Seven Strategies for Empaths to Achieve Emotional Balance

Do you avoid crowds because you feel weighed down with negative energy that does not belong to you?

Do you find your self drained and depleted for unknown reasons especially when helping others out of their stuff?

Do you have confusion around what your feeling and the underlying cause or emotions?

Do you feel that people are stealing your energy and your light rather than aligning with their own light?

Do you find your self always trying to fix or rescue people and it does not turn out well?

If you answered “yes” to several of these questions, you are likely an empath. As an empath, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed in social situations because you simply feel SO MUCH. Here are seven tools to help you navigate social settings with ease and grace. 

1. If you have uncomfortable feelings surface in your body, check in and identify what you are feeling.  Is it sadness, anger, depression, guilt, shame, blame, fear, agitation, malice, or strife? None of those belong to your higher Self. Yet, you are experiencing those feelings to bring awareness to yourself. To identify, take a deep breath starting from the belly toward the ribs and into the heart. Hold the breath, then breathe out as you ask your higher Self, “What am I feeling?”. Then listen, your higher Self will eventually tell you. Spirit will always answer when asked.

2. Observe the feeling as you are breathing. Is it coming from within? Is it coming from outside of your sacred space? You are in charge of what is in your sacred space, your electromagnetic field. We call it your medicine wheel. You are the center of that sacred space. If you observe that feeling rather than become it then you can eventually transmute it with awareness. You may not be centered, you may feel out of balance. Own it enough to explore it rather than deny it.

3. Take full responsibility for what is there. Witness what is in your body with no blame, shame or making yourself wrong. Just own it long enough to stop resisting it. What you resist WILL persist. Now tap three middle fingers on your third eye and ask, “Is this mine, does this belong to me? Where is this coming from?”. Keep tapping and asking until the answer comes. It may be a deep pain coming from your ancestors who are asking to be healed or your inner child creator that is shut down because you are not listening. If it does not feel like it is your childhood judgments about your Self coming from within, then ask, “Who does this belong to? Why are you here?”. If it is an ancestor passing that pain onto you, inquire, “How can I help resolve this pain?”. Most often, the primary necessity to heal ancestral pain is in the allowance of their truth to be spoken out loud. They may have an unresolved issue and may be asking you to hear them.

4. If it does not belong to you then ask, “Whose business am I in? Why am I allowing this in my space?”. We often confuse being an empath as having sympathy for our loved ones or even a complete stranger who is suffering. Yