The Empath in Relationships
I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.
brené brown
A few years ago, I overheard two young children sitting in a sandbox. The little boy was crying. I wondered if the girl had taken his beach toys. But no—and I soon heard her ask this:
“Do you know your tears turn into smiles as soon as you get them out?”
“But I feel bad!” the boy wailed.
“I know; I feel it too.” The little girl nodded sagely. “So let’s both feel sad and then happy together.”
The sobs stopped, and pretty soon the two children were playing alongside each other.
This interlude was a telling example of empathy. When two people or beings, no matter their age or background, share with each other, the result is love.
Joy often rises and falls based on this loving empathic connection. We are designed for relationships of all kinds; our empathic wiring is proof of this. We are here to relate, each according to our own ability and style.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the roles of the various empathic styles in relationships. First we’ll look at each empathic style and explore how it enriches close personal relationships, as well as the most typical challenges linked with it. Then we’ll address the role that the steps to compassionate empathy can play to better your relationships and solve your empathic problems. Also included, at the end of this chapter, are useful sections showing you how to deal with one of the most vexing (and rampant) relationship issues of our time—narcissism—and how to increase your empathy even if you’ve been struggling to do so. You can apply all of this information to your most vital relationships, those closest to your heart.
As we journey through this landscape of soul and love, be prepared to both laugh and cry at some of the ways you’ve experienced empathy with those close to you. As the two youngsters in the sandbox revealed, love really exists where tears and sunshine can comingle.
The Knowing of Love
What makes two people feel close and connected? It starts—and ends—with intimacy, the art of being vulnerable in love. Intimacy is completely dependent on the ability to exchange moods, cares, and awareness. The same is true of creating intimacy with beings of nature and those from the other worlds. Empathy is also core to intimately sensing the information in a crystal stone or the principles illuminated by moving planets. No matter how we bond or what we are bonding with, it is empathy that forms unity. Because of empathy, we can dance in another’s shoes and cry when they are sad. Because of empathy, we can love.
Each brand of empathy opens the empath to a unique way of communing through love. And, as with all good things, each empathic style also opens us to certain challenges. As we explore both the ideal and the difficult facets of the various types of empathy, I encourage you to explore whether you have experienced what is described. Search for your yearnings and longings within your heart; these are the soul desires that will tell you where there are horizons yet to be touched, sources of love yet to be enjoyed.
Physical Empathy: The Other within the Self
You may be familiar with matryoshka, those Russian nesting dolls: one brightly painted, oval-shaped doll rests inside of another and yet another, and so on. Remove the many layers and you find a tiny child doll nestled inside. In close relationships, a physical empath often functions in a similar fashion. Inside the physical empath lies the physical sensations of another person; inside these are those of yet another person.
In a relationship, physical empaths are usually highly responsible and great providers. After all, they are able to sense others’ physical needs, including material provisions such as food, housing, clothing, and financial security.
Many physical empaths attune to these fundamental core requirements, sensing when another is dealing with inadequate material support. Yet others sense other people’s physical sensations such as bodily aches, pains, and illnesses. Many physical empaths sense all of the above.
If you are a physical empath, you are most likely one of the best material providers, mates, fathers, or mothers around. Danger occurs when you are folded into a relationship with an irresponsible person who is more than happy to have you to do the work while they cruise. I once spent four years in a relationship with a man who kept telling me he was going to make money and somehow never got around to doing it. Supporting my own two sons, him, and his children was enough to take me down. When I presented a deadline for action, he decided to leave.
That relationship taught me that you simply cannot do for others what they should be doing for themselves, whether it’s paying bills or providing healing assistance. Physical empaths often end up with adrenal burnout, fatigue, and illnesses caused by sympathy. The other likely complaint is caregiver burnout or stress, which results from taking on another’s problematic symptoms. It is a common occurrence in emotional empaths but an even more serious challenge for physical empaths; despite their outward protestations, they often find themselves partnered with individuals who require assistance or working in jobs with unhealthy people.
The link between physical empathy and caregiver burnout was presented in an academic paper outlining the origins of “compathy”—the shared (“com”) feelings (“pathy”) of physical empathy. According to the authors of this paper, physically empathic individuals exhibit a “compethic response,” which causes one of four scenarios:
- Two people can mirror identical symptoms, and this can make it hard to tell who is really ill.
- Symptoms can also be transferred, such as when a man with a pregnant wife experiences the same back pain and odd food cravings she does.
