empath empowerment

If you struggle with “taking on other people’s energies or emotions”, this page is for you.

If you identify as an empath, this might be challenging to hear, but you don’t need protection or to constantly clear your energy. Instead, you need to learn how to fully occupy your own energy field and power.

“I’m an empath” has become synonymous in people’s mind with a disempowering state, which is unfortunate and inaccurate. I’m sensitive to energy, but that’s doesn’t mean I am a doormat or a sponge. I don’t need to protect myself from “negative people” or “negative energy” because other people’s energy is not more powerful than my own, especially inside my own body and energy field.

Empaths need empowerment, not energy clearing techniques.

I learned a lot of this from Christina Lopes, so I’ll link some of my favorite videos of hers here:

This is about claiming your sovereignty.

The stronger you are in your own energy, the more you can walk into a room and set the energy of that room, rather than be a victim of it. That is the actual superpower of an empath–not to be a constant energetic victim, but to be an energy worker who is able to transmute whatever energy they encounter.

The first step is to not take on responsibility for other people’s experience. Just being aware that something is up with someone’s energy does not obligate you to do anything about it. Sensitivity is just information. You are completely at choice about what you do with that information. You are not responsible for other people’s pain or growth or any other need just because you become aware of it.

The next step is to recognize that you can connect and hold space for someone without taking responsibility for them. That means you can fully engage with their energy, but release it when you are done with the interaction. This requires fully believing that other people are Source incarnate just the same as you. That means that they do not need you to help them. You do not need to rescue them. Help is not rescue.

You cannot truly help someone if you believe you have to help them or they will be lost. If you are coming from that energy, you are not seeing them in their wholeness in the first place. And helping someone heal requires you hold a vision of their wholeness for them to step into. So if you are caught in a rescuing pattern, it has nothing to do with helping others heal. It has to do with your own unresolved “Drama Triangle” patterning. It’s really important to understand this or you won’t be able to address it in yourself. (If you are not sure what the Drama Triangle is, I recommend Heidi Priebe’s video on it.)

A lot of empath issues are a form of energetic codependence.

I learned this the hard way through being married to someone that I’m sure some people would classify as a narcissist/energy vampire. But  energy responds to intention which means nobody can take something from you that you are not on some level intending to give them. I had to work through my own self-sacrifice templates to shift this pattern. It’s always easier to blame someone else, but blame is incredibly disempowering (even if it’s accurate). By owning my part in creating the situation, I was able to do my own inner work to transform myself (and get divorced).

I had to become a person who was no longer available for that kind of interaction. I had to do a lot of attachment work and healing to be able to set the boundaries I needed. Before that point, he was “taking advantage” of me–but I was also letting him, because I was caught up in a pattern of needing to prove that I’m a good person. I had to accept that for me to take care of myself, I would have to stop over-giving, and then he would see me as a “bad person”…and I just had to live with that. That was the price of freedom.

Whatever your pattern is, there is some belief underlying it that says, “I have to keep doing things this way”. Maybe it wasn’t safe to be powerful in your family or culture. Maybe you think that by being disempowered, you are safer. Maybe you believe that good people are never selfish. Whatever it is, the origin of the pattern is inside you, which means you can uncover and transform it.

If the problem is in your life, there is something for you to learn from it.

I want to be clear that I’m only taking responsibility for the lesson showing up in my life. I’m not taking responsibility for someone else’s behavior, or their karma from it. The lesson here is really to stop trying to rescue people–that’s not your job. Your job is to own your own power and use it for whatever you are here on Earth to do.

But if people are “taking” from you, on some level you are “giving” to them. You are participating in it, or it wouldn’t be happening. It’s up to you to figure out in what way you are participating in it and transform that.

I understand this kind of radical self-responsibility doesn’t sit well with everyone. And feel free to disagree, you do you. I always support people to figure out what beliefs feel true and work for them. All I’m saying is that from my experience, taking this level of responsibility is the only way I’ve been able to transform my life and reclaim my power.

Please do not misunderstand me. I’m not saying that real power imbalances don’t exist in the world. Of course they do. All I am saying is that you can only change what is in your control. And other people are not in your control. Focusing on what we can do differently is the only power we really have. So it’s always a good idea to take the attention off other people, and look at what we are doing that is making us subject to their behavior or energy. Sometimes the answer is boundaries and sometimes it’s about shifting how we show up in our own energy field and what beliefs we have about our own power.

Light has the power to dispel darkness.

But only if we allow it to live in us fully and come through us. If we believe that darkness is more powerful than our light, it will be. That is the free will we have to create our own experience here on Earth–we can create negative experiences just as easily as positive ones. It really is in your hands to make being an empath a positive, empowering, wonderful experience for yourself.