Chapter 6

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Empathic Healing:

How Empaths Can Heal Themselves and Others

We don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.

pema chödrön

Empathy compels us to help the people, beings, or forces that slip through our boundaries and summon our compassion. Sometimes the call to help overwhelms us, and we end up struggling. Should we assist another or not? Are we capable of doing so or not?

At other times, the urge to provide help comes from within and is directed toward ourselves. Some part of our body, mind, or soul is held hostage to a past trauma, addiction, or problem, and we must turn our eye inward and, from a place of love, send love and healing.

This chapter addresses the deep desire that lies within all empaths, no matter the style of gift: to provide healing or insight to another or to ourselves. We will apply the three empathic techniques we learned in chapter 5 toward this endeavor, looking at how to ease all kinds of afflictions, from false empathy to physical challenges.

This important knowledge speaks to the soul of the empath, who at some level is asked to take up the torch of healer.

The Empathic Healer

Georgia came to see me because she could sense everyone’s deeper wounds. “I need only sit next to someone at a business meeting, and I come away worrying about them,” she related. “I am especially aware of the emotional damage caused by their childhoods. And believe me, almost everyone is damaged.”

Georgia expressed that her biggest challenge was figuring out what to do. “I don’t know if I should say something or ignore the problems. I try to send prayers, but I don’t think it does any good.

“Most of the time I simply do nothing,” she sighed. “But that doesn’t feel right either. Why would I know what’s up if I wasn’t supposed to do something?”

Why, indeed? Nearly every type of empath has asked me this question in one form or another:

There are two additional questions I frequently hear, usually in reference to impaired empathy:

While empathy is touted as the force that will save the world and bond us together like a knot in a shoelace, being empathic isn’t easy. Quite simply, it’s hard to figure out what we’re getting, what it means, and what exactly we’re supposed to do about it—especially if the incoming information relates to healing needs. This is where the tools I introduced in the last chapter can be of tremendous help.

But before we can apply the three empathic tools to healing, we must first have a firm grasp of the concept of healing—what it is and what we can expect from healing processes, whether they involve tangible action or radiant empathy. I’ve determined that most empaths, even certain types of impaired ones, usually expect too much of themselves, and this must be cleared up before they can become effective empathic healers.

What Is Healing Really?

Empaths spend much of their time engaged in healing and often don’t even know it. The word healing means “to make whole.” It is the process of helping someone return to a more whole state than they are in now or even achieve a more whole state than they have ever enjoyed.

When we’re in need of healing—whether our discomfort is physical, financial, relational, emotional, mental, or spiritual—we usually concentrate on relieving symptoms. We don’t like feeling sick or sad, poor or unloved, stupid or in pain. Why would we? No one does. Therefore, the first and foremost goal is a reprieve.

As instinctive as this drive is, the problem is that healing isn’t equivalent to an immediate or even eventual shift of symptoms. We can heal while having cancer and still die from the disease. We can heal poverty issues and continue to overwork for a subsistence wage. Likewise, we can provide someone else healing yet see little change in the way their dilemmas appear.

This fact grates on most empathic people. When we attune to another’s hardship, we feel or know their agony, grief, or hurt. They aren’t the only one going through pain; we feel it also. Why wouldn’t we want to provide an immediate release?

Sometimes we sense that someone else is enjoying him- or herself or having a good day. Most of us like noticing that others are happy. Sensing that someone else is satisfied or that their life is pleasant doesn’t usually impel a call to heal. This isn’t true for certain types of impaired empaths, who often get angry when others are happy. Individuals with narcissism and other personality disorders, PTSD, and even schizophrenia or other psychospiritual challenges might become jealous of the joy others can achieve because it seems out of reach to them. We can all imagine struggling with difficulties that would make us so envious of others’ happiness that we wish the worst on them.

The urge to relieve ourselves or others of discomfort, whether the distress occurs because someone else is dismayed or overjoyed, is a major cause of empathic difficulties. To alleviate our uneasiness, we might anxiously gulp in another’s energy or fake our reaction, exhibiting emotional contagion. We might deny our doubt about a healing and fall into hyperoptimism or reach out in pity and get stuck with someone else’s problems. If we’re dealing with a malevolent impaired empath, we might fall prey to their shaming or manipulation. If we’re autistic or have ADHD, we might become overstimulated and lose focus.

