A New Empath Resource

In the past several months, I have been learning more about what it means to be an empath. It's the part of my sensitivity that is most troublesome for me. Unlike crowded places and loud noises, things that I can often avoid, I am still learning about this aspect of my sensitivity - how to not get thrown off constantly by other people's energy. 

There was a time when I used to be constantly absorbing emotional energy -- feeling curiosity, anger, or anxiety jumping out at me and wrestling me down to the ground. It was exhausting and enervating. 

Now that I am in a space where I am more consciously aware of being an empath, I have started to discover people and ideas that might help you, if you are an empath too. 

One of them is Anna Sayce, whose blog I recently stumbled upon. She reads Akashic records and does intuitive work, and even if you don't believe in "alternative stuff," what she says in this post about the connection between our struggles and our soul gifts will likely resonate with you. 

It gave me food for thought and shifted things a little for me. 

Anna says that "our biggest soul gift and biggest struggle in life will usually spring from the same source." She talks about how she often sees this with her clients, this idea that our struggles and our gifts are two sides of the same coin. 

For people who have the empath gift, this is how it often plays out: 

"On the upside, these people were born with the ability to experience what life is like for another person. They make great mediators because they can see two sides of a story and can switch their point of view easily. They are the ones who are good at caring for and looking out for others. But they can sometimes have so much compassion and understanding that they might not always look out for their own interests sufficiently. Or they might be easy to exploit. They may fail to take care of themselves while taking care of everyone around them. Most often, they may feel like their sensitivity is a burden."

You might feel this acutely. The same thing that makes up your essence also creates problems and difficulties. It is as if we can't have the gift without also being handed its shadow side. The challenge is to fight the monsters before you can really enjoy and utilize the gift. 

If you have been struggling with your empathic abilities, this connection might give you some relief. The reason that being empathic feels like a double-edged sword is because it is double-sided and tricky. Like me, you might deeply value being empathic when you can mediate in a stressful situation and contribute something of value. And yet, the blurring of boundaries, the taking on of other people's stuff might leave you feeling as if you are caught between a rock and a hard place. 

I want to explore this dynamic and what being empathic means in more posts. In the meanwhile, do check out Anna's blog. She has some great stuff there, and it could help answer some of the questions you might be struggling with.   

A Field Report: Intuition Exercise

I wrote recently about an exercise that allowed for intuitive insights to occur.

The theory goes like this. Although we can't make intuition happen, we can get into a space where intuitive insights are more likely to happen. 

The exercise that I wrote about tells us that the ideal conditions for intuition are paved by relaxation and a state of flexible attention, giving us access to a place in which we can loosely spread our attention over a larger area, instead of just directing it at one point. 

The way we do it is by imagining different distances in our bodies, the point between the elbow and the wrist or the knee and the ankle for example. Then, we imagine our attention spreading across these spaces. 

I have done this exercise a few times now, and here's what's happened so far. There's no right way to do the exercise, so I just went with what felt right. In places where I didn't quite even sense my body, I tried to feel the tense places. Where I felt some energy, the image of shifting sand popped up in my head. I visualized my way through that area, the sand moving and taking form in that space. The image helped me move my attention, and it seemed like it came out of the unconscious as a metaphor for what was happening in my body. 

In the same way, I visualized my spine filling with air, and I had some felt sense of it. At one point, I combined this exercise with deep pelvic breathing. It was amazing how the two seemed to work together with wonderful synergy. 

I relaxed within minutes, and it was empowering to feel that I could do that at will. When I was focusing on my lower body at one point, my back, which was tense and scrunched up, loosened and relaxed. I touched on the fact that my body was one system, and working on one part affected the other. 

Did I get more intuitive hunches? I am not sure. I felt a difference in my intention to follow whispers of feeling. I felt like my mind had quieted down a bit, and as if I could access my body, even its numbed out parts just a little. I felt my energy collecting a little, and not getting scattered by things that go on outside. 

My sense is that something in the exercise is working and will work. I will do it more, and see where it takes me. Often, I have stopped myself in exploring and my first goal has been safety, even when dealing with myself. But digging inside my own caves is probably the most illuminating and rewarding thing I can think of doing right now. 

