One of my observations so far as a clinician has been that many women on the autoimmune and hypermobility spectrum trend more towards hyper-empathy.

What do we mean when we refer to the hyper-empath?

The ability to express empathy occurs on a spectrum from low to high, the result of a number of different factors… legacy effect from previous generations passed down, genetics, environmental factors in your formative years.

An explanation for the higher prevelance of autoimmune disorder among women?

One of the reasons I believe women are more prone to autoimmune disease is because they tend to be more empathic than men. We often speak about different facets of what has been referred to as the exposome – differences in hormones, gut motility and terrain, michrochimerism, etc. But the spectrum of empathy should not be left out and in my view may be the biggest factor.

Some of the attributes of the hyper-empathic individual:

• You tend to be more introvertive.
• You struggle saying no ; everyone else comes before you.
• Everyone calls on you with their problems
• You let others be lousy to you.
• Your emotional responses are out of proportion to the stimulus (crying at the Kodak commercials).
• Sensitivity and Brooding… lots of brooding and sitting in your emotional responses.
• You see colors when you hear music or can taste words spoken or read, we call this “Synesthesia.”
• You can feel the emotions of others ; often physically in the gut or just under the sternum.
• You might even have clairvoyant capacities.

A weakness?

Empathy is often thought to be a weakness, but I look at it as a superpower. Many of these women tend to be extremely intellectual or gifted in certain domains. Exceptional capabilities in a few domains come with a cost, deficiency in other domains.

Anyone like M. Night Shyamalan movies? Unbreakable? Split? Glass? Add those to your watch list… they’re a lot fun.

Anyway, Bruce Willis, Samuel L Jackson, and James McAvoy all have extreme capabilities. Willis can withstand almost any physical trauma, but crumbles if he gets wet. Jackson has extreme cognitive capacity, but his bones are literally glass. McAvoy’s character can become “The Beast” but is psychologically but is crippled by dissociative identify disorder.

And so too is it with the hyper-empath… extraordinary abilities to see, feel, taste and hear like few can. But with it comes weak links.

Bad vibes… the water, the glass, the psychogenic soft spot

These women in my view are tuning fork for bad energy and bad vibes. And I wonder what all of the possibilities are for intervention provided my clinicians like myself. But a no brainer is avoiding that bad energy.

I posted a video on tik-tok a few months ago, sharing my experience of a woman with Sjogren’s disease. I was speaking about fatigue in Sjogren’s with a neurologist and ophthalmologist at this event. She had approached me at the end of by blabber and said.

“I am in remission.”

“That’s awesome. What did you do?”

“I kicked my asshole boyfriend out of my apartment.”

That really sunk in that day.

The comments to the video posted numbered over 1,000. It didn’t matter what the disease label was. These women removed a source of bad energy from their lives and ended up off medication or dramatically improved.

Are you a hyperempath with an autoimmune disease? Are you paying attention to the bad vibes in your life?