The truth is that healing energies may or may not provide immediate relief; we cannot predict results. All we are assured is that if we follow the Divine’s compassionate lead, we will help ourselves and others achieve the highest possible outcome. Ultimately, the healing process is dependent on acknowledging that we are powerless to alleviate the suffering of another. We can help, care, assist, or advise, but the work of transformation depends on the Divine. And, ironically, the more we get out of the way, the more powerfully the Divine can assert itself.

The importance of opening the gate to the Divine is apparent in the following example. Consider a natural empath who is attuned to a baby animal whose mother isn’t around at that moment. She might sense that this baby is scared and worried. It would be natural to try to soothe or pet the baby. How wise is this if we’re talking about a bear cub and Mom could be right around the corner? Rather than trying to alleviate her empathic discomfort through a knee-jerk reaction, our natural empath could use our three empathic tools to invite divine assistance.

Let’s imagine our empath conducts Spirit-to-Spirit and senses that the mom is nearby and it’s safe (if not safer) to leave. Maybe she sends healing streams of grace to the baby, using radiant empathy, and the grace calms the baby. Perhaps she even sends healing streams of grace to the mom, which carry the message “hurry back.” Maybe she conducts the full five steps to compassionate empathy and calls a forest ranger or an expert to help, surrendering to the fact that she can’t fix every problem by herself. It’s always helpful to invite the Divine into the process, knowing that in doing so we might not immediately ease our discomfort, but we will be led to the best solution to the problem.

The remainder of this chapter will further this discussion as we look at the processes involved in healing self and others.

Self-Healing for Empaths

There are many circumstances in which we feel compelled to heal ourselves. Maybe we’ve triggered PTSD by sensing another’s situation empathically or we have fallen into the trap of one of the many empathic masquerades. We might be aware that our empathy is blocked. Or we might simply want to use our empathic gifts to invite physical, emotional, mental, or another type of healing for ourselves.

Following is a process you can undertake for any reason to help free your empathic self for greater health and well-being. Step 3 showcases a few ways you can customize this process to your special type of empathy, your primary empathic style.

preparation: Conduct Spirit-to-Spirit

Affirm your inner spirit, the spirit in all others, and the presence of the Greater Spirit.

step 1: Ask for and Acknowledge Needed Information

Request that the Divine help you understand the reason for your challenge. Ask to be shown the reasons for your current difficulties, and ask that you be held and protected while you perceive what occurred.

step 2: Conduct Compassionate Self-Assessment and
Ask for Divine Assistance

This step asks you to embrace and shift the misperceptions that led to your challenges.

First, ask the Divine to help you perceive yourself with compassion, as if you are wearing eyeglasses that shine with forgiveness and light while probing for the beliefs that led you to adopt an empathic strategy that hasn’t benefited you. Is there anything you need to say or share with your wounded self? Is there a need for a healing stream of grace to assist or protect this inner self?

Second, ask the Divine to assist you with seeing into the hearts of the others who were involved in the situation that is still causing you difficulties. What were they really going through? What challenges were they trying to cope with? Why might they have interacted with you in such a way as to cause you harm?

When you feel like you’ve achieved a sense of compassion for yourself and others, you can move on.

step 3: Ask for Divine Response

Now ask the Divine to provide full healing for you and any others involved in the situation. Take your time with each stage of this healing. You might need to give yourself days or weeks to concentrate fully on your own inner self and a similar amount of time to achieve peace with others. Know that the Divine can reach out to you in any number of ways, depending on your empathic style. A physical empath might feel compelled to eat certain foods or exercise in a new way, while an emotional empathy could receive an abundance of emotional support from friends. A mental empath could be hit on the head with a book full of guidance or instruction, while a natural empath might receive boons from the birds. A spiritual empath could receive signs directly from the Greater Spirit, and a shaman from angels visiting in dreams. It is common for the Divine to reach us through our strongest empathic gift, so it is important to pay attention to what occurs in and around you after you’ve asked for divine assistance.

step 4: Take Action with Humility

During this stage, ask the Divine if there are any further actions you should take to bolster your healing. These actions might be concrete, such as seeking additional therapy or getting help with an addiction. Or they may involve radiant empathy, which could entail continually checking in on an “inner child” so he or she knows your adult self is present. Actions are often multilayered; we take one step forward and are then asked to take another. Because change often occurs in a process, not because of a single behavior, we have to continually self-assess, asking ourselves whether we feel like there could be further transformation to allow. We can always ask the Divine if there is more for us to do or accomplish—and for encouragement so that we can keep moving in the right direction.