An Exercise for Authenticity

When I was younger, not sure what to wrap myself around and grow, I listened to the cacophony of different voices inside and couldn't figure out how to reconcile them all. They all seemed so different from each other, these different parts of me. I couldn't hold this tension, this feeling that inside me were many different people. I couldn't see how to bring them all together. And so, I flattened parts of me into one. 

Some of this was also because I conformed and gave in to the loud voices outside. But some of it was just to quickly arrive at a solution, to figure out what exactly I was supposed to be. The stress of not knowing, not having that clarity felt terrifying. 

In the past few months, some changes have been afoot. I have started dancing again, something that defines my essence more than anything else. I have been getting in touch with my real feelings beyond the haze of being nice, and started gaining a felt sense of how I used to feel before getting other people's approval became such a driver. 

The word "Authenticity" has been dancing in my consciousness, coming up from the depths of my own self and vibrating in the stories I am finding around me. Dipping through the lovely Julia Cameron's book The Vein of Gold, I chanced upon a little exercise that speaks to me right now. 

It might speak to you as well, if you are feeling some cracks. You are noticing the difference between the official version of who you are and who you really are. Maybe you are feeling fragile too, and just a little crazy. You are changing your moves and that feels uncomfortable and unsafe. 

I hope we both safely land on the shore on the other side. Maybe this exercise can be part of your raft. It goes like this. Number a piece of paper from one to twenty. Then fill out the sentence, "On the one hand, I'd love to ....."; on the other hand, I'd love to ....." twenty times.  

This feels like freedom, a declaration of my different loves, and an invitation to stretch what all encompasses me. Too often, I have said, "I'm not the kind of person to..." "I'm not the kind of person" puts a label on me, puts me into a small box, makes my options limited.  

I'm not the kind of person is also a way of making an excuse, of keeping myself stagnant. I am not the kind of person who questions other people. I'm not the kind of person who changes her definition of giving. I am not the kind of person who says No. I am not the kind of person who can confront and challenge when someone confronts and challenges me. 

But maybe I am. Maybe I can be. On the one hand, I'd love to please everyone. On the other hand, I'd love to say No without feeling guilty. On the one hand, I'd love to give to others. On the other hand, I'd love to claim all my time for myself and give to myself for a change. On the one hand, I'd love to fit in and be harmonious. On the other, I'd love to stand out and reveal who I am. 

On a lighter note, on the one hand, I'd love to experiment with the way I dress. On the other hand, I'd love to hone in on my own style. On the one hand, I'd love to wear high heels. On the other hand, I would love to dress down. 

It's freeing to feel a possibility of different ways of being co-existing. I love heels. I love comfort. I love to please people. But too much pleasing has been killing me. I also love to please myself. This feels like lying beneath a very large expansive fabric, feeling that I can expand the ways in which I respond, that I don't need to stay within some arbitrary lines I drew for myself. 

Here's what my beloved Julia says about the exercise and what it can do. "Do you feel the stretching of your consciousness as you embrace apparent opposites? Can you see that you can encompass more emotional range than you may have realized?" Can you see that? Can you? I have some sense of it. I hope to see it more, to see that I can be nice and good and strong and fierce and militant and peaceful. 

All these different things can live inside me and be accessible to me, and I can be more expansive and less boxed in. I can be a little bigger than I have been till now.  

An Exercise for Developing Intuition

Making decisions has been hard for me. I have gotten better at it, but I am still searching for ways to decide  that feel right. I know that too much information can paralyze me, leaving me sorting through options. Is this better? Someone else is doing that. Should I do that as well? What is right for me?

One big piece of this struggling to decide is struggling to listen to the voice inside. It seems like there are too many clamoring voices. How do I know which voice is an intuitive nudge and which one is just wishful thinking? I need to find a way to get to that place of awareness where that answer becomes clear.

