Okay, some clarification: If you're empathic or intuitive, you tend to absorb feelings. If others around you are denying those feelings, the feelings don't just go away. They get (to use a psychological term) projected--mostly onto you, if you're an empath. Then you feel anxious or sad or whatever the other person is denying in him/herself.

The classic example is the "crazy-maker"--and here's an explanation of that term, too. The "crazy-maker" totally denies that anything is going on with him (or her). But he ever-so-subtly provokes someone else (let's say his wife) to anger. He leaves his socks or his dishes lying around, or he compares her cooking to his mother's--whatever he unconsciously knows will send his wife into orbit. Then the wife reacts by getting cranky. "Hey, what's wrong with YOU?" he asks--genuinely innocently. "You must have PMS!"

Now, I'm not implying that all crazymakers are men--or that all men who leave their socks and dishes lying around are doing it to pick a fight. We all make accommodations for our spouses, and in good marriages, those accommodations are mutual and loving. But patterns of provoking others to anger, of giving mixed messages, or creating chaos, are crazy-making.

Does that clarify it? For another take on this, see the "Sponges and Mirrors" chapter in my book. It may be easier reading than this!