In this step you can also ask the Divine to provide healing streams of grace to all concerned, including current-life and past-life parts of yourself. These streams can be used to replace dysfunctional beliefs with accurate ones, soothe inflamed emotions, or substitute a divine connection for energetic or entity attachments. Ask, too, that all soul issues be addressed. How about allowing the Divine to retrieve the parts of you that have been lost over time and to return the parts of others that have adhered themselves to you? Remember also to request a shift in your epigenes or ancestral codes or any other aspect of self that requires assistance.

You can then ask if you need to perform radiant empathy for yourself. Yes, we can send healing to ourselves, using our particular empathic gift to share physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, or nature-based energies with our wounded self. A shamanic empath can ask for otherworldly assistance as well.

step 5: Surrender the Outcome

What exactly do we surrender when we perform self-healing? We don’t know what our healed—or continually healing—state will look like. We might want to think that the shy self, shamed for her empathic style, will suddenly develop the confident demeanor of a bold and colorful socialite; she might not. We might believe that our overbearing style will relax and we’ll be easier for others to get along with. Maybe, maybe not; perhaps other changes will occur first. We become comfortable with our shy attitude and start writing books at night. We transform our aggressiveness into the ability to stand up for others. There will be changes—good changes; we simply need to notice them.

When Seeking to Heal Others

Sometimes we feel empathically led to assist others. We like it when the message to act is clear and we can proceed. But life isn’t always so convenient, and that’s why I describe the steps for healing others from the starting place of attuning to an external empathic call—or cry—for help. By following these steps, you will give yourself multiple opportunities to discern a fork in the road that will empower you to make a decision: whether to help others or dismiss yourself from that work with clarity and confidence.

Initial Contact: You’ve Received a Message

A person, situation, natural being, or spirit reaches out to you and compels a healing response, whether they do so consciously or not. With all of our discussions about empathy to this point under your belt, you are now better equipped to consider the following critical factors:

Different empathic styles will figure out the best responses to the first three points in different ways, as follows:

physical empaths: Sensing others’ physical issues can be startling and leave you wondering whether the pain you feel is your own or another’s. If the physical sensations are overbearing, excruciating, or don’t release when you ask for divine help, you are stuck in a masquerade and need to ask the Divine to release you with a healing stream of grace. Proceed only if you can refrain from believing yourself to be a miracle maker, and you’ll be okay with what might appear to be a non-outcome.

emotional empaths: The other’s emotional pain or feelings will fit you like a lock and key and cause no reaction other than compassion. If your own issues are stimulated, you will be able to clearly differentiate the other’s energy from your own. You won’t feel burdened or more intensely stimulated, as you would if your reaction was sympathetic, nor will you be tempted to take advantage of the other’s emotions to express your own. And you will not have the sense that you have to help no matter what.

mental empaths: If the data you’ve received is destined for you, you can embrace it calmly and cleanly. Don’t proceed if instead you feel forced into a response, nauseous, or overanxious. Know that your own awareness cannot fix another’s issues.

natural empaths: You can proceed with your empathic steps if you feel a sense of peace about participating. If the empathic calling is unhealthy for you, you might feel stressed and worried. Negative reactions to environmental stressors such as mold, inorganic materials, chemicals, additives, or electromagnetic fields might increase, and you could find yourself obsessing over the need to help.

spiritual empaths: An affirmative “proceed” will be accompanied by the sense of being unified with the Divine. Ask to be cleared of the empathic information if instead you feel despairing, anxious, depressed, or have a sense of foreboding or darkness. If you feel shaky or cold, you might have already taken on the other’s negative energies and need to ask the Divine to clear you.

There is one additional warning sign for the spiritual empath in regard to reacting to impaired empaths. While they can appear quite charming and enchanting, if not downright enlightened, in actuality they are highly manipulative. You will feel sick to your stomach no matter how they appear. At some level the person is asking you to ignore your spiritual truthfulness and buy into their appearance. Ask the Divine to send them a healing stream of grace and dismiss you from service.

shamanic empaths: One of the major liabilities of being a shamanic empath is the continual receptivity to empathic needs. Think of how many beings from dozens of worlds can potentially reach out for help.

Being a shaman necessitates strong energetic boundaries, which can be formed by asking the Divine to surround you with an abundance of healing streams of grace. If you ask the Divine for this protection and it doesn’t stabilize, perform self-healing; there might be internal reasons for this or interference from dark forces.

I also recommend that you appoint a gatekeeper to help oversee your empathic causes. This spiritual protector, which could even be the Divine, will only attune to the empathic messages that are divinely approved. With these healthy defense mechanisms in place, you can proceed to help another if your gatekeeper allows it.