So, I have been reading about intuition and how to allow it to surface. One interesting exercise that I have come across is called Open Focus. It has been developed by Dr Lester Fehmi of the Princeton Medical Center. It goes something like this. We need to imagine the space between different points in the body. What we are trying to do is diffusing our attention and letting it cover a larger area, instead of  trying to focus on a single point. This helps reduce anxiety, tension and inhibition . It helps us lose our preoccupation with a sense of time. We feel more expansive, more attuned to the wisdom that gets lost in the chatter.

The questions go like this: Can you imagine the space between your eyes? Can you imagine the space between your ears? Can you imagine the space inside your throat, between your shoulders, between your hips? Can you imagine that the area between your ankles and knees is filled with space? Can you imagine that your spine is filled with space? And so on and so forth.

We are not trying to come up with some answer such as "There are two inches between my eyes." What we are trying to do is imagine and experience that space. If we only have a vague feeling or sense of it in the beginning, that's okay. There is no right way to do this. We are learning to let our attention become expansive and move over a larger area.

When we can do this, we can become more flexible about shifting from narrowly focusing on something to a state in which we lose self-consciousness and where time slows down. This is the kind of state we need to access to tap hidden stores. This is the space from which insights and images will start bubbling up.

Of course, we can't make ourselves have intuitive insights. But we can create a space where they are more likely to happen. This exercise is one way of clearing the way.

Would you be willing to give it a try? It might be that the intention to learn how to tune into intuition might actually make it more likely to happen.

As I work with this, I will keep you updated on how much it worked for me, or not.          

HSP Tools: Guided Imagery and Meditation

I recently wrote about HSPs and their struggles with developing self-compassion here. For HSPs that have  gone through a traumatic experience, this struggle is even harder. Trauma, by its very definition, is overwhelming and to deal with it, we might have run away into our minds and away from our bodies.

Our bodies might feel like the source of the pain. They might feel like the connecting thread to a  past that we might prefer to forget. And so, we unconsciously turn to our minds, seeking refuge in a different place. But we end up getting lost because it is our senses that connect us to the present.

On some level, we might unconsciously choose this trade off. Being disconnected and dissociated from our bodies might feel easier than facing the threat of re-experiencing traumatic memories.

So, being grounded can become an even greater challenge for HSPs suffering from trauma than it is for HSPs with more normal experiences.

So, what do we do? If we are suffering from the after-shocks of trauma, we need professional help. We need a therapist who can help us release the locked trauma in a safe way. Trying to do this on our own, without any help, would be discounting the level of injuries we have sustained.

It is okay to need help. It is okay to ask for it.

We don't want to open up wounds that we don't have the resources to deal with. What a sensitive therapist would do is use talk therapy along with bodywork and several other tools like guided meditations and imagery. 

If you are an HSP who hasn't suffered trauma, you can also use tools such as guided meditations on your own. Too often, we might see our sensitivity as only a burden.

We may never see that we are not just more sensitive to the bad stuff, we are also more sensitive to the good stuff. This can serve us well and become an advantage.

We can use our sensitivity and imagination to create more nurturing experiences. Using a suitable audio guide like this one by Belleruth Naparstek, we can start to form a better relationship with our bodies.

In a meditation such as this, we might be asked to imagine the pleasant vibrations of energy surrounding our bodies. We might be told to imagine being surrounded by a protective cushion of air or swimming in an endless sea with friendly dolphins all around us.

Essentially, what we are being asked to do is to actively use our imagination to create a safe space and access the good feelings that our senses can provide.

We feel the warm cocoon surrounding our bodies. We relax a little. We feel the dancing waves around us. The water feels good. We relax even more.

We have created something imaginary. But the effect on our bodies is real. We feel nurtured and secure. We feel a connection to our body and to the present.

Of course, this process is not always dream-like. It can unfreeze emotions and cause them to flow. This catharsis lessens our burdens.

Without the structure and guidance that the guided meditation provides, we may never have wanted to feel our sadness. But that would have just meant that our sadness would remain locked inside us.

By going through this process, we release what lies buried underneath. We have taken some more steps forward. We have used our sensitivity and imagination for our good instead of letting negative imagination drown us.

We now have another tool in our tool-box. We can pick it up and use it whenever we need it. 