- A third possibility is called “converted compathy,” in which the recipient of the empathic sensations changes the symptoms so as to share healing with the other. For example, as a physical empath I often sense my client’s physical problems in corresponding parts of my body. I once sensed a client’s newly broken thigh. The pain was quite sharp. As I registered the pain, I had my psyche mute the throbbing hurt into a dull sensation until it was nearly nonexistent. I then used radiant empathy to transfer this slight discomfort to my client, using a healing stream of grace to substitute this much-improved version of pain for the agonizing one. My client immediately sighed and said, “This is a pain I can live with.”
- And a fourth possibility is “initiated compathy,” which involves one person sending his or her symptoms into someone else.
According to the paper’s authors, the beauty of physical empathy is that a caregiver who can truly sense what is occurring in another can provide the optimum care. The problem, as we have seen, is that the empath can become overworked, overburdened, used up, and just plain sick.45
We have also discussed the potential for the physical empath to be sensitive to the energy stored in objects. I’ve experienced the upside and downside of this ability myself. I remember staying at a bed and breakfast one night and not being able to sleep. I felt “bad energy” coming from a desk in the corner. In the morning I discovered that a woman had written a suicide note at that desk. Of course, a physical empath can benefit others using this same ability; you’ve only to touch someone’s hand or favorite object to sense what is occurring in them.
Theoretically, in the case of my sensitivity to the suicidal spirit, I could ask the Divine for assistance to make sure she has “gone to the light” or been sweetly passed to the angels on the “other side.” This is true of all such negative or sometimes frightening vibrations. If we open to divine inspiration and help—and put ourselves in the quotient in terms of self-care—we can use all things for good.
Another positive tool for a physical empath is to deliberately program objects given to loved ones, such as presents, with good intentions. You can hold a note whose destination is a kid’s lunchbox, a bracelet being presented to a friend, or a gemstone or watch that you’ve chosen for your partner and use your radiant empathy powers to send blessings into that object, and these will then be shared with your loved one. Simple actions like this are a brilliant way to share your gift.
Emotional Empathy: Magic Markers of Love
Audrey was a typical emotional empath. “My world is an array of colored magic markers, each a different feeling—each a different shade of my inner self,” she told me. “I’m so lucky my second husband is an emotive man. We share so much joy. My first marriage was impossible, though. Bob never had a feeling—I had them all.
“In fact,” Audrey added, “my first husband thought I was borderline because I was so emotional. It took forever to figure out that I was simply feeling—and expressing—all the emotions my husband refused to acknowledge.”
In personal relationships, emotional empaths are just that: people who color life with feelings. They are able to sense what loved ones feel, relate their own emotional needs, and sometimes fill in the emotional caverns in another’s soul.
Typically women reveal more skill with emotional empathy and expression than do men, but this is probably a result of culture and modeling. Millennia ago our ancestors assumed a social compact that neatly divided human tasks according to gender. Men were to hunt, women to gather. With this division, men adapted a stoic style, and women, an emotional one. But there are exceptions.
Within my own family, I am an emotional empath, as is one of my sons, Gabriel. Gabriel is as highly attuned to others’ feelings as I am. You can only imagine our conversations.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Hmmm, nothing.”
“That’s not true. You’re scared.”
“You know, Gabe, I am. And I can tell that my fear is making you feel scared.”
My other son has deep emotions but runs a different way. He relies on me to help him express his emotions. I still remember one conversation in which he was upset about something. My sentences were punctuated with statements like this.
“If I were you, I’d be really sad.”
“Yes,” he shared, his voice cracking.
“I’d also be mad that someone acted like that.”
“I am!” he agreed.
I am intimate with both of my sons through my emotional empathy, but the relationships differ in that one son is more emotionally empathic and the other is empathic in other ways. The point is that we don’t need to be in relationship with people exactly like us—we simply need to be able to use our gifts and for others to accept them.
Emotional empaths, in particular, must have their emotions accepted and validated, and they do best in relationships with people who can acknowledge their own emotions. Short of the latter, the emotional empath can easily become oversympathetic, taking on the other’s emotions and acting them out. This is what is occurring any time you see one member of a couple histrionically expressing feelings while the other appears deadpan. Because of this tendency to carry all the emotional freight in a relationship, an emotional empath must use the steps to empathic compassion to separate their own emotions from another’s and refuse to take in or act out feelings that are not their own.
Sometimes the emotional empath attracts friends or romantic companions who are anything but emotional, including individuals who manipulate others’ emotions but can’t relate to them inwardly. These people might display emotional contagion or narcissist-like traits, or be deeply depressed and unable to connect with their own emotions. An emotional empath can end up caring so much about these difficulties that they lose their own emotional compass in the process. On the upside, an emotional empath is wonderfully able to relate to impaired empaths such as those with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) or ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), or even people who are depressed or anxious.