Dismissal: Perform Spirit-to-Spirit and Invoke Grace

It’s important to figure out if you are supposed to proceed in a healing capacity or not. Sometimes a person, group, or animal reaches out for help, but it’s not for us to respond. They might blindly throw out an SOS or personalize their plea to us. Either way, before going any further, perform Spirit-to-Spirit and ask the Divine to clue you in. Are you really supposed to assist or not? Is there any reason you are supposed to refrain? Unless you are clearly supposed to proceed, don’t. Instead, ask the Divine to use healing streams of grace to return the other’s data or energy to them.

You can also request a healing stream of grace for yourself. This stream will wash you clean of the other’s murky energy. Also request that you be surrounded with a bubble of grace that will serve as a filter. This will help keep you from being reached again by persons or beings that should not be contacting you. If some part of you insists you should help even if doing so would be bad for you, do some self-healing work to figure out why.

If you are clear that you are supposed to provide assistance, move to the next stage, which is to prepare yourself to serve as a healing instrument.

Preparation: Perform Spirit-to-Spirit and Invoke Grace

You believe that you are called to assist another. Let’s double-check. Once again, execute Spirit-to-Spirit and ask for another affirmation. Ask yourself if you are supposed to continue. If you receive an affirmation, use the healing streams of grace to surround yourself in a bubble. Know that this bubble, or membrane of grace, directly connects you with the Divine, which will protect, guide, and help you through your healing endeavor. Now you can continue on to step 1.

step 1: Ask for and Acknowledge Further Information

Ask the Divine to provide information you need to better understand your role as a healer.

step 2: Conduct a Compassionate Assessment and Ask for Assistance

Now dig deeper to perceive what the Divine wants you to know about another’s real needs. What is the nature of the challenge? Are there causal factors you need to be aware of? Is there a word, a treatment, or a type of energy to avoid because it might cause further harm?

Next, concentrate on yourself. We are never called by the Greater Spirit to perform a task that will endanger us. Could you incur potential harm by participating in this healing? If so, ask the Divine if there is an extra layer of protection that you need or if, before proceeding, you need to conduct some self-healing. Ask, too, what will help you register intuitive and energetic information rather than absorb and hold it. Is there a certain way to work that is more rather than less compassionate toward yourself? Is there anything you must first tend to in yourself? This is a good time to ask the Divine for healing streams of grace to soothe, heal, and protect you as you move forward into providing healing for another.

step 3: Ask for Divine Response

It is now time to ask the Divine to provide the healing for the other. Your role is to witness what the Divine delivers.

step 4: Take Action with Humility

The Divine might now call you to deliver service. Begin this step by asking the Divine if you are supposed to perform an energetic task such as employing radiant empathy to send a statement or affirmation, or transporting energy; each is best done by containing the energy inside healing streams of grace. You might also sense that you are supposed to both send a message and transport energy. These activities can be “packaged” inside the same healing stream of grace.

Each empathic style will use radiant empathy in a slightly different way:

physical empaths: When sending physical healing to another, it’s important to remember that you do not send your own personal life energy. This will result in exhaustion, fatigue, and eventually a depressed immune system. Usually, a physical empath sends a healing stream of grace into the part of the body or the chakra that is afflicted. If you are in doubt about where to direct the grace, ask the Divine to deliver the stream of grace to the other person’s spirit.

Another technique I often use is to ask the Divine to interweave natural energies—including the vibrations of herbs, tinctures, or even the elements—into the streams of grace. These fortified streams can be programmed to deliver the exact amount and intensity needed and to be discarded when the healing is done.

emotional empaths: The healing streams of grace emotional empaths send are most frequently composed of soothing feelings that balance disturbed emotions. Some emotional empaths like to visualize different colors inside the streams. Following is a list of colors with a description of energies you can provide.

mental empaths: You can package supportive statements and words with healing streams of grace, including statements such as “you are a success” or “you are worthy.” These are good antidotes to the negative messages mental empaths often perceive.

natural empaths: What better way to provide healing for nature-based beings than to use the technique just described for physical empaths? Ask the Divine to insert natural medicines, elements, or energies into the streams of grace you direct to the one in need. For example, think of the potency of herbs, the strength of stones, the warmth of fire, and the refreshment of water. Nature contains everything required for healing. You may also draw on the powers of celestial bodies such as the moon, stars, and planets. Many natural empaths respond to others’ needs by serving as feng shui masters, designing an environment to be energetically balanced, or seeking solutions in the wisdom of astrology.

