Being an Emotional Empath

When we talk about being an emotional empath, often times the conversation online is focused on setting intentions and visualizing ourselves being surrounded by a bubble, maybe of white light that protects us. While intention is important and I believe that intention works in many ways (for example: when we do a meditation and send love or good thoughts to someone and they respond in kind the next time we meet them), when it comes to taking on stuff energetically from others, I think working on our boundaries is essential.

It is something we neglect when we focus exclusively on working with intention. Maybe because it can be hard to do, especially if we haven’t learnt about good boundaries while growing up.

This week, I want to share some passages from Sonia Choquette’s book True Balance. Sonia’s approach is grounded and practical, and her stories might help you think about what it really means when we have an overly empathic heart. 

Sonia talks about how just as a closed heart causes problem, so does a heart that is too wide open and permeable. Not understanding this leads to empath fatigue and anxiety.

“Such a heart causes people to be overly sensitive to the energy of those around them, so much so that they actually absorb other people’s energy. This can be psychically and physically draining, especially when the energy is dissonant or angry. When you are overly empathic, the resonance you feel with others is non-selective. If someone is happy, you feel happy. If someone is miserable, you feel miserable. You are at the mercy of feeling whatever anyone else is feeling, whether you want to or not. It’s as if you were a lightning rod in an electrical storm. If energy is being discharged, you can attract it.”

If you are an emotional empath, someone who can feel and absorb other people’s energy, you probably understand what Sonia is saying. We do often feel like we are lightning rods, and our bodies become vehicles for the energy that needs to be grounded. Often, people come to us to vent, to talk to us about their problems instead of talking being a two-way street. This is something that comes up again and again for me. At some point, it stops being useful because it adds to my resentment of being almost used as a dumping ground for emotions. When my own energy is distressfully low and I still over-give (out of habit and a sense of that being my role, I guess), it adds to my discomfort at being in relationships where the energy exchange doesn’t feel mutual.

I often feel unseen. Even if I am thanked, I feel as if I have given too much of myself away. In the end, it becomes a rescue. This giving becomes murky. It is somehow different from the energy of true giving, which energizes and opens my heart.

Sonia tells us about her own experiences with this dynamic.

“Being an intuitive, this was my problem for many years. When I did a reading for a joyful or peaceful person, it was a great pleasure, but when I read for someone who was angry, scared, or in pain, I found myself swimming in the very same sea–and drowning. ”

It took her years of study with her spiritual teachers to learn how to not absorb energy and to remain within her own heart.

She says that what she had to learn was the difference between love and sentimentality. This learning way the key to avoiding the fatigue and anxiety that empaths often stuggle with. 

She started understanding that sentimentality wants everything to be “pleasant, smooth and calm,” that it wants to “whitewash life,” and it does not see that pain and discomfort are essential for growth. But love is something that can support someone without interference or judgment.

Then, she says something that might strike you as true for yourself.

“When I fall into sentimental rapport with someone, I want him to feel better right away. But to be honest about it, this isn’t for his benefit as much as it is for my own, since I don’t want to feel his pain.Though we may tell ourselves that absorbing another’s hurt is kind and loving, in fact it is really an attempt to relieve our own discomfort.”

So, we have to kind of shift what we might have thought love is on its head. Maybe, if we had chaotic childhoods, we might have been almost taught that this is love. If you read this and find yourself getting angry, it might be because you are compassionate and you have been doing things to help other people. It might make you feel that you are being told again that you are doing it wrong or that again, you are not appreciated.

You might, like me, struggle with letting go of this deep identity as a fixer and a helper that many empaths seem to develop.

But just like me, I think you do sense what Sonia is saying.  We do, on one level, want to make things okay for others in an instant because those feelings are almost jumping out at us. We want to also relieve our own discomfort.

In all this emotional chaos, we lose sight of the fact that “we all need our experiences in order to learn.”

If we rescue and fix or take responsibility for other people’s feelings and decisions, we may be also, Sonia says, “setting them back on their path,” not letting them learn their own lessons for growth.

“Though being an empath can feel like being a turtle without a shell, vulnerable and exposed to the elements, you need not suffer through others’ energetic storms. They can actually make you sick.”

Sonia goes on to tell the story of a client of hers named Ramon. Ramon, she says, was a natural healer and a very sensitive and loving person.

He felt physically anxious whenever he was exposed to someone’s pain and sadness. It didn’t matter where the feelings were coming from. They could be from the irritable clerk at the grocery store or his passionate but volatile girlfriend. It seemed like people’s energies were always getting under his skin.

In fact, Ramon did literally develop a skin condition- a severe case of eczema. When he had tried everything else – medication, hypnosis, meditation, other alternative treatments – and the eczema still persisted, he realized that he also needed to clean up the energetic dynamic where he felt so attached to other people’s energies. By being intentional about it and by being aware, he did start changing this.

He did improve. But he was still exasperated with the intense reactions he kept on having around certain people. He just couldn’t seem to detach. He told her:

“Sonia, I understand that I am not to interfere with others’ lessons, but how do I stop feeling their frustration, especially when it belongs to someone I live with, like my girlfriend? It is still almost impossible for me to filter out her energy, and it drains me.”

Sonia gave him the same advice her spiritual teachers had given her:

“Whenever you feel as though you are absorbing someone else’s energy, you can always use your left and right feet and leave. Walk away from them, and send them blessings and prayers on the way out. This will help you disengage from the field and not interfere with their process, all the while that you are being loving.”

This answer seemed so obvious to Ramon that he laughed out loud. He agreed. Sonia told him:

“Give your sensitive self a break. Let it be that easy.”

Let it be that easy.

That’s something to chew on, isn’t it? Instead of trying to shield ourselves or protect ourselves, just accept that yes, we do get affected, we are sensitive and then put some physical distance between us.

Sonia tells us that Ramon is slowly healing and is getting his energy under control.

Of course, something as simple as walking away might be incredibly hard for us to do if we have been told that rescuing is love, that fixing is love, that healing is love. We have to start thinking about whether things in our life are working overall. If what we are doing with this “helping” is increasing our resentment, something somewhere is broken.

We have to think about what we think love means and what it really might be. We have to clean up the beliefs that might be holding us back.

Did this resonate with you? This is something to think about and try. This is also something in which we need to extend patience and care to ourselves. We have been doing what we think was right. Now, we are thinking, maybe it isn’t.

I know it is hard to do, especially if like me, you feel identified with being an empath.  But we can change. There is hope. Here’s to love and light!

If you liked this piece, you might like this piece I wrote on Life as an Emotional Empath for Maria Hill’s Sensitive Evolution website.

If you liked this piece, please share it online or with someone who might like it as well. Thank you! 

If you liked this piece, you might enjoy this piece as well:

Advice for Empaths: Sonia Choquette on Observing, not Absorbing Energy 

My Early Experiences with being an Empath