Mental Empathy: The Cheerleaders of the Universe
When it comes to figuring things out, such as what’s really going on and what needs to be done, the mental empath takes the prize, hands down. Like a computer, a mental empath is able to sort through vast amounts of data pertaining to another and zero in on what’s pertinent.
If you are a mental empath, you have much to contribute to a relationship partner. You know when your partner’s spirit is flagging and how to help. You pinpoint the reasons behind low self-esteem or self-confidence and can zoom in on self-sabotaging beliefs. Better yet, you know which truths should be substituted for the lies that trigger those states. You know what actions will lead to success and which will head south. Likewise, you’re a great parent or parental figure; you can unknot just about any problem and brainstorm a practical path forward.
The downsides of being a mental empath are twofold. First, you can end up feeling—or actually being—used. Because you can sense the underlying needs of others, they can turn to you for support and ignore the fact that you could use a return favor. You could also rely too much on your mental faculties, to the detriment of your own emotional or soul needs. You might end up using tools like imagination or hyperoptimism to fit in with someone who is emotionally based, or you may partner with an extremely emotional, physical, or shamanic sensitive to round out your personality. High mental empaths sometimes develop anxiety disorders because they can’t shut off the flow of information; it can all become “too much.” This might be the case with certain types of ADHD, which I believe could involve receiving so much intuitive mental data that it’s hard to process explicit information too.
The beauty of mental empathy is the wisdom that gradually evolves with its appropriate use. Because of its link with clairaudience, a mental empath can become the interpreter of knowledge, the giver of truth, and the rational rock needed in just about any relationship.
Natural Empathy: Representing Mother and Father Nature
What can fill a natural empath with more love than connection with an animal, tree, or force of nature? Certainly natural empaths are able to bond with a mate, relatives, and friends, but they reserve a special place in their heart for the beings of nature they are uniquely attuned to.
I have one friend whose primary relationships are with her dogs. She has hosted several dogs over the years, often two at a time, and always seems to know exactly what they are thinking and feeling. Most of them live years longer than they are statistically supposed to, and I am sure it’s because of her empathic care. In my own home, we have a guinea pig, Max, who is going on nine years old, more than twice the life expectancy for one of his kind. He lives in the dining room and can see everything that occurs from his perch. I believe he is the grand choreographer of many an activity in our household.
Natural empaths might relate to one particular type of natural being or nearly all of them, but they often find themselves speaking for their friends in nature. I once had a client come to my house for a session, and before she left, she handed me a notepad full of insights from my dogs, who had “spoken” with her during the session. The inaudible conversations were more like ransom notes, reading like this: We’ll leave you alone at five in the morning if you give us bones.
Natural empaths are often able to share messages from the natural world with their human loved ones, and sometimes combine sensitivity to the plant and planetary worlds with a physically empathic healing ability. I once worked with a woman who could energetically tap into a client or a loved one and sense what type of star energy they needed. She could then feel which star in the sky could provide this unusual healing energy and send the starry light into the person in need. Yet other individuals, those who are often shamanically sensitive, are able to attune to foliage, trees, or even elements and then connect with the spirits of these forces, requesting that they send radiant healing empathy to another person.
In a romantic or family relationship, natural empaths often find themselves representing the natural world, instructing the people around them about how to better relate as well. They can be found putting stones under a child’s bed or scolding a mate for killing a fly. This can present challenges for people who are not naturally sensitive and simply want to coexist with the element-loving empath rather than access the same sensitivity.
Spiritual Empathy: Knowing Best
“My wife doesn’t always tell the truth,” complained a husband. “Everyone else believes her, but I can always tell when she’s lying. Of course,” he added sarcastically, “she can do no wrong, and so I’m usually left feeling invalidated.”
It turned out he was right and that the lying was more serious than fibbing on her taxes. About a year later, the husband discovered that his wife had been taking cash out of their account and gambling with it on business trips, during which time she was also conducting affairs. Her seemingly generous personality had alerted no one save him, primarily because he was a spiritual empath with the sixth sense needed to assess another’s value system—or lack thereof.
In a relationship, you can’t ask for a more decent partner than a spiritual empath. They simply can’t live with themselves if they don’t abide by their own value system. Whatever they profess as true, they will do their best to demonstrate. If they hold deep family values, they will be at every soccer game their child plays in. If they believe in fidelity, they won’t stray even if their partner does. Unfortunately, the same sensitivity that allows them to gauge their own behavior against their beliefs also alerts them to others’ fluctuating levels of self-responsibility and respectability.
