Own Your Intuition Show

25. Common empathic challenges and their solutions

February 28, 2023 Aimee Cartier Season 1 Episode 25
Own Your Intuition Show
25. Common empathic challenges and their solutions
Show Notes Transcript

You’ve likely heard the word “empathic” or empath by now right?  You know what, it can be completely overwhelming if you don’t know that a. you are empathic or b. how to differentiate between what others are feeling and your own feelings.  You end up being swamped by the feelings of those around you—with no action point available to relieve them since they don’t belong to you!  Or you end up so wrapped up in solving other people’s challenges or absorbing their interests or experiences that you don’t know or can’t identify your own.  On today’s episode we are going to talk about some common empath challenges and ways to solve them.  Like, one way to know if what you are feeling belongs to YOU and an exercise you can practice anywhere to get yourself in the practice of differentiating your energy from the energy around you.  If you are empathic or know someone who is, this is an episode you’ll want to hear or pass on. 

Show Notes

 Download Aimée’s free: “44 Signs You Are An Empath.” (Also includes “4 Antidotes to Common Empath Challenges:” audio)

 Aimée’s Empath Resources Page

 Empath Core Tools  (for a special listener only discount, enter in the coupon code: PODCAST)

 Aimée on Instagram

Aimée on Facebook

For more about Aimée, her work, readings, speaking, or classes visit www.AimeeCartier.com

 

 

 

 

You’ve likely heard the word “empathic” or empath by now right?  You know what, it can be completely overwhelming if you don’t know that a. you are empathic or b. how to differentiate between what others are feeling and your own feelings.  You end up being swamped by the feelings of those around you—with no action point available to relieve them since they don’t belong to you!  Or you end up so wrapped up in solving other people’s challenges or absorbing their interests or experiences that you don’t know or can’t identify your own.  On today’s episode we are going to talk about some common empath challenges and ways to solve them.  Like, one way to know if what you are feeling belongs to YOU and an exercise you can practice anywhere to get yourself in the practice of differentiating your energy from the energy around you.  If you are empathic or know someone who is, this is an episode you’ll want to hear or pass on.  

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MUSIC  **Ayla Nereo, "All of this" song clip**

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Do you crave clarity and insight?  Do you sense that your intuition is trying to tell you important things, but you have a hard time trusting it?  Do you want access to your own internal  wisdom, and to understand how it operates so that you can guide your life in ways that are meaningful and satisfying?  

 Well then, welcome, I’m glad you are here.

 I’m your host, Aimée Cartier.  I’ve been a professional psychic, since around 2007.   I’m the author of the book, “Getting Answers: Using Your Intuition to Discover Your Best Life.”  I’ve been teaching others to understand and use their own intuitive and empathic abilities for more than a decade.  

 Join me each week for true stories and tools that will inspire you to take seriously, your own inner knowing—that internal sense that you have uniquely tailored to YOU and designed to not only set you on the roads that are best for you but also help you avoid the ones that are treacherous.  

 It’s time for you to OWN YOUR INTUITION.

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Hi, Welcome again to the Own Your Intuition show.

 Back in 2020, I decided that instead of putting out a bunch of pictures of me and my kids etc. on social media I was going to invest my time in something that I felt would hold real value for people.  THIS podcast/radio show is a result of that commitment to adding value instead of JUST pretty pictures/random thoughts to a world that is flooded with those things.  Supporting more people’s access to this also needs you—sharing, liking, staring, commenting!  Here is my weekly plug for following and staring this Own Your Intuition show wherever you get your podcasts.  If you like what you hear here, if you are getting a lot out of it, if you are sharing it with your friends and family members (as I have heard from many of you).  Would you, could you, also take a minute to follow and star it in your phone podcast app.  And a review would be DIVINE!  You know there are A LOT of podcasts in the world. So THANK YOU for taking your precious minutes via the ways that I just said.  Believe me I know how precious the time is.

 Today we are circling back around again today to the topic of empathic ability.  It is something I have taught for years—how to manage your empathic ability— since I started my Intuition University back in 2015.  It feels like centuries ago.  How to manage your empathic ability has been a topic of my classes for years. 

