@sarahsweets I have not seen you active and I hope you are ok with all that's going on. I have noticed that you do spend time here on the boards where you post caring supportive things to others that are struggling. I thought about you last night when I watched my husband take time to set up an online meeting for all those who support each other one day at a time to stay sober. I walked by and could see different individuals talking and sharing how they have been trying to help those who are just beginning their path to living their lives sober. She was talking about everything that's been going on and how much stronger one needs to be to not use the one thing they self medicated with to "not feel". So many trying to find ways to reach out for support and offer support and some even call that need "someone" to comfort them and help them face all this challenge without self medicating. Due to all gatherings being closed, these individuals are trying to be creative and have meetings on line in video chats. It's nice to be able to see that, to see how people are helping and supporting and empathizing with others who struggle with the disease of alcoholism. With this lockdown taking place, I have been overhearing different conversations in a different way.

There is a respect for anyone who is working on learning to live their life sober giving them the right to have their own sense of a "higher power". I want to make sure that in all my responses to you that I am not saying to not have or believe in a higher power. What I have seen a lot of is how different individuals are engaging in "being empathetic" with others and showing respect for the challenge and their own personal sense of a higher power. I don't see them competing or engaging in tearing each other down. Most of their battle is within themselves. I have learned that a lot of these individuals have adhd and many also discover they are suffering from ptsd as well. Well, over the past 28 years of meeting many different "friends" my husband has made that are in the program, I have met a lot of individuals who have struggled within themselves and yet they are not "bad" people. Instead it's the disease they have combined with other life challenges that is "bad".

Recently someone threw something VERY mean at me, that I am unacceptible because I chose to forgive and learn about this disease and be a source of support even though I was hurt by what it does to someone. I have experienced that before in my life, I was "shunned" in very hurtful ways. And some did this shunning because they did not want to know THEY THEMESELVES also had a problem. I also noticed you had a thread where you apologized if you failed to be the right kind of supportive to others. Even though you struggle yourself, you do care about how your actions or words may have had a bad affect on others. You learned and embraced that step well. The truth is you can embrace empathy and have an empathetic personality that has absolutely NOTHING to do with paranormal or supernatural powers.

I did spend a lot of time here in your thread. And the reason I ended up doing that was because due to facing the challenges of what having a dyslexic brain and an adhd brainin someone I loved was something I had to learn about and I was guided and read a lot about these challenges so I did not punish someone for something they genuinely could not help and don't deserve to feel bad about.

Then, when I developed ptsd, I experienced these very vivid flashbacks that really frightened me. So I spent a lot of time and still do, reading about the brain and what is taking place in the brain itself that was causing me to experience these often very scary symptoms. I tried to pick up the pieces that were so badly destroyed in my life, tried to regain who I was. I would go out in my riding ring and work with a new pony training it and I would have these very real flashbacks of the pony I loved that I could not save. I did not know how to explain what I was experiencing at all, and I would just stop and put the pony away. I really frightened me and I did not know what to say or think about it. So, I began to read and read about the brain and why I was experiencing this. I would go into the barn and get feelings and visions of her in the stall I had set up for her and had these IV bags and all the time I was trying to feed her with syringes and talk to her. It was not a ghost, and it was not comforting at all, it was confusing and scarey.

@TunedOut, that's what my FIL has been experiencing when he sees my MIL sitting in the chair, that he gets so upset about he has to get up and leave the room, just the way I had to leave my riding ring. My FIL was traumatized by my MIL's passing, he really was taken by surprise by it because it was so sudden. And because I have read so much and learned so much about why I myself was experiencing that, I was able to help him understand it better, because it's not comforting, instead it's scary.

My contribution to this thread isn't about denying anyone how they embrace certain beliefs. However, there are ways these beliefs can be distorted and unhealthy. One of those distortions is in fact the kind of response I myself have gotten simply because I shared what a professional therapist explained to me about myself. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything "paranormal" or anything to do with possessing some kind of special powers at all.

