Seeking Guidance: Empathic Abilities Gone For Years

Until recently, I haven't much thought about my lost gift, but would like to explore the possibility of experiencing it again.

Quick Run Down:

When I was 13, I recognized that some of the things I was experiencing were out of the ordinary, but couldn't put my finger on on a name for it. Honestly, it was a REALLY hard time for me. I was just trying to get a grasp on my own adolescent emotions, which was terribly difficult while wrestling with all of the external stimuli occurring around me that I didn't understand. Shortly after, I made some bad decisions and started doing hard drugs to cope with my situation. At 13, I was doing an absurd amount of LSD. After about 9 months of this, there were terrible side effects including a chemical imbalance, OCD tendencies, and frequent panic attacks. My instability combined with my lack of understanding of my empathic gift made this incapacitating. I was diagnosed and medicated for this and rather quickly rectified this situation. Still not understanding what was happening to me and having only the guidance of a very traditional counselor, I was made to believe that I still needed to be medicated and had social anxiety.

To be clear, I was aware that it was MUCH more than just social anxiety. However, I was only 14, it was 1996, and I didn't readily have access to the internet. I could sense where people were without seeing them and before entering rooms, pick up on people's emotional states, and anticipate when someone had something urgent occurring, regardless of whether I could see them. It could be anything from them wanting to raise their hand in class, urgently needing to go to the bathroom, being upset about a situation, etc. I tried hard really hard to keep to myself and avoid eye contact with people, which seemed to help a bit.

Through high school, I started to learn to control and shield myself from my gift. It wasn't until my junior year that I could really enjoy it. I still had to reduce eye contact when walking down hall ways and entering large rooms, but was able to really enjoy interacting with those that I had grown to be comfortable spending time with. Friends started coming to me and the emotional stability of those within the latter years of high school were FAR more stable than the younger junior high years. Instead of being surrounded mostly by insecure and fragile individuals, I was surrounded by happy sexually charged teenagers. I know that sounds funny, but I can't explain to you how predominant and clear that became. Lol. Its SO strange knowing you're being sized up by someone and catching yourself react to it before you even know who it is. Or picking up on it happening all around me, in pertinence to others, as we all scurried between classes. Pinpointing emotional direction and categorizing what I was sensing became much easier. I became very proficient at helping people and recognizing when it was appropriate, which can be REALLY important to learn when you're inadvertently snooping through people's emotional states. Lol

In 2003 I met my wife and we were crazy in love. Not terribly relevant to the story, but it definitely made me more focused and aimed towards being a successful and steady individual. By then, the affects of my gift felt fairly tame in relation to the past. Perhaps I just had them well aimed and controlled. There's so many things taken for granted after that long. Reacting to things before they happen and sizing up the emotional states of individuals becomes as natural as noticing their clothing or if they got a new hair cut. Its not always that way. Big gatherings and busy grocery stores were always tough. Avoid eye contact and stay focused Lol. Doing things at night when there are less people definitely makes a difference.

Then, in January of 2005, I started to get a different feeling from my mom. Things seemed muddled and I had trouble reading her, so I'd find myself asking her how she was. She would just reassure me that she was tired. It was puzzling to me. I'd never experienced anything quite like it. So, I started coming around more and stopping by the house to check on her. I would sit down and visit with her and see if there was anything I could do to help. I didn't really know what else to do and it didn't get better. At the end of January, I got a phone call telling me that she had driven to work in a blouse and her slip and was acting very strange. They brought her to the hospital and ran a series of tests on her. In doing so, they found that she had an "Astrocytoma" in her brain. Its a tumor that looks like one of those "velcro-like burrs" you get on your sock and all those little spiky things grow outwards through the brain. They told me she might have a week to live.

I was devastated and soon as I ended the call, I had a complete and utter emotional breakdown. It absolutely filled me to the top. I've never been a big fan of hospitals, but had my wife take me there immediately. As I strode through the halls, I had no room for anyone else's emotions and felt nothing but my own grief, concern, and fears. When I got there, she didn't recognize me and I couldn't sense her emotional state at all. Little did I know that this wasn't a short term situation. I spent as much time with her as I could and she passed two days later. I don't know if anyone has ever been in charge of a funeral or had the difficult task of sorting out the remnants of someone's life, but there's not much room or time for grieving. I had to be tough and work with family to make sure things were quickly and properly addressed.

Oh. Quick story segway. The moment my mom passed, my wife was in the bath. She had two voices come greet her. One of them was clearly my mother. The other was another voice that was talking in an extremely familiar way with my mom, kind of bossing her about, and was using fairly southern expressions with some borderline vulgar words. They had a strangely casual conversation about making sure me and my brothers get along, that everything was going to be okay, and that our children were excellent people. My wife finished her bath and very cautiously approached me to tell me what she'd experienced. Neither of us could understand who the other voice was and I was a mixture of both skeptic and concerned about the whole thing. She hadn't shared that story with anyone, until we were hanging out with some of Mom's side of the family drinking wine and it somehow came out. My aunt VERY quickly identified the secondary voice as being my Grandma, whom I'd only met when she had Alzheimers. I really should have picked up on that. For story purposes, I left out the strange or remarkably coincidental fact that my mother passed on the same date that her mother died. February 2nd.

Since then, I've had no profoundly noticeable empathic experiences. I still have things occur that could arguably be linked to my gifts, but easily rationalized as a keen sense of intuition or situational awareness. I can still anticipate when certain things are going to happen or if someone is thinking about me or about to look in my direction. My emotional awareness of others is keen, but it doesn't stand out like it used to. On the other hand, I've been profoundly clear minded and emotionally grounded since then. A great sense of peace has come from everything. For that reason, I have not pushed hard to investigate the loss of my gift. Its almost as if I traded it for inner peace. I still can't help but wonder if I'm not doing myself and others a disservice by not pursuing my gift again though. I've looked all over for others in this situation, but its mostly those that are sick or got knocked in the head and lose it for no more than a few weeks. I haven't truly felt my gift in 8 years. I'm not sure how to proceed or if it's even a reasonable venture. Any feedback is welcome.

Thank you for your time.