For instance, I have a client who is married to a well-known lawyer and has to attend a lot of business events. She can’t stand the events, mainly because she only has to sit near someone at a table or jostle their elbow around the punch bowl to know if they are deceitful or insincere. She simply senses it in her body. She is also endowed with the other spiritual empathic gift, which involves knowing another’s true destiny. After one fundraiser, she said to her husband, “Do you think there are any lawyers who want to be lawyers rather than missionaries, dentists, authors, or something else?” Her spiritual powers are so intense, she can feel who is off-path and unhappy because of it.
If a spiritual empath is partnered with or in relationships with honest individuals, the relationships will flow smoothly. The challenge lies when other people are hiding something.
Ironically, spiritual empaths often attract at least one significant relationship with a less than savory individual in order to test their gifts and decide to believe in them. The mirror of a dishonest person also makes us look inside to expose parts of ourselves that are deceptive. Are we fooling ourselves, believing what we want to rather than what we should? Can we stop shaming ourselves and cease feeling unworthy of decent treatment?
Paradoxically, a spiritual empath is also highly susceptible to low self-
esteem and therefore mistreatment in a relationship, simply because their standards are so high. There is a difference between being able to sense our spiritual possibilities and being able to live there. Ultimately, the best protection for a spiritual empath is grace—gracefulness and mercy for self, which can then be extended to others.
Because of their spiritual sensitivity, many spiritual empaths partner up with manipulative, impaired empaths who hide behind the “do-gooder” to look good themselves. They can also be kindly sensitive toward impaired empaths who struggle with issues caused by ASD, ADHD, depression, anxiety, or mental illnesses, including schizophrenia. A spiritual empath reads the purity of another’s soul, not the way the person presents in the world. This characteristic is positive when the impaired empath is good-hearted but devastating when the impaired empath is narcissistic or manipulative and simply uses the spiritual empath for their own gain.
Some spiritual empaths are impaired themselves. They might be so attuned to the negativity in a family that they become depressed; they feel bad because they can’t shift the family system. They might become bipolar in the sense of splitting their own so-called dark self from their light self, as they are unable to fully embrace the dark, or shadow, self that needs love and healing in order to evolve. I believe they can even develop the type of bipolar tendencies or schizophrenia that relates to a split soul. One part of them might be outside of the body, trying to help others, while the other part feels trapped inside the body.
Spiritual empaths are truly a light unto themselves and the world as long as grace takes the lead role in the play of their lives.
Shamanic Empathy: Here, There, and Everywhere
The shaman empath has entire worlds to draw companions from. This can either increase the propensity for love and joy in personal relationships or potentially detract from that experience.
As we have discussed, the pantheon of spiritual helpers includes natural beings, deceased relatives, spirit guides, and souls known in past lives. Ideally, all of these can support the shaman’s close relationships. Besides bringing their own cornucopia of connections to the shaman empath in relationship, they are frequently able to tune in to helpers linked with the shaman’s loved ones too.
This reservoir of assistants can bolster a relationship, with the invisibles serving as everything from matchmakers to parental advisors. Yet, as you might imagine, the large number of “insiders” can also become overwhelming and intrusive for the shaman and their loved ones alike.
I remember years ago spending all night awake in a hotel because I could sense the presence of visiting spirits. My husband wasn’t too thrilled about the succession of others that paraded through the room and how that seized my energy and attention. Since then I’ve learned to screen out everyone and everything but the Divine, unless the Divine directs my focus to a visiting spirit or being, but it took years to accomplish that goal.
Shamanic empaths are gifted with at least partial access to all other empathic capabilities as well, making for yet another potential merry-go-round experience for them and their loved ones. The key ingredient for healthy relationships for the shamanic empath is boundaries; lacking these, the shaman can be plagued by nearly every relationship and empathic challenge. All the tools I presented in chapter 5 are of great help in establishing healthy boundaries.
Relationship Rx:
Applying the Five Steps
to Compassionate Empathy
How best to assure that your empathic gifts lead to successful and loving rather than challenging relationships? By appropriately applying the techniques for compassionate empathy. I suggest you practice these steps while thinking of a special relationship. Keeping your bond with a beloved other in mind, see what you can discover about it and your own gifts.
During this exercise—which you can conduct anytime you need to, whether you are with a loved one or not (and even if you don’t like the person you most often empathize with)—I blend the questions related to each empathic style. We often find that when we open one paint tube or color of empathy, other abilities begin to arise. For this reason I am inviting your inner self to test for all forms of empathy. If you don’t get a response to a certain style, simply ignore that area and continue.