 In episode 13, 14, and 15 I also talk about empathic ability.  In fact, in episode 13 I gave a whole list of characteristics—so if you think you might be empathic, but you are not sure, have a listen there.  In episode 14, I spoke with one of my previous students, Tami Brockway-Joyce, so you get to hear about the journey of another empath as well.  In episode 15, I talk about two important rules for empaths.  That’s another one you don’t want to miss!

 So just to review: an empath is someone who feels everyone else’s emotions through their own skin as though it were happening to them.  So if someone is sad in the room—an empathic person will also feel that sadness in their own body.  They aren’t just like, “Oh that person is sad.” They start to feel sad themselves in their body.  There are other characteristics too—like some empaths pick up the body sensations of another. But what is universal for empaths is the emotional bit—so that’s the part I am going to focus on.  I often liken empaths to radio receivers.  We pick up and broadcast the emotional station in the room (or world even).

 As you can imagine, that can be INTENSE sometimes!  Especially if you don’t know you are empathic—which can be the case for long tracks of your life.  I was around 29 or 30 when I discovered I was empathic.  That story is in episode 13.

 Today we are going to talk about a couple of common empathic challenges and what to do about them.

 The BIGGEST ONE IS

 Empaths are often not sure if what they are feeling belongs to them or someone else.

Discerning whether what you are feeling belongs to you or someone else can be so tricky for an empath. Especially when you are first starting out on your journey of understanding.  It’s likely, depending on where you are in your journey, that you’ve attributed a lot of what you’ve picked up from outside of yourself to you your whole life long.  Or been confused by it.  That’s okay.  With a little attention and practice you’ll get the hang of discovering what is yours and what is other, no problem.  Knowing that it is possible that it is not you is half (or more) of the hurdle!  And I’ll teach you a starter tool to get the hang of this a bit later in this episode.  It can be navigated with a little self-inquiry and paying attention.

One of my favorite examples happened in 2006.  Remember when the housing market crashed and everything went to shambles overnight?  I didn’t know it.  I was going about my life doing what I do.  I hadn’t heard any news that day.  The day it happened I remember feeling on and off nauseous, but I couldn’t really attribute it to anything.  Like I hadn’t eaten anything unusual and despite the feeling, I didn’t have the sense that I was actually getting sick.  I had this weird sense of disassociation with the sensation.  Like I could feel it, but I found it more curious than alarming.  It came and went so I just rolled with it, noticing it but not giving it much real thought time.  By the following evening I was sitting on my porch outside (still not having heard ANY news) when I noticed that my thoughts had amped up into a frightened frantic pattern.  But as I scanned my day I couldn’t identify a single thing that had happened to me that day or the day before to make me feel shaky, in danger, or unsupported in a way that aligned with the way my thoughts were acting.  Everything in my life was the same as the day before. By that time, I already knew enough about my own empathic ability to just let it ride without getting freaked out.  Since I couldn’t identify any obvious cause of a scare, it was very clear to me that this wasn’t me.  I understood that although I didn’t know what was happening– I was picking up something outside of myself.  And it was strong!  What I didn’t know was that at that moment thousands, perhaps millions of people all over this country WERE freaking out in scared panic about their futures.  The fear was real.  It just wasn’t mine.  The thoughts, mine, didn’t subside immediately once I understood they didn’t belong to me.  They actually continued more or less for the rest of the evening.  But I was no longer identifying with their cadence.  In my bones I knew that I had nothing to fear—that I was just picking up a vibration from somewhere.  I couldn’t identify any action to do either, since I wasn’t clear on from where the source of this fear was coming.  So I just cleared my energetic space, asked for help from my ethereal guides and went to bed.  The following day I heard what had happened with the stock market and immediately I knew what had been causing my experience.  I had been picking up on the collective fear that as more and more details were revealed had people all over this country and around the world feeling very unstable, unsupported and afraid.  Once I identified its source, the feeling dissipated and did not return.  

Another, less dramatic experience happened to one of my students while she was doing my Empath Intuition University program.  She told our class a story of being in the grocery store when suddenly she started to experience this intense and dramatic anxiety that seemed to come out of nowhere.  When she felt it she started to worry immediately about her son and something he was dealing with.  She was confused about it and asked about it in class because she couldn’t figure out if it was her worrying about her son or something she was picking up from elsewhere.  