HSP Tools: Conscious Complaining

There's a fog settling down on the hills outside. I can see the traffic moving along, sighing under the weight of the approaching darkness. The general mood is hazy, compacted. 

Sometimes, our feelings can build up like that. They come swirling around the corner, and soon, our internal landscape seems saturated with them. 

They settle down into nooks and crannies, and believing that we can' really do anything about them, we let them overshadow everything else. We don't think as clearly. We let our feelings roll us along, and we don't act as cohesively. We are left off-center. 

But generally though, there is something, even if it is small, that we can do to shift our energy. One such tool is conscious complaining. Karla McLaren talks about this in her lovely book The Language of Emotions. When we are stewing in negativity and complaints, we can cordon off some time for ourselves, sit alone, and just vent and give voice all that is going wrong in our lives. 

We can complain about what hard luck we have. We can moan about all the things we have to do, but don't really want to. We can let go and show the irritation that we always side-step when we are actually talking to someone. We don't need to play nice. We don't need to pretend that we are above it all. 

What this might do is, what this complaining out loud, all alone, might do is release some of our pent-up frustration. Many of us, and I suspect many HSPs, spend a lot of time playing nice, while just beneath the surface, our real feelings - our anger, our fears, our doubts and hesitations -- are coalescing into un-identifiable sloppy messes. 

When we take the lid off of them, when we speak about our hurts and grudges and misgivings, we air out our feelings, so to speak. They are no longer the faceless monsters becoming bigger and bigger because we are not paying attention to them. In the light of the day, we can see them a bit more objectively, and if there really are some monstrous specimens, we can at least lessen their force by doing something with their energy. No one is hurt by it. We are not venting at or to someone. 

We are learning to slow down and see what these feelings are made of. We are practicing getting in touch with what we feel, and giving ourselves permission to express the "not-nice" feelings. It really is okay to be angry, or tired, or hurt. It is okay to feel our feelings, and let them out in a way that is healthy for us. 

Maybe conscious complaining could help you be more emotionally self-regulating because you have already gotten something out of your system. Maybe it can help you get in touch with what it is that you really feel, beneath all the masks that we put on for everybody else. Maybe it can be like a safety valve for your emotional experience. 

Maybe it can be one more tool in your arsenal that you can pick up and use when the emotional clouds start darkening your inner sky. 

HSP Tools

Yesterday's post was about Dr Ted Zeff's wonderful new book The Power of Sensitivity. While reading it, I thought about all the different strategies that we come to learn while navigating the stormy seas of our sensitivity. 

For me, one of them has been learning to calm my mind. The best way, of doing this, has been through practicing a gentle form of yoga, which connects my awareness with what is happening in my body. 

When I don't do this, I feel as if my energy is dissipated, or I am stuck somewhere jutting out of my body. 

For many HSPs, a regular practice of some kind - a gentle form of exercise, meditation, reiki, or prayer - provides the groundwork for harnessing our energy in other areas of our lives. 

One of the wonderful things about being an HSP is that although the valleys that we go down can be dark and deep, our peaks can be just as expansive, just as exhilarating. Sometimes, when I think of my awareness as porous, letting everything in, it only seems like a disadvantage. But there is another side to the coin. And it is the fact that when I give myself what I need, I am almost as easily lifted, elevated. If I hear a beautiful piece of music, it nourishes me in the deepest kind of way. 

The challenge, really, is to develop the habit to regularly give ourselves what we need. It's a hard challenge for some of us, and our struggle with developing self-compassion can be extremely frustrating. It can make our progress really slow. 

I recently read Sonia Connolly's lovely book Wellspring of Compassion again. What she says resonates with me so much and I expect, you will find yourself reflected back in her words. "Self-care can sound like an obligation, one more item on a long to-do list. Self-care can sound like abandonment if we were emotionally or physically neglected as children and still long for someone to rescue us. Self-care can sound selfish, self-indulgent, or forbidden when we are accustomed to caring for others first." 

For a lot of us, all these things make it incredibly hard to do self-care. This is a subject I want to explore more deeply this year and find solutions for. 

What about you? How do you think an increased sense of self-compassion can help your life? What stops you from actually giving yourself what you so acutely need?