Preparation: Conduct Spirit-to-Spirit
As before, affirm your inner spirit as well as that of your partner or close confidant, and then affirm the presence of the Greater Spirit.
step 1: Ask for and Acknowledge Needed Information
Concentrate on the relationship and ask the Divine to provide you with information about your role in it. What are you doing in it? What does it mean to you? What is it supposed to give to you—and what are you supposed to give to it? Now ask if there is a situation you need to zoom in on during this exercise and whether you can receive empathic understanding from the other person.
step 2: Conduct Compassionate Assessment and Ask for Assistance
Ask the Divine to provide deeper insight into the empathic information provided. Are there additional feelings your loved one has that you need to acknowledge? Are there mental perceptions that would help you better understand them? Is there a sense of their physical predicament or a being or force of nature that presents itself to provide information? Do you sense input directly from the Divine, get a sense of what is right or wrong with this person’s current situation, or perceive something right or wrong with your relationship with them? Finally, is there insight from the otherworldly realms that compels your attention? You can also ask whether there are any clairvoyant or clairaudient messages you are supposed to receive.
Now focus on yourself for a moment. How do you feel about the information you’ve obtained? Does it stir an emotional or mental response inside you? Does your body feel comfortable or not? Have you in any way taken in the other’s feelings, thoughts, or physical issues, not to register the data but in a way that will cause you problems by absorbing and holding it? If so, release these extra energies right now using a healing stream of grace to rebalance yourself.
Does it seem that the Divine wants you to continue in order to better understand the other’s situation or your own relationship? Is there a right or wrong way to proceed? Do the entities or spirits that are present feel beneficial or harmful to your loved one, yourself, or the process? Are there any past-life or ancestral issues present—in you or your loved one—that might affect what is occurring? Follow divine input and use healing streams of grace if you need to perform any kind of protection or entity release or begin healing past traumas. Release yourself from the entire process if the Divine leads you to do that; otherwise, move ahead.
step 3: Ask for a Divine Response
Ask the Divine to provide healing for the other, for yourself, and for the relationship. Is there a part of you that wants to take over God’s job and do the fixing for your loved one? Step back and let go.
step 4: Take Action with Humility
Are you called to serve? Then ask how. Are you supposed to do something for the other person, either on an initial or ongoing basis? Or is there perhaps something to stop doing? Conversely, is there something you need them to do for you? Relationships are two-way streets, and we need to examine them from a variety of angles.
How about those emotions? Is there a way you could more significantly tend to the other’s emotional well-being or ask for a return favor? Has there been discounting or a lack of validation on either side? If so, what might correct the situation?
Are there beliefs underpinning the relationship or either of your own individual roles in it that should be addressed and clarified, perhaps even changed? What is your job in this regard? Is there something to share with the other that will serve you both?
How might a tighter bond with nature assist the relationship? Do you collectively or individually need to spend more time outside or get a dog? Is there an insight or remedy that astrology or feng shui might provide? Are there natural forces that can be called upon? How about spiritual knowledge you should be aware of?
Along the same vein, ask what the ultimate purpose of the relationship is from the Divine’s point of view. If it were to follow its highest destiny, what would the relationship become? What could happen in the future?
Now play “shaman therapist” for the relationship. What insights can be provided by examining past lives the two of you have experienced or the interplay between your souls? Are there past-life or soul issues you need to examine to support the relationship or your next step in (or out of) it? Is there an invisible “relationship counselor” that can come to your aid and, if so, what do they show you?
Finally, ask if there are any radiant empathy responses you might open to and offer for the other person, the relationship, or yourself.
step 5: Surrender the Outcome
No matter what you may have shifted in the preceding steps or not, ask the Divine to take charge from here on. Thank yourself, the other, and the Divine for this work.
Dealing with Difficult People
“Dear Abby” is the name of an advice column founded in 1956 by a woman under the pen name Abigail Van Buren. Through her column, she dispensed worldly wisdom and commonsense advice to generations of women and men. Her strong sense of healthy boundaries mixed with compassionate humor is what we need in spades when it comes to dealing with impaired empaths—as well as aspects of ourselves that might be impaired. (A reminder: for a detailed discussion of the varieties of impaired empaths, see Appendix 2.)
The three techniques for compassionate empathy you have learned are vital when applied in a relationship. Still, challenging situations can arise that leave us feeling confused and distressed—until we learn a few tips for reclaiming our power. Some common scenarios are as follows.
