Recovering Empaths Anonymous

Hello, my name is Angie. I am a recovering empath. And I have a quote to share with you.

Honestly, I think about this at least once a week. When I studied with Pixie Lighthorse, it was powerful and humbling for her to explain this to our group of earth medicine practitioners. She said it just like this, "What if it is unethical to pick up on other people's emotions?" 🤯

Unethical?!?!

But but but…I can’t control who and what I feel! And besides, all these messy people who just avoid their work…THEY ARE THE PROBLEM!

Um. I deeply value ethics and integrity and boundaries. But omg, to discover you are a violator of other people’s boundaries takes some real cajones to admit. But that is the work we engage in here, no? We are engaged in meaningful self-discovery. I often say that I am on a fact-finding mission, and if I get stuck in the eddy of shame and guilt about not knowing something, then I will never change that thing.

If shame worked, we’d all be sober and thin. But it doesn’t and we aren’t.

There is two layers here. One is the one who is the empath, and the other is the one who is “empathed upon”. Last first, um, so, that is what I was feeling when people were trying to comfort me after Lucy died by saying, I KNOW JUST HOW YOU FEEL, Angie, my cat died last year, cue tears. Now I am comforting the grieving cat mom and I feel less understood than before. It is also why it enraged me when people were telling me how I was feeling or reading me without my permission, and why my empathy wasn't healing me. Feeling other people’s emotions did nothing for me, but cause an autoimmune disorder and crippling anxiety.

Being "an empath" was not my path to psychic work or third eye opening, but my biggest blockage. Understanding that it is my work to keep boundaries around feeling other people's energy, not theirs, freed me. Pixie reminding me that being an empath and feeling other people’s feelings made it impossible for me to truly hold space for them. It made me messy and erratic. It also wasn’t exactly true. I am intuitive. I am empathic. But that involves wild sweeps of assumptions about another’s emotions. I have no idea if I was ever right about another person’s emotions. How presumptuous to think I ever knew that. Maybe what happened instead is that person triggered emotions of my own that I hadn’t touched in a while, and I thought they were theirs?

Pixie’s challenge and argument provoker empowered me to feel able to hold and maintain my boundaries around empathy and start doing some work around my wounded childhood. Not only that, it helped me understand and face my own emotions when I stopped feeling other people's emotions. I had spent so much of my childhood trying to figure out adult emotions, reading faces and body language to figure out what was going on, or how I should act that empathy became a natural result of being emotionally neglected and trying to read people’s emotions. You just become hypervigilant in any changes in the force. And by force, I mean, the force of emotions. Kids who grew up with emotional or physical neglect are hyperaware of the subtle, microchanges in someone’s facial expressions, emotional energy, and body language that defines a good 70% of communication. Energetic hygiene means clearing your own filter...a filter used to perceiving others through wounding and people pleasing.

Ethics and integrity is so important to me as a healer, and engaging in it means looking at ourselves--what can I control? Me. But first I had to divorce the moniker Empath, and embrace myself as a highly sensitive neurodivergent person. As I am preparing my work teaching my first online Earth Medicine Mentoring Circle, I know boundaries, energetic hygiene and understanding our gifts is going to be my first stop.

Where are you on this journey?

Kyra and I talked about the dark relationship between narcissists and empaths on my podcast a few years ago.

empathic boundaries

One of the things that I get asked most frequently, whether people know me as a Tarot Reader or a Crystal Healer or Energy Worker, is "Don't you get really worn out doing that work? I mean, don't people drain you?"

And actually, no, people don't drain me, and beyond regular working physical exhaustion, I don't get worn out in an empathic way. But they used to wear me out, simply when I went out for coffee with someone. I completely understand why people ask that question, because learning how to control your energetic boundaries is incredibly difficult and being an empath can be draining before you learn how to deal with it. We go through headaches, bellyaches, fatigue, anxiety, trouble grounding, as well as picking up ailments and emotions of other people. I am a classic Empath with IBS, Celiac, Arthritis, and Hashimoto's Disease--autoimmune disorders from years of tapping out my adrenal glands and not practicing good boundaries.

 When I work on a client, we have both signed a kind of sacred contract. First, they are inviting me into their energy field or aura. I take that responsibility seriously. My clients are allowing me to sense their energy; allow my intuition to pick up on their emotions, guides, and spiritual grappling; and to work on the different layers of their energetic field--the ones that govern the physical, the etheric, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual.