One of the "distortions" I have noticed is when someone like my sister who is emotionally unstable decides to call themselves and empath when that's not the case but instead the desire is to FEEL she has some kind of superior power. My sister actually manipulated both my parents and myself to think she was being "empathetic" when she literally denied the fact that my father's teeth were in need of care. My sister kept saying "there is no money" and she even refused it when my older brother and I offered to pitch in and take my father to see a dentist because we were concerned for his health. My sister who claims to have special powers believes only SHE can determine things. What I did not know was how at that time she was withdrawing thousands of dollars FOR HERSELF. Because she denied him that important care for her own selfish reasons, my father collapsed with pneumonia and his heart was weakened with is what neglecting poor dental health and gum disease can lead to especially in the elderly. And when my father had to be hospitalized I was banned from visiting him or being able to talk to any of the health care professionals. Yet, I did manage to talk to a nurse and I begged her to PLEASE tell the doctor to look at my father's teeth.

My older sister is all about the paranormal, the psychic and putting herself in a role of having these SPECIAL POWERS. She is twisted and has actually abused and hurt others all the while claiming only SHE has these empathic powers and can talk to ghosts and can experience "feelings" about things. She literally projects her own narcissistic behaviors and lies onto others. If her opinion or way of needing to see things is threatened? She will use anything she can to hurt and smear and use against that person and claim to be "this victim". With all this Coronavirus taking place? She doesn't care but insisted every item had to be removed that are mine and my brother's from my parent's home. My brother has repeatedly explained how he gave permission to my husband and I to act as his agents as he lives out of state. Also, my brother has been battling cancer and with the danger's of this virus he CANNOT travel, his cancer doctors have told him not to travel and to isolate himself. That is not anything this so called "empath" my sister clams to be CARES about or thinks about but instead has refused to allow us to get the last item from my parent's home for him. Well, SHE is psychic and has these SPECIAL powers, and everything she FEELS is true due to her "special powers" and "psychic abilities" and how she talks to ghosts so that's all that matters to her.

My husband has gotten individuals he knows from the program to help him, it's VERY, VERY unhealthy for me to get near my sister physcially. My sister has treated these individuals absolutely horrifically. Ironically the latest person to help my husband was woman in the program that does odd jobs for him here and there, they tend to help either other that way in the program too. I had tried to help that way by paying someone to come here and help with the barn work to help the individuals have a sense of purpose while working on their sobriety. When I met this woman friend from the program, she reminded me a lot of you sarahsweets tbh, she is a nice person. I felt HORRIBLE that she was going to meet and experience this horrible monster of a sister I have. The person in my life who claims to be psychic and the true empath yet always the VICTIM and always needing the drama, drama, drama and wrapping herself in all this paranormal BS is going to leave yet another person with OMG, WOW, and may even end up triggered. That's what I see after my husband and anyone he finds to help him comes back expressing. Always that deeply disturbed look about them. The last guy got so triggered by my sister he talked about calling upber to get away from her. It's the way she gets right into your space, so negative and intrusive, for guys that want to turn around and punch her, ofcourse they don't but she is relentlessly so negative and intrusive.

I think it's important to be careful about embracing the paranormal and having some kind of power. I have seen how distorted and unhealthy it can get. For myself, I have done a lot of reading and learning about the brain. The brain is a very complex organism and there are reasons for lots of things we experience that have nothing to do with paranormal. What I experienced has nothing to do with paranormal either. I would be literally crazy as a loon by now if I embraced that. I choose to understand the whys instead of choosing to look at things like my older sister who is getting more and more toxic and delusional and deluded.

Things are not black and white, even though some find it easier to look at things that way. I prefer to learn about the brain and understand some whys instead making things up or embracing something that could simply throw someone into looking at things in delusional ways. Truth is a lot miracles can happen that don't have anything to do with the paranormal or some kind of supernatural. It's more due to this amazing thing called the human brain.