Lost in a Crowd
Many empaths struggle to tune out others’ energies when in a crowded place such as a school, shopping center, or party, or when standing on the street in a busy downtown area. The emotional empath might be flooded with others’ feelings, and the mental empath “junked up” by others’ thoughts, especially negative ones. The physical empath can easily feel compressed and sick, afflicted with everyone else’s aches and pains, and the spiritual empath might start paying too much attention to this cacophonous ecosystem’s striking challenges, which seemingly shouldn’t exist. Shaman empaths might feel like they are literally exploding with the acute awareness of all the above, as well as the presence of both angelic and demonic forces and other entities.
The natural empath might pick up on the inorganic factors of a human-made environment and desire only to flee, struck with nausea or even a fever in reaction to its glues, paints, and power lines and other stressful EMF sources. They might sense the wounded nature of the one daisy growing out of a sidewalk or the wilting cries of the single plant attempting to grow in the corner of a mall.
A natural empath might also define a crowd differently from the other empaths. A crowd might be a logged forest replete with wounded tree trunks or a newly designed fracking site, the earth’s shale bemoaning its fate. It might also be the reaction of the atmosphere to pollution or the fear of a flock of water birds faced with spilled oil.
Remember that your best empathic friend is Spirit-to-Spirit. Ask always for Spirit to filter and screen others’ messages and energies for you, directing them away from your field when they are not beneficial. I like to visualize that the Divine places a great big blower fan in the front and back of me and sends these incoming energies upward to the heavens.
Also use your healing streams of grace, asking the Divine to surround you in layer upon layer of grace, which will filter others’ energies so you only take in what serves the higher good. If necessary, get out of the environment. If you are in a class, sit near the door so you don’t feel trapped. Find a bathroom and wash your hands, imagining that the water cleansing your hands is also clearing your energetic field. Concentrate on your most empathic chakra(s) and imagine a strong beam of color entering from the backside, the part of you that can open to heavenly energies. (For information on the meaning of colors, see page 134.) Call upon your spiritual guides and ask them to serve as sentries. You can be blissfully alone in a crowd, even if you don’t think so.
Feeling Shut Down
As empathic as we might be at times, there are certain circumstances in which most of us shut down. I used to close off during family get-togethers and, consequently, left every holiday gathering with the flu or a cold, as my physical system wasn’t able to clear out the incoming toxins. I also used to close off around narcissists, alcoholics, or people with bipolar disorder. My family was replete with individuals afflicted with these conditions, and my childhood self-protective mechanism was to imagine that I could crawl deep inside myself and shut the trapdoor behind me. The problem with this reaction was that despite the fact that I thought I was protecting myself from others’ issues, I really wasn’t; I still picked up on everything going on in them. Not only that, but I developed coping mechanisms that hurt me in relationships as an adult. How can you carry on a healthy adult-adult relationship if you close off when under pressure? Depending on your empathic style, you might shut down around animals in pain, thinking it’s better to distance yourself than be unable to help, or turn off whenever you sense a ghost in the room, believing yourself indefensible to invisible intrusions.
How do you know you are shut down? Your body provides you with clues. You might become cold, which means you have shut your chakras and collapsed the energetic field around your skin. And unfortunately, the less electrical flow in your body, the more permeable your energetic boundaries. You might also experience a sudden flash of heat, which means you are allowing another’s energy to flood you; heat indicates an influx of energy. If the heat is uncomfortable, you are allowing in energy you don’t want, which in turn dampens your own energy and responsive intelligence.
A part of you might also numb out, which indicates that your conscious self has abandoned that part of your body. The danger in this is that others’ energies can now enter. As well, you are now unable to connect with a necessary part of your body-mind-and-soul consortium to effectively problem-solve. You might also sense that you have separated from your body—that you are floating around outside yourself. This disconnection suggests that you have dissociated and that a part of your soul—and therefore your power—has fled your body. You could now easily be coerced and controlled by manipulative empaths or entities that wish to take advantage of the empty space your fear has left in its wake.
If you experience any of these signs, I suggest that you immediately stop whatever you are doing and conduct Spirit-to-Spirit, breathing deeply into your body until you feel that you have reconnected with yourself. You can then ask the Divine to fill you with healing streams of grace. If you are with someone, ask for a time out or a pause. If the other is asking you to do something, tell them that you will have to think about it. If you sense that you are being manipulated, you can simply say that something doesn’t feel right and you need some time and space. Call a friend, go outside, take a walk, head to a yoga class, or do anything you need to do to integrate the part of you that has been triggered and has abandoned the rest of you. Then, when you have more time, perform the self-healing exercise on page 126 called “Self-Healing for Empaths.”