She had applied one of the techniques I teach my students about how to discern.  That is to ask yourself, “Did anything JUST happen to me personally to trigger this thought or emotion?”  Just like I did that day back in 2006 when I noticed the cadence of fear in my own mind.  When my student asked herself that, she got, “No.”  She was just standing in the grocery store, minding her own business.  And yet her mind was suddenly thinking about a very real worry she did have over her son.  

I love this example because it shows you what usually happens in your brain even when what you are experiencing is something you picked up outside of yourself.  When I first recognized those fearful thoughts that night in 2006—they weren’t about other people—they were about me and my life.  Your brain doesn’t place it in the context of “outside of myself” when you are picking up other people’s emotions.  That’s the difficulty of being empathic.  You don’t think—“Oh that person is afraid.” You think, “I feel afraid.”  My student was likely picking up something that she came across in the grocery store and her brain was trying to place it—“What am I worried about!?”  In that time in her life whatever was going on for her son was of concern so her brain started logging that as the issue.  However, the feeling came on suddenly while she was doing something unrelated to her son.  She wasn’t with her son, nothing in the grocery store had reminded her of her current dilemma with her son.  She was thinking of her grocery list.  She simply got a whiff of an intense emotion so to speak and started to play it out – her mind searching for where that intensity of worry could belong in her life.  Do you see what I mean here?  That’s why this question is one of my favorites.  If you can’t identify something that JUST happened to you to cause the sensation or thought then it is likely you are picking up on something that originates outside of yourself—never mind that your brain is trying to place it in context of your own concerns.  

Get it?  I always say to my students, if an emotion suddenly comes out of nowhere for you be highly suspicious!  You can start by asking yourself that important question: Did anything JUST happen to ME to warrant that shift in emotion?  If the answer is no, it is very likely the feeling does not belong to you.

The other reason I wanted to share those two examples with you is that one of them was local emotion—my student was in the grocery store, likely around someone who was having intense anxiety—at the time.  The other was a global emotion—which we have had SO MANY OF in the last few years.  If you are empathic, it’s important to know that if many people are having a shared emotional experience, worried about a pandemic for example, or an election, or an unjust killing of a black man, or what have you— you can and will pick up on the emotional vibe EVEN IF you are not in the same room as someone having that experience.

So that’s the first common challenge—not being able to discern if what you feel belongs to you—and asking yourself that question is one way to discover.

This is Aimée Cartier and the Own Your Intuition show.  Today we are exploring empathic ability and some of the common challenges empathic people face.

So here I’m going to share with you an exercise you can practice if you are empathic—to start to get the hang of the fact that you CAN start to differentiate between the different emotions in the room.  It’s an exercise I teach in my Empath Core Tools program.  That’s an on-demand class which gives all the essential tools that I feel any empath needs in order to be able to easily manage their sensitivity.  (Link in the show notes.)

If you are not empathic, you are not going to get it!  All this talk will just make you scrunch up your face!  But share it with someone you know who IS empathic or you think they might be, and a light bulb will go on in their head. For a person who is accustomed to feeling all the things this exercise can be a revelation.  

I have come to think of the exercise as a tennis match.  It’s all in your mind of course.   But when you first start understanding your empathic ability sometimes even the concept that another’s energy can or could be different than your own is a new or slightly foreign concept.  When you’ve been living your whole life with everyone else’s energy in your own psychic space or constantly and with no holds barred downloading everyone else’s business—sometimes it is just helpful to get your mind and body acquainted with the fact that not everything you feel may belong to you.  Essentially this practice involves you consciously moving between your own energy and that of another person in your proximity.  You are NOT downloading the other’s energy while you do this—you are practicing understanding that there is a difference between you and the other person. 

I still vividly remember an experience I had around 15 years ago.  The memory is still so prominent it may have been the first time I was ever consciously aware of an intense emotion that was originating in another person and successfully stopping it from entering my being.  I was standing in the pet store, waiting by the register to purchase a bag of kibble for my cats when another woman walked through the door and straight toward the register.  She had a big cloud of angry/frustrated energy around her.  I couldn’t actually see it; but I could feel it. Though she hadn’t yet said anything her emotion was LOUD to me.  It was as if she had walked in the door and shout growled, “I’m MAD!”  As she began moving toward where I stood at the register I had this luminous yet tiny thought, “That’s her.  Not me…. I’m fine actually.  That’s her energy.”  In that moment my energy was crystal clear to me and so was hers.  Before they merged, this thought and repeating it to myself while she stood there interacting with the woman behind the counter allowed me to keep them separate.  It allowed me not to download her emotion and suddenly feel as though I felt mad or frustrated.  This happened during a time period of my life where I was teaching myself to keep my energy clear of everyone else’s energy (the tools I teach in Empath Core Tools program).  So I was finally getting accustomed to what I felt like without other people’s energy in my space. 