spiritual empaths: Many spiritual empaths deliver a healing stream of grace while praying. You can also visualize the stream as white, the purest and most complete of all colors, or gold, which results in the immediate enforcement of divine will.

shamanic empaths: The shamanic empath can use any of these techniques in addition to one other significant provision: spirits. Why not call upon a nature spirit or a risen master to provide insight as well as healing? Why not ask angels to perform psychic surgery on a tumor or remove an entity from an addict? Shamans can always avail themselves of otherworldly assists.

step 5: Surrender the Outcome

You are not in charge of the changes others allow for themselves or of what the Divine does for them. Sometimes illness and other challenges are designed for growth, and because of this we won’t perceive any healing. At other times, healing is a matter of timing: it is not yet time to see a significant change. And sometimes the transformations that take place are more than skin deep—they occur within another and cannot be perceived externally. Peace is ours when we release ourselves from the position of God.

Is It Your Dilemma?

How do you know whether your empathic abilities are attuning you to your own illness, dilemma, or healing need or to someone else’s? After using Spirit-to-Spirit to receive divine guidance, you can employ this simple technique to find out.

Concentrate on the healing need you perceive and then pick up an object. Ask the Divine to help you pour the need into the object. Then set the object down and walk away from it.

If the issue, sensation, or problem seems to persist, chances are that the challenge belongs to you. If it fades or disappears, the trauma or drama might be another’s. If less than half of the previous empathic sensation dissipates, the issue might actually belong to someone else but could also be triggering a similar one in you. If this is the case, you’ll want to perform self-healing to figure out whether it is better to assist the other or simply release them on a healing stream of grace, asking the Divine to surround them with light and remove their attachment from you with love. When this process is complete, you can also ask the Divine to cleanse the object of your own or another’s energy with that same restorative flow of grace.

An Example of Healing:
Freedom from PTSD

What might an empathic healing look like when performed? I have included this section to help you embrace yourself as a healer so you can perceive ways in which your empathic gifts might benefit another. It assumes that you are employing the techniques you have just learned.

We are going to focus on PTSD, the trauma-induced state that lingers after a catastrophe, illness, shocking event, or overwhelming loss. I believe that PTSD underlies many impaired empathic challenges, including mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and more (for further information on this, please see Appendix 2). It can be carried from one lifetime to another, applies to soul fragmentation, can be a result of entity attachments, and can even be triggered through our epigenes, or from the state of primary cell development onward.

In order for you to best visualize the application of your empathic healing powers, I want you to imagine that you are in a room with a person (or, in the case of natural empathy, an animal) in need of healing from prior trauma. This means that you can touch or talk with them, depending on your empathic style, although you will primarily be sending energy through radiant empathy. Simply imagine that you are going through these experiences according to your empathic style.

Conduct Spirit-to-Spirit and make sure that you are supposed to proceed. If the process is affirmed, ask Spirit to provide insight about your role as a healer. Is there anything specific you need to know? Is there a certain way you are supposed to work or are there any pitfalls to avoid?

Ask also if there are any divine helpers being assigned to this process. In particular, a natural empath might sense the presence of a natural helper such as a power animal or a plant spirit. You might sense you need to surround yourself with an elemental force such as air, water, stone, metal, wood, fire, ether (higher ideals), earth, star (fire and ether), or light. An entity, ghost, spirit, or angelic being might join a shamanic empath. Any or all empaths will work with the attributes of their personal style but might tap into clairvoyance, clairaudience, or another empathic style as well.

Now ask the Divine to help you assess both the symptoms and causes of the PTSD. The physical empath might actually feel the physical repercussions of both, such as a pain in the shoulder of a veteran who was shot down in battle. An emotional empath might feel the original emotional shock of a friend who found her spouse in bed with another woman, as well as the long-term shame and anger that followed. A mental empath might sense the change in the victim’s self-esteem or receive knowledge of what actually occurred during the abusive events.

A natural empath will most likely draw on shamanic tendencies to relate to the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual sensitivities of an animal companion, perhaps sensing a dog’s arthritic hip, feelings of confusion, perception that it’s done something wrong to cause the pain, and the Divine’s stance that the arthritis can be healed.

As a spiritual empath, you might pick up on the Divine’s anger that a person was mistreated or perhaps sexually abused. And as a shaman, you might do all of the above while having a meaty, in-depth conversation with the person’s favorite spirit guide.

