What's the difference?

[palimpsest]

Between empathy and telepathy? I understand them as information, but when doing psychometry for example I say I can feel the symbol under the card and think its name, but because they're both needed for me to describe how I perceive the information... as one, somehow.

So I'm trying to separate them a little better. What I got so far is emotions are too primitive to be images or words-- but are abstract "thoughts" that can't be visualized or said, really just very complex emotions?

Is it that emotions cause physical reactions you can't control like palpitations or sweating, while thoughts are more subtle? But you can't really control which neurons fire in your brain even if nobody else can see it-- and that's a physical reaction... that's actually happening with emotions too... and psions get telepathic overload symptoms too right?

Or is it a balance of energy and information? Which is why emotions let you lift a car that would crush your baby, but thought can only maybe tell you where a lever can be found and wedged where the car puts the least weight on? But to me it's both thought and emotion that would tell me a baby's under the car in the first place. So is it just how you choose to react that can only deal with one or the other?

Or, why people are expected to control their own thoughts but can't be expected to feel other than what they feel (but my mom always says "happiness is a choice you make" and I can't say I've regretted what others call irrational tantrums, any more than I've regretted what others call a logical but wrong decision...)

Or is empathic information is only receptive, so you can't send somebody an emotion unless they're emotional receivers themselves (or you have to send them telepathic information that makes them feel something, instead of the emotion itself)?

Or I've heard of telepathic signals being sent and received in the head area, while empathic signals are received in the chest-- (I just... well... get 'em,) so is it supposed to be about sensory organs of psychic energy vortexes on the astral body, and level of reality or frequency of psi energy (like is it the frequency or substance of a wave of sound that makes it different from light waves?)

... but sorry if this has been posted before. I searched, but didn't find.

[AnimalGurl]

Well I think it all depends on how you try to seperate them.

I am a natural empath, but only became aware on how to use telepathy last summer. I think empathy is part of telepathy.

Telepathy is more about concepts, ex water: cold, wet, liquid (this would all be one concept of water)
Empathy is just that projecting and receiving feelings of others. I don't feel I receive the two any differently other than I often reflect other peoples emotions like my own if I don't shield myself.

I don't know about anyone else but I combine them when I communicate.

There can be lots of messages. For example "Person X gives me trouble"
Person x: My impression of the kind of person they are, how I feel about this person and anything else that I want to identify about them as an individual.
gives me: The impression that they cause something to happen, or they did something.
trouble: the most specific recent predicament they have put me through, general kinds of trouble they have caused in the past, and the emotions (how I feel about the trouble they have caused).

You can join ideas emotions and impressions together to form a overall concept that in language would be like a word. But since you are talking through the mind concepts can be changed and understood depending on the conversation, situation and isn't a term to be written in the dictionary. A concept just being based on the way you view things, you include as many impressions in the concept as possible to give more accurate information.

[GEOvanne]

empathy and telepathy is basicly the same thing.

just that empathy is what you call it when you deal with just emotions. but with telepathy you also pick up emotions along with thoughts

[Fearn]

I really love this question!

It all depends on what YOU think. Empathy is sometimes said to be a sub-form of telepathy, and telepathy is sometimes said to be a sub-form of empathy. In my opinion, they are just two separate skills. What is a thought? What constitutes an emotion?

[palimpsest]

Telepathy is more about concepts, ex water: cold, wet, liquid (this would all be one concept of water)
Empathy is just that projecting and receiving feelings of others. I don't feel I receive the two any differently other than I often reflect other peoples emotions like my own if I don't shield myself ... You can join ideas emotions and impressions together to form a overall concept that in language would be like a word. But since you are talking through the mind concepts can be changed and understood depending on the conversation, situation and isn't a term to be written in the dictionary. A concept just being based on the way you view things, you include as many impressions in the concept as possible to give more accurate information.

I understand emotions as concepts too, but I think I'm starting to get it... so it's more in the way these concepts are expressed, instead of perceived, that creates the distinction?

In my opinion, they are just two separate skills. What is a thought? What constitutes an emotion?

That's what I was wondering... your opinion must have come from experience with these skills being separate though (so it's in skill, not terms,)-- that experience I don't have, so I thought it was the same except that telepathy was remote (and I was wrong... hence confusion.)
Would you Fearn and GEOvanne be able to explain how different they are to you? I hope it would finally clarify things...

[AnimalGurl]

True you can think of emotions as concepts also I tend to think of them as the raw feeling.

I think it all depends who's looking at it. I am not sure if there is a place where you can draw a line between empathy and telepathy they can be so similar. If there is it is a really blurry line.

The way you express it can shape how the other person perceives it. I think it has a good deal to do with both, because you can project and receive both.