 They lie prone on my table, allow themselves to have their eyes covered with an eye pillow, and fall asleep, or drift into another plane of existence while I hold space, watch over them, lay crystals on the body and then touch their bodies. It is a huge responsibility. My part of the contract is not only to take that seriously and treat their body as sacred, but also to do my own work, keep my own boundaries, and align my thoughts, feelings and spiritual center with their healing. Vulnerability is a precious gift. I honor that gift given to me in my healing space.

 Most people do not invite many people into their auric field. Think about how many people you have close physical contact within the course of a day--our partner, our children, maybe a random hug here and there. But in general, to get into someone's field means you are standing within arm's length. Those encounters come in 10 second increments throughout your day. A client has allowed me into his or her auric field for one hour. What I need when I practice crystal healing is incredibly strong boundaries and a regimen of spiritual hygiene. I couldn't do my job effectively if I left my healing studio filled with the emotions, quandaries, and physical ailments of my clients. Or worst, my clients left with mine. It is something we don't talk about as healers often. We must align our thoughts constantly in session.

 My unsettled mind used to drift constantly in meditation. Buddhists refer to it as Monkey Mind, or a mind as filled with monkeys. One monkey is chattering, another jumping, another banging loudly on something. What am I making for dinner? Where are we going today? I can't believe that happened with so and so. Fear is a very loud monkey, as I once read in a Buddhist piece, screaming about everything that can go wrong. The writer in that article suggested talking to your fear monkey, and asking it questions. What would happen if we didn't have enough money? And just talking to your fear monkey about natural consequences. My cure for monkey mind is simply to acknowledge it. I label it, "Thinking." And then go back to being aware of the present, right where I am. A teacher once told me to stop in the midst of monkey mind and look at my shoes. This is where you are right here. Right now.

 In session, quiet overtakes the room, and I am in sacred space. The entire session is meditation for both my client and me. It is inevitable that we will drift into thinking, but my part of my sacred contract is to release my thinking, my feelings, my issues as I am in my client's sacred auric field. I also give my clients suggestions how to release a thought that may arise during session. It may sound hard, but it is liberating. If you are feeling something you don't want to feel, wait. It will change very quickly. Emotions, if we release storytelling, move through our body quickly. This is a practice to cultivate when we are in meditation. Feel the feeling, but release the thoughts around the feeling.

 I have done a great deal of this work. So, first I am conscious not to have my client pick up on my energy, but I am also conscious not to pick up on theirs. My teacher Pixie Lighthorse said in a boundaries class, "What if it is unethical to feel someone's feelings for them?" We must abide without picking up the emotions. I have consciously worked to strengthen my auric field and help transmute my emotions and the emotions of others. The first step was grounding, grounding and more grounding. The Empath is frequently ungrounded when they haven't trained their gifts. Using transmuting stones is helpful, like black tourmaline, smoky quartz, dravite, and obsidian. You can also ground yourself by walking barefoot, hugging a tree, and just simply sitting on the ground. During session, I ground my clients by sitting on the floor and doing energy work at their Earth Star. I see myself as their ground into Mother Earth and consciously channel energy this way through my sitz bones and up through my hands into their feet. For me, grounding begins this process of protecting your EMF. It is hardly work for me anymore. It simply is a way of being.

 One thing I am grateful for is not to be empathically drained after sessions with clients. I am absolutely present in that space. The feeling I consciously express are that of love and healing energy. I ask to be a channel of healing and peace, and call on angels and guides that assist to use me, but I also ask my guides and angels to help empty my emotions and thoughts out during session. To remain present with my client. This is hard work, and I know I can't do it alone. So I ask Great Spirit and my guides. You can ask too. When I finish, I treat my work like I've been in a sacred space of shedding and I am covered in other people's emotions, thoughts, and pain. I first run Selenite through my aura, and wipe of the energy. I burn sage sometimes, or use a sage spray. When I get home, I take a salt bath, drink lots of water, and practice Reiki and crystal healing self-care. If I can't get to a bath, I use a salt soap to cleanse my auric field.

 There are some great resources for working with strengthening your own boundaries and monkey mind. I love this small piece on Addictive Thinking .  Rose Rosetree has some incredible blog posts about her ideas of Empowered Empaths, and has written a few books about how to work with your Empath self. I love how she talks about turning off your gift of empathy, which is something I do in public. Pixie Lighthorse has written a wonderful book called Boundaries & Protection based on her two bootcamps called the same.