Feeling Sorry for Others
How often do you descend into pity when you are around a hurting person or animal instead of remaining empathic? How often do you feel sorry for yourself instead of feeling empathic? It’s easy to do, but it’s not helpful to yourself or anyone else.
For example, I have a friend with a severely ADHD son. Samantha is a high emotional empath and easily attunes to Jared’s frustration and hurt. Jared doesn’t quite understand why he can’t complete tasks at the same rate as his brother or why other kids sometimes stay away from him; ADHD kids often enter others’ energetic spaces and make them uncomfortable. Samantha so deeply senses Jared’s suffering that she excuses him from chores, does his homework for him, and tells him that his lack of friends is “their loss.”
My youngest son is also extremely ADHD as well as dyslexic, but I refrain from pity. I actually perceive the condition as offering an inherent gift. Because Gabe has to try harder to do the same amount of schoolwork as other kids, he is extremely hard working. Instead of pitying him and compensating for his issues, I have had him work with an ADHD coach since he was four. I’ve had to learn how to set up rigid organization rules, which is very good for me, and monitor my own emotional reactions so I don’t descend into pity.
Do I feel sorry for myself because I have to go the extra mile—or ten miles? I confess to feeling tired, but I also feel honored to be of service.
Instead of falling into the pity trap, we can use our empathy to look for the strengths in another and figure out what weaknesses we can strengthen inside ourselves. Learning how to be more patient and organized has done me—and the world—a world of good. I say this because these are two of the qualities that have enabled me to write books, lead workshops, teach classes, and counsel thousands of people.
A Relational Example:
Narcissism in Others or Self
Let’s examine one of the several types of impaired empaths to see how we can empathically relate to individuals with this disorder—and we may count ourselves in their number. I have selected the narcissistic condition because it is so widespread. The same concepts and techniques that help us relate to narcissists or our own inner narcissist can also be used with other overly self-focused individuals, including active addicts, individuals with bipolar disorder, and even people lost in depression and anxiety.
Narcissists are individuals who think mainly about themselves. Charming and bright, these people are actually empathic but are classically described as only mentally empathic. They simply don’t understand—or care about—others’ emotions.
The current standard of empathy only measures two basic types of empathy: mental and emotional. I believe that narcissists use their mental perceptions to manipulate others but can do the same with shamanic empathy, accessing darker forces to gain insight about another and using this information to get their needs met. I have also come across narcissists who can employ physical empathy, but mainly they use radiant empathy, sending their physical issues into others, primarily their romantic partners or children. (This is called “initiated compathy,” as explained earlier in this chapter in the section on physical empathy.) Seldom do I find narcissists skilled in natural or spiritual empathy. A narcissist will believe that because they are human, the natural world is “beneath” them.
There are two main reasons a narcissist might not access their innate spiritual empathy. The first is that a spiritual being might see through the narcissist. Narcissists don’t want anyone seeing their dirt, partly because they don’t want to see it themselves. The second reason is that they want to be the most powerful or aware being in their personal universe. To acknowledge that a spiritual being operates at a higher level than they do is to feel like a failure or “lesser than.”
Quite often, kind or highly empathic individuals are attracted into relationship with narcissists because the wounded child within the narcissist is calling out for help. Emotional empaths sense the agonizing abandonment issues and resulting hurt and pain underlying the narcissistic persona, while mental empaths perceive the crooked thinking processes. Both emotional and mental empaths long to fix or heal the infant or child locked inside the narcissist.
Physical empaths relate to the stuck state of the narcissist; energetically, narcissists are locked in the equivalent of a closet inside their bodies. Natural empaths become entranced if a narcissist can manipulate them through their companion animals, such as pretending to care about the animal, and spiritual empaths become enthralled by the prospect of “saving” narcissists, who are usually ethically off-path. Shamans fall prey if they are mesmerized and manipulated by the dark forces often accompanying the narcissist.
I have perceived—and best avoided—narcissists by paying attention to empathic clues, not my eyes. I feel emotionally scared around a narcissist. My mental empath twists my stomach when they are talking. My physical body gets cold and shuts down, and nature often sends disturbing signals to warn me. I decided not to date one man because after dreaming about him one night, everywhere I went there were police cars—hundreds of them. I figured I should avoid this person. For a short while I actually did date a narcissist, and when I was thinking of getting more serious, a tree in my yard was suddenly loaded with crows—hundreds of crows—that cawed at me every time I ruminated about this man. Recalling these experiences reminds me that our spiritual empathy tells us when others are lying and will help us catch them in their lies for the good of all concerned.
