I’m an empath. I didn’t know what this was until around the year 2005 when I attended a Hay House workshop and heard Dr. Judy Orloff go through a list of “symptoms” of empaths.
I said yes to every single one. Everything from struggling with depression, to weight gain, to having my mind swirl with what seemed like everyone else’s thoughts and feelings.
I was so grateful for that insight because for the first time I didn’t feel crazy. I had no idea that most of the thoughts and feelings I was carrying around within me, were other people’s. I didn’t know this was an intuitive gift, let alone how to use it in a powerful way.
But I wasn’t taught what to do with the gift. I had it. I could feel it. And I kept taking on people’s energy, emotions and thoughts thinking that was the compassionate thing to do to try to help others.
At times I felt so full of stuff that wasn’t mine, especially the challenging stuff, that I was suffocating. And I thought it was all mine. I thought I was messed up, I was broken and I was so overwhelmed that I just stayed stuck. What do I do with all of this? How do I choose joy when so many people are suffering?
I thought that in order to be a compassionate and kind person, I had to run this energy I was feeling through my body and energy field as a way to try to heal it.
In some spiritual circles, I was even told to take on the suffering of people as a way to heal it.
Guess what? That doesn’t work. Now you are suffering, you are judging the other person (or the world) as suffering and nothing changes. We just get sucked into the cycle of suffering.
Think about this for a second. When has it ever worked to heal someone or change the world by first judging energy as bad, wrong, or something that needs to be fixed, then running that energy through our empathic gifts, which usually means taking on that energy in some form?
Where’s the joy in that?
It takes a lot of energy and judgment to judge the world as suffering, or someone as less fortunate.
When our empathy goes to the side of feeling sad for someone’s circumstances as an automatic reaction, how are we BEing joy or a solution to the world?
What if our automatic judgment of someone or their life as sad, less fortunate or in other words “less than what we think they should be” is actually the thing that creates struggle in the world verses creating joy and possibilities?
How can we use our empathy as a true stand for positivity, joy and solutions for people and the planet?
Being aware of someone’s emotions or thoughts instead of identifying with them as our own is the first step. We can be aware of someone or something and simply notice it. Observe. Anything it brings up in you is YOURS to heal. Running the other person’s energy through your mind, heart or body doesn’t take suffering away from the world. It actually adds suffering to the world merely because you have to judge the person, the world or the circumstances as bad or wrong.
Does this mean we turn a blind eye to people or things we can be a contribution to? Of course not, it just means the energy in which we BE the solution is totally different.
The key to helping people and the world is to expand your joy to exponentially that others can’t help but see and create new possibilities for themselves.
When we buy into suffering and attempt to heal other’s suffering (our judgment of their suffering) through identifying it or running their energy through our own emotions or physical body, we don’t solve anything, but a few things do happen:
- We support the other person’s self judgment that they can’t create something new for themselves
- We downplay our magic and ability to create new possibilities
- We buy into and support scarcity
If you are a fellow empathy, here are a couple of steps that will help:
- Ask the energy you are feeling in your body or in your energy field, is it yours? If not, return to sender with full consciousness and love attached. Give it to mother earth.
- Now this is where you can use the Access Consciousness Clearing Statement to clear anything that is yours.
- Expand the molecules of YOU to be bigger, bigger, bigger…more, more, more…more joy, more truth, more lightness. And choose that energy to be your new normal.
What does the world really need? More people to be fully aware, alive and BE their magic. What could be possible then?
How do you use your empathic gifts? Leave a comment below and share it with me.