The Healing Begins

It’s almost time to ask the Divine to begin the healing process. First, ask if you need anything specific from the Divine before you continue. In exploring the symptoms and causes of the other person’s PTSD, have you triggered any of your own trauma issues? Have you been mistreated in a similar way? If so, ask the Divine for a healing stream of grace and to indicate whether you should continue or not. If you receive a no, gently send a healing stream of grace to the person and suggest that they work with someone else. Explain that you don’t feel qualified or ready to help.

If you are to continue, it’s time to ask the Divine to assist the person you are striving to help heal. Guess what? Now you get to observe. Feel, listen, see, and sense what is occurring. You might need to talk with the person about what they are currently experiencing or even about the traumatic incident that caused the resulting PTSD. It is during this stage that many recipients of healing think that the healer is doing all the work. Actually, though, the Divine is doing all healing. You might be talking, listening, coaching, or even hugging, but the Divine is delivering the healing energy.

You might sense that you now have a part to play in the healing endeavor. What is your role? What should you do? Let the Divine guide you. Typical activities might include the following:

physical empaths: You feel guided to put your hands on the PTSD sufferer and channel through them a healing stream of grace. You might even sit across the room and hold your hands out, palms toward the person. Or you can hold an object, program it with a healing stream of grace, and hand it to the person. You might also feel prompted to advise the “healee” about specific physical actions to take for their own continued healing: seeing a massage therapist, attending a twelve-step meeting, running every day, or whatever emerges.

emotional empaths: Your job is to help the person express their hidden feelings. You can label the emotions you feel in your own body and ask if they’re on target. Is the person sad? Scared? Angry? Ask what they need in order to reveal their feelings to you or to someone else. You can also imagine sending healing streams of grace in various colors into their body to stir and clear emotions. It’s best to continue this until the person reaches a mild sense of joy or lightness: relief, gratitude, optimism, or satisfaction, for example. Other feelings are not bad or wrong; they simply indicate that there are more emotions to clear, either now or later.

mental empaths: It’s as if you can sense or hear the person’s thoughts, specifically those interwoven with the onset of the PTSD. Through your sensitivity, you can surface the negative beliefs that developed because of the trauma: lies like “I am worthless” or “I am powerless.” It is actually these misperceptions that cause the recycling of PTSD symptoms, sometimes the intensification of those symptoms, and even impaired empathy and its resulting emotional dramas. Frequently, mental empaths are called upon to help the person reexperience the causal event, coaching them through the persistent pain so as to pinpoint and then shift the dysfunctional beliefs. Using radiant empathy, send the person the appropriate beliefs on healing streams of grace so as to energetically replace the inaccurate ones.

spiritual empaths: You will be filled with sensations that will help you address and change the misguided shame that always results from being abused or traumatized. In fact, I believe that the glue that binds the repetitive terror, pain, and grief (as well as other shards of emotional fallout from the original ordeal) is shame: the conviction that we are a bad person because something bad happened to us. The terror results from believing that the disturbing event will repeat. Underneath all of these reactions is that toxic theory that the Divine doesn’t love us or he or she would have rescued us. As a spiritual empath, you provide primary and primal healing by sharing the truth of the Divine’s unconditional love; the person needs to hear this truth in order to heal. If they refuse to believe in their inherent lovability and deservedness, send them the certainty of their worth in a healing stream of grace.

shamanic empaths: You might do any or all of the above in addition to holding court with spirits that can help you remove entity attachments and dark forces. I believe that serious PTSD, especially the kind that results in addictions, chronic anxiety, depression, and other forms of impaired empathy (including narcissism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder), almost always involves manipulative dark forces. These “whisper” to their host, prompting negative thoughts and self-destructive behaviors. The easiest way to release an intrusive entity is to substitute a healing stream of grace for the attachment, then ask the Divine to do the rest.

When you’ve done all you can do, surrender the outcome. Ask the Divine to continue the healing long after the life-affirming interaction you have just experienced has ended.

As we’ve explored, the urge to help others, to stand in the place of healer, is intertwined with being empathic. To perform healing is a natural expression of our innate compassion, an extension of the loving call to kindness. Still, as much as we’d like to help—as frequently as we are stirred by our own or another’s needs—we must always stop and wonder: is this for me to do? Even if we proceed to follow our empathic yearnings, we must remember that our role is most frequently to serve as the witness, the one who cares, allowing the greater healing to be done by the Divine. Our role is not insignificant, however, whether performing healings for self or others. To be empathetic, to sense a need, and to add love to the process of being an instrument of grace are immeasurable gifts that reflect the divinity within our souls.

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