The shamanic world is most likely the richest mine for sensing and dealing with narcissists, those who can leave you feeling stripped of pride, worth, and even the resources they have conned out of you. Quite simply, narcissists cast spells.
The best way to deal with narcissists is to consider them enchanters who throw spells of glamour, first over themselves and then over you. They spin a seductive web and insert it into their energetic field to appear competent, attractive, and intelligent—which they might be. The thing is, narcissists can’t stand to appear weak, ugly, or mistaken in any way.
When they smile or pay attention to you, they are using their physical radiant empathy to encode you with their desirability. Every empathic skill is spent reading you so as to find your hot buttons—not only to please you but also to shame you if you don’t approve of them. Toward this end, they (usually unknowingly) enlist dark forces to support the manipulation—and vice versa. Narcissists are easily used by dark forces, which encourage them to hide their pain from the world as well as themselves. The dark forces thereby keep them enthralled and unable to achieve their higher purpose.
By paying attention to your empathic clues, you can spot a narcissist and use the three main techniques: Spirit-to-Spirit, healing streams of grace, and five steps to compassionate empathy. I find the most gentle and appropriate way to break the spell, to push away the enchantment, is to send healing streams of grace toward the infant or young child locked inside of the narcissist. They might not immediately decide to face their deeper issues, but you will dismiss the codependent aspect of you that longs to heal those in need. By using the healing streams of grace, you let go and let God.
But what if you are a narcissist? Well, as I touched on earlier, the truth is that we all have at least a narcissistic wound, a psychological injury inflicted upon us when we were young. In the context of intuitive empathy, these wounds can also be carried in from past lives or be triggered through our epigenes. They can also result in a splintered soul and vulnerability to entity interference.
These wounds, which might or might not result in a full-blown narcissistic personality disorder, are caused by our parents’ inability to meet our emotional needs when we were growing up. The result is a sense of emptiness and disconnection, which we try to fill through grandiosity and perfectionism, as well as by projecting our issues upon others. The part of us that feels constantly maligned or better than others might be inflicted with a narcissistic wound. If we fall prey to believing ourselves a martyr or a victim, we might be dealing with our inner narcissist. As well, if we are constantly attracting narcissists into our life, it might serve us to figure out whether we have a narcissistically wounded self that attempts to feel good—and even better than others—by trying to continually fix others.
We don’t want to reject our narcissistic self, but neither do we want to put this injured self in charge of our relationships. Instead, I recommend devoting time to conducting the self-healing exercise in chapter 6. Then pay attention to indications that you may be lost in or acting out of your narcissistic self, which could include feeling a lot of self-pity, the sense of being continually put down or unimportant, the desire to blame others, or the need to take over a situation because “no one else can get it right.” You can also take yourself through the “An Example of Healing” exercise in Chapter 6 to examine your own PTSD conditions.
Know that you can also use your dream life for diagnosis and healing work. Before going to bed, ask for a dream that will help you perceive your wounded child. Every time you wake, write down the dream or the lingering feeling from an unremembered dream. You can do this for several nights. When you sense you understand the traumas that created your abandoned self, begin asking for healing when you go to sleep. Keep track of these dreams as well. Continue this exercise until you have a sense of further healing work you might need to do.
Opening to Empathic Understandings
Are you struggling to understand something or someone? I will close this chapter with a simple exercise you can try to open your empathy.
1. Conduct Spirit-to-Spirit.
2. Sit comfortably and breathe deeply into your heart. Now concentrate on the person or being you want to empathize with.
3. Allow your mind to free-associate with all feelings, thoughts, awareness, perceptions, and even words, tones, colors, shapes, symbols, and images that arise. (Know that you can also hold an object related to this person, especially if you are highly physically empathic.)
4. Refrain from deciphering which associations come from empathy rather than your mind. Simply continue with the process until every awareness narrows down to a single knowing and the feeling of compassion.
5. Concentrate on this distilled information and ask the Divine to provide you further understanding of its meaning and what you should do with this knowledge.
6. Sending healing streams of grace to the other and return to your normal state.
At the most fundamental level, understanding your empathic gifts in relationships is the basis for understanding your empathic gifts, period. The seeds of empathy are sown within in order to grow into vines of connection without. Paradoxically, by analyzing the ways we interact with others—physically, emotionally, mentally, naturally, spiritually, and shamanically—we inevitably come more “into ourselves,” into our compassionate heart. We fulfill the prerequisite for knowing best how to fulfill our calling to care.