Can you sense the emotions of people in a room as soon as you walk into it?
Does spending time with some people totally drain you, but others fill you will enthusiasm?
All these signs could mean that you are an energetic empath… and if so, you’ll need to make sure that you keep yourself healthy during this time of confined living.
I’ve been an energetic empath and introvert my entire life. My childhood was spent negotiating the emotions of the other people in my household. I remember trying hard not to add to the tension I sensed, especially if Dad had a hard day at work and too much noise or disturbance would upset him.
I have 4 sisters and we’re each unique in our sensitivity to energy and emotion. I learned how to bend and flex my own feelings to account for the feelings of others. Sometimes I got it right and sometimes not, but I was always aware of it. Always aware of what I did or didn’t do and how that would impact others. Always aware of the effect my ‘energy’ had on others. So I learned to regulate it and the older I got the more skilled at it I became. Regulating at first and then, unfortunately, abandoning my own emotions by suppressing them, so that I could focus on maintaining equilibrium for the sake of others.
In my thirties I sought the guidance of a psychotherapist to help me to reattach to my own emotional experience, so that I could tune into my own thoughts and feelings. I had some life decisions to make and I realised that I had ‘lost myself’ over years of suppressing my feelings. I learned how to literally feel my own emotions in my body (that’s called embodiment - more on that next week) I also learned how to recognise the difference between my authentic responses as opposed to feelings that I was picking up on and staking for my own when in fact I was absorbing them from someone else.
Many of you may recognise some of these descriptions and may find yourself in a similar situation now. Where you are suppressing your own experiences and emotional responses, in order to ‘keep the peace’, to placate others in your household, to help others, who perhaps aren’t so good at controlling their emotions, to keep calm… Whatever your situation is and however you are managing your emotions for the sake of others, I want to talk directly to you.
As empaths we must prioritise our own health. I know that this idea is difficult to fully process. The idea of putting yourself first doesn’t sit well. You’re not used to it and it feels selfish. I understand, believe me.
Usually once we’ve been in the company of others, we take a little time to reconnect to what it feels like to be on our own, in our own energy or emotion. Once the ‘resonance’ of the other person/peoples energy has faded, we can begin to feel ourselves back into our own experience.
Now, we don’t have that kind of time or distance at the moment. So coming back to a ‘state of self’ is almost impossible. This is the reason it is so important to give yourself time (even if it’s just 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening). If you don’t take time to come back to yourself, so that you can process your own response to this strange and unprecedented time, you will soak up the emotional energy of the people you are quarantined with.
Because we are in an extended period of confinement, we are at risk of becoming ‘emotionally highjacked’. This is when your normal capacity to process emotions is exhausted and can not function healthily. Effects of this can be that you would have more extreme reactions to things that normally you would process by taking time to yourself and tuning back in to how YOU feel.
We want to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the heightened emotional states of others (and possibly ourself). The best way to do this is to take time to yourself. With absolutely no input whatsoever. No music, phone, tv… Just you and your mind, body and emotions.
Ask yourself two questions:
How do I feel?
What do I need?
These two questions are emotionally ‘enabling’ and they will help you to tune into your feelings and what you need in order to respond kindly and healthily to those feelings. You must tend to your own emotional needs before attending to others. Imagine putting on a mask on a plane, they always tell us to tend to ourself first so that we can assist others in the most effective way. The same is true here.
Try asking yourself those questions for the next few days and see what answers come up for you about what you might need in order to soothe, process, shift, accept the emotions you’re having.
The difference could mean you feeling overwhelmed and disconnected leading to a deeper sense of isolation and loneliness (even if you’re surrounded by people at home) … and a feeling of spaciousness, optimism and connection.
An extended exercise to do once you’ve mastered the art of emotionally enabling yourself is to write out the following:
What is the situation that happened today?
What was the other persons/peoples response?
How did they feel?
What was my response?
How did I feel?
Now take a step back from the paper, laptop or phone that you’re writing this on and literally move away from what you have written. Look at it for a few moments, realising that you can take a step back from the tangle of what happened. You can pull yourself out of the emotional soup.
Once you have literally taken a step back for a moment, then go back and answer these other 2 questions.
How do I feel now?
What do I need?
I hope these simple questions help to download what happened, take a step back and then guide you towards your own feelings and needs. I hope that they help you to separate what you are experiencing verses what someone else is experiencing, and in doing so my hope is that you remain connected to yourself, and each other x