For a non-empathic person this trying to remember that another person’s energy is not your own probably just sounds like a no-brainer, or even slightly crazy!  For an empath, having the sensation that you can— not only differentiate another’s emotions (before you suck them up) but also not have to take on the sensation— feels like this clouds parting, light streaming down on you, chorus of angels, “Ahhhhhhhh!” moment.

This is Aimée Cartier and we are talking about tools for common empath challenges today.  

So what’s the practice?  How do you do your mental tennis match?  

Simple.  Practice feeling and experiencing yourself, your emotions, your vibe, how you feel, then bouncing your awareness to the other person in the room, especially when they are feeling something intense that doesn’t belong to you.  Actually, you can start even when they are not feeling something intense – probably actually better to start before the intensity happens.  And then, when the intensity does happen, or when another person in the room is having some intense emotions that you are not having—you can use this tool.  In that moment—whichever one and whenever you try it— you say to yourself, “That is their energy.” Taking your attention back and forth between yourself and them you volley with the recognition and even the words in your mind, “This is me…. That is them... This is me… That is their energy.”  Probably just hearing this you can imagine how powerful it would be to be able to stand in a room with someone (a family member, perhaps) especially if they are having an intense emotion and still stay completely connected to your own sensations and feelings without taking it on.  If you are empathic, again, this is a pivotal moment.

You can try this exercise anywhere—in your own kitchen with a family member—in a pet store or any other place you may be.  Obviously I’m just giving the pet store example because that is where I first did it—you don’t have to be in a pet store!

Another common challenge of empathic people is that they lose themselves in other people’s ideas.

My son is currently really into RC cars—remote control vehicles.  He and my husband recently went to a place called, RC Raceway, or some such thing in Tacoma.  To my understanding, it’s basically a racetrack for people with remote control vehicles to drive around.  When they came back my son and husband were telling me that there were a handful of women there—who were just sitting around while their man partners raced their cars.  Now, now I’m not judging—the lives of these people are really none of my business.  But it was totally puzzling to me!  Why was that woman there!?  And that one?  And that one?  When she clearly didn’t give one whit about RC cars—because according to the reports of my son and husband none of them drove the cars, none of these women.  They just sat there.  Personally, I CAN think of about a thousand things I would rather do than spend my day at an RC track.  My son can think of a thousand things he would skip in order to spend the day there.  So what about those women who were there anyway?  Not watching, sitting on their phones or their computers.  I don’t actually know.

But by way of making sense to this for myself and my children I said to my kids, “Sometimes when people are in relationship, especially if they don’t know themselves and what they like well, they can adopt the ideas or interests of the people they are with.  Perhaps that is what is going on there?  Maybe some of these women don’t know what it is that they love to do—so instead they spend a Monday afternoon sitting around at the place where and while their partner does what he loves to do.  It does happen.”

I was also like, “Thank god I knew who I was before your dad came along—or maybe I’d be outside trying to build stuff—wouldn’t that be a wreck!?”  My husband is a master carpenter that is why I say that.

I remember one such time when something similar happened to me.  I was dating a man who loved to bike.  He and I started planning this trip where we would bike across France.  I mean, not the whole way across France—but we were planning a trip in which we would go on a biking tour in France for a couple of weeks.  At the time it sounded fun to me—because I was picking up on his enthusiasm for biking.  I already knew I loved France.  We never ended up doing the trip.  But years later, when my youngest child turned two, I took a solo trip to Paris.  I wandered around the sites, I spent time in office supply stores oogling over pens, erasers, journals, art supplies—because that is something I love to do.  I journaled and painted at many cafés.  I remember laughing to myself at the time thinking about this “biking through France” trip I had once crafted in my mind as something that would be fun!  That was totally NOT MY trip!  Journaling with watercolors by the Seine is MY kind of trip, wandering through fun shops and stopping for a café or beer is my kind of trip.  I would have probably been miserable on a week of biking in France trip!

