The skill of an Empath can be varied and the person's ability in their skill can have various degrees.
Some can do this while others can do that.
I don't call it a gift. I believe everybody has the ability, but many need to "train" to improve their skill.
It's based around the ability to sense or feel things in other people. Emotion based basically. Some only pick up emotion, some pick up illness as well. Others can pick up even more.
If I'm in tune (and some days I'm totally not LOL) I can pick up a single person who has a suffering of some kind - whether it be emotional or physical illness. I can can hone in on physical pain - tell a person where it is - but I can't tell them what's causing it.
I can pick up on deep emotion but the negative side of my ability to do this is that I take it on myself. I can end up dreadfully miserable via proxy. LOL
If I want to learn to harness my skill properly and control it successfully, I need to put a metal barrier up against embracing the emotion of others and making it my own.
For me, taking on another's emotion actually wears me down.
Oh, I know it's not "me" and the emotion stems from elsewhere, but trying to keep in touch with the fact that it's not my emotion can be difficult when it's too late.
Also, if I've had the misfortune of taking on someone else's emotion, I rarely know whose emotion it actually is... So I'm given no notice to throw a block up.
When my husband died I spent 3 days in my own emotional tsunami, which was completely normal. But after I'd "let out" my own grief - I took on someone else's. I suspect that the emotion I took on was actually that of my husband.
We lost him... But he lost us too.
Anyway, a good site to surf around is...
http://healing.about.com/cs/empathic/a/uc_empathtraits.htmThe above link is very informative. It says a lot more than I could ever say.
I'm non-practicing but that doesn't hide me from my ability to grab something that comes my way.
I'm also natural-born. I've not thought about it much, but I expect that if I was to enhance my skill and develop what is already there my ability would evolve into something far more.
