Empirical Energy: Learning to Trust Your Empathic Abilities

If ever as a child you felt out of place, or that you could see, feel or sense things others couldn’t then you are most likely an empath. Now, this can mean different things to different people, and while I believe humans are innately both with sensitivities beyond the 5 physical sense, not everyone stays open to them…

If it’s never felt like much of a choice, then you are most definitely an empath. For me personally, I feel like my entire life up to this moment has been a paradox; a back and forth, a push and pull, a rise and fall or simultaneously wanting to heal the trauma felt so intensely in those around me, yet also and equally wanting to be alone with nothing but nature and my own imagination.

I just turned 40 this year and after years and years of self-reflection and observation, I still feel eons away from fully grasping this gift and even farther away from understanding how to use it to my benefit.

In speaking with other empaths, there seems to be a common ground that we share when it comes to feeling fear, guilt, and shame around setting personal boundaries and fulfilling our own needs. It’s as if we are so acutely tuned into to the emotions of everyone around us, that we learn to sort of put our own on mute.

From what I can gather this has come from a sense of not feeling worthy of the very love and attention I am putting out, and I can trace this back to key experiences from my childhood. Even after hours and hours of shadow work and healing in these areas, I still recognize how quickly some situations can instill such a fear of abandonment that I literally freeze for a moment.

Needless to say, I know I have a long way to go and perhaps the greatest gift I’ve been able to give myself throughout this entire process is patience and the understanding that it IS a process and all of it matters. Even what other’s may have attempted to instill within me doesn’t matter, I’ve learned to listen to that voice of intuition, the calls of the inner gut guru and heart and choose every single day to KNOW that it’s all connected and therefore it all matters…nothing is trivial.

A huge missing piece of my personal puzzle has been around trusting myself as this is one half of a toxic circle of co-dependency we empaths tend to find ourselves in. We can come out of something so terribly painful, acknowledge the damage we’ve allowed another to lay upon us, and make promises to our very own souls to never let it happen again. And yet, somehow, someway we often find ourselves right back in the same painful lessons we thought we aced a long time ago.

And what’s important here is to stop judging that fact when you find it pertains to your own life. As we can all appreciate a kind yet firm teacher who allows us to grow in our own direction, we so quickly tend to forget that we too are teachers worthy of listening to and that often the inner child is that one student who so desperately just needs some guidance out of the darkness by someone who cares. Unfortunately, we are not often taught to BE that someone for ourselves and that if we do, it is wrong and selfish.

Overcoming trauma is by no means an easy feat, and neither is feeling the world around you so intensely, but dear brothers and sisters, what is perhaps the hidden gem at the bottom of the empathic gift box is the knowing, the life-affirming, motivating, encouraging knowing that you are worthy. And those emotions we are constantly flooded with are not to be fought against or controlled but ridden like gentle rapids.

When we can learn to trust not only the flow of life but also the raft we’ve built to sustain ourselves, we become like the mighty Phoenix, who is never scared of falling (or drowning) because she trusts her own wings, not the branches upon which she rests. And to me, that kind of energy that forms your integral essence is nothing short of empirical.

Tamara Rant is a Co-Editor/Writer for CLN as well as a Licensed Reiki Master, heart-centered Graphic Designer and a progressive voice in social media activism & awareness. She is an avid lover of all things Quantum Physics and Spirituality. Connect with Tamara by visiting Prana Paws/Healing Hearts Reiki or go to RantDesignMedia.com

Tamara posts new original articles to CLN every Saturday.

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This article was originally created and published by Conscious Life News and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Tamara Rant and ConsciousLifeNews.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this Copyright/Creative Commons statement.