So you see, it happens.  When you are empathic, especially if you don’t know yourself yet, but even if you do, you can absolutely start to easily pick up the habits and interests of those around you—because you can feel what it is like to LOVE that thing while in their presence.  Sometimes it’s not a problem.

For example, I don’t enjoy cooking.  Like if I didn’t have to cook for the rest of my life I would be over the moon—that’s how much I do not love it!  However, I remember one time sitting next to my sister (who happens to love cooking) while she was perusing a cookbook.  We were sitting at the counter in our parent’s kitchen.  She was excitedly turning the pages and reading out some of the different recipes when I caught myself thinking—“Ooooh that sounds fun!”  

Now I can tell you that is NOT me!  That was me sitting next to someone who was/is excited about cooking.  I was picking up her enthusiasm.  I was feeling it in my own skin– like we empaths do– and for one hot second I thought it sounded like fun to try this very complicated recipe that in all other moments of my life would feel like hell to me.  Closer to the truth would be— I would love to try that recipe—after someone else baked and delivered it—if the opportunity presented itself.  If not, WHO CARES!  I won’t think about that recipe ever again!  I remember walking out of the room and sort of shaking myself and laughing as I thought of me thinking that baking that recipe sounded like a good idea! 

That was no big deal.  I know myself—so I wasn’t about to make a list of ingredients and head to the store to buy them!  I was just able to enjoy her enthusiasm for a bit.  It was fun.  That’s just a perk of being empathic.  For a second, I got to feel what it is like to feel genuine eagerness and interest while paging through a cookbook.  

Downloading the loves and interests of those around you is only a problem when it takes you away from your own life or if you find yourself crafting a life that is based on someone else’s idea of what sounds fun or interesting—and always forgoing your own.

I had a student once who loved to travel.  Only she forgot it.  She described to our class that she had acquired a fear of flying in recent years that prevented her from traveling.  Once she started to use the tools I taught her she discovered that this fear of flying she had developed was not actually hers at all.  It was her husband, not her, who was afraid of air travel.  Using her empath tools she got reacquainted with the fact that for most of her life she had loved adventure and travel—and this sensation and fear didn’t belong to her at all!  And guess what, suddenly, the world was her oyster again!  

This is Aimée Cartier and the Own Your Intuition show.  Today we are exploring some of the common challenges that empathic people face.

Another common empath challenge is over-extending yourself constantly to take care of everyone else, not ever considering yourself in the mix.  Something important you must know as an empath—it is NOT always your place to help, even if you can perceive that a problem or challenge exists.  Especially if you are in the habit of what I call, “over yessing” that means saying yes to solve any of the problems that you understand and/or FEEL exist, without checking in with yourself first.  Then you are over-yessing.  Listen to episode 15 if that sings to you—if you think you might be an over yesser—I’ve already given some important understandings for you to know there.  And, write this down—"it’s not always my place to help.”  Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.  Before you jump right in with both feet—pause, inquire within: Is it MY place to help in this moment?

Okay, I hope this was useful! 

Next week we’re going to be talking with one of my previous students Coco Banks.  She’s taken my empath programs and we’re going to find out how being empathic impacts her world and what she’s learned to do about some of the sucko parts of picking up everyone else’s energy.  The week after we’ll be discussing something you probably didn’t know your empathic ability was good for!  Mostly, we only hear about the sucko things—and it is true that being empathic can be really overwhelming if you don’t know how to manage it.  But, it’s also really wonderful for a lot of things too.  It has practical uses!  So stay tuned and you’ll find out.

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If you know someone who is empathic, or you think they might be—send them a link to this show.  Their life might be completely revolutionized in the best way, by what is here.  I know mine was when I discovered these things for myself back in the early 2000s.  And I’ve had many students through my programs in the years since who would say the same thing.

 I’ve also got some freebies for empaths in the show notes.  Including my,  “44 Signs You Are An Empath.”(Which also includes “4 Antidotes to Common Empath Challenges:” audio). And my Empath Resources Page.  As well as a link to find out more about Empath Core Tools and a special discount for my show listeners.

 See you soon!