset and rebalance yourself.
Therapist By Charlie Huntington, M.A. noted that there are different forms of empathy that impact people in different ways. Someone who has cognitive empathy understands other people's emotional states, yet there's a sense of distance. Someone who has affective empathy lets other people's emotions become their own emotions.
Being an affective empath can feel overwhelming, which is why you need to take time and space to be alone. Recalibrating your emotional state is hugely important for your well-being, so that you can navigate any overloaded emotions of your own.
4. You absorb other people's emotions
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"Due to heightened sensitivities to emotional and physical energy, it's a very common occurrence for empaths to take on the emotions of others and not even realize it," empath and author Christel Broederlow explained. "This can cause difficulty to distinguish what emotions belong to oneself or another."
She noted that strengthening your self-awareness and maintaining boundaries can provide a sense of emotional control and "the ability to determine whose emotions are whose, [which] will help the empath not get caught up in the outside emotions."
"Being an empath may seem like a burden. Your emotions can run high and cause anxiety and moodiness — but all of those feelings can be used to provide you with greater insights into life," Broederlow concluded. As an empath, protecting your inner peace is essential to taking care of yourself first.
5. You neglect your own needs
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Putting your practical and emotional needs on the backburner in order to take care of other people is not just a sign you became an empath as a result of your chaotic home, it's also a sign of having people-pleasing tendencies, which can ultimately lead to resentment and burnout.
As licensed clinical social worker Terry Gaspard explained, "Individuals develop a pattern of putting other people's needs before their own due to dysfunction in their family of origin." While breaking the pattern of self-neglect isn't easy, it is possible. Gaspard first advised people-pleasers to "Examine your childhood experiences and how you may have ignored your own needs to seek approval from others."
On a practical level, learning to say "no" and setting boundaries around caregiving is part of freeing yourself from people-pleasing habits. On an emotional level, Gaspard shared that believing in your own worth is essential to caring for yourself. "Believe in yourself and work on self-acceptance," she said. "You are worthy of love and all life has to offer."
6. You have heightened intuition
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Because you have heightened intuition, your initial instincts about other people tend to be correct, since you learned to tune into other people's emotions to keep yourself safe.
Broederlow noted, "Empaths have a deep sense of understanding emotional significance that's unwavering and unquestionable. Their emotional knowledge comes with pinpoint accuracy in reading a person or situation. They are capable of reading others without obvious cues and can describe what's really going on beneath the surface."
She noted the positive aspects of this type of intuition, sharing that "Empaths [are] emotionally connected to others in a profound way. They are able to read the significance of complex emotions and are expert listeners." Yet it's also valuable for empaths to know where to draw the line and know when to tune others out, so they can tune into themselves.
7. Your sensitivity is in overdrive
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If your sensitivity operates in overdrive, you pick up on what people aren't expressing outright, meaning that you can read the subtle energy that people send out without even knowing it.
Your ability to sense, understand, and absorb other people's emotions can leave you feeling emotionally exhausted, which directly impacts how you care for yourself. If you feel deeply fatigued or emotionally overwhelmed, it could be a sign that your senses are working in overdrive, and you need to take a step back to decompress.
Coming back from burnout isn't easy, but prioritizing your basic needs, like getting enough sleep, staying nourished and hydrated, and leaning on others for emotional support, can start you on your healing journey.
8. You have a tendency to overthink
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You have a tendency toward anxiety, which means you replay conversations, ruminate on the past, and over-analyze how other people feel. You might also project your anxieties into the future and imagine worst-case scenarios, which leave you feeling uneasy and destabilized in the present.
Practicing mindfulness can help you stay grounded in the moment. Learning to let go of what you can't control allows you to be with yourself in a healthy way. Instead of worrying about what might happen, being mindful means you accept things as they are, which can let your busy mind rest.
9. You're conflict avoidant
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Being conflict-avoidant is a sign you became an empath after growing up in a chaotic home. If you had emotionally unstable parents who fought often, the idea of confrontation might spike your stress and make you feel unsafe. Since you tend to take on people's emotions, being in conflict with others often makes you feel agitated and even angry.
Avoiding conflict might mean that you step aside and don't stand up for yourself in emotionally-charged situations. Yet doing so won't solve the issues at hand, and your sense of resentment will only grow bigger over time. Remind yourself that you deserve to be treated with respect, even in conflict, and that expressing your needs doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you're human.
10. You struggle to let go of toxic relationships
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If you have a hard time letting go of toxic relationships or removing yourself from situations that don't serve your best interests, this pattern of behavior stems from your deep-seated belief that you can fix people. You have endless wells of hope that people can change, even when you're the one managing their emotions for them.
Being able to recognize and release toxic relationships isn't easy, yet it's a skill that you can cultivate over time. Listening to what you need and not compromising yourself for others will give you the inner strength you need to move on from people who can't give you the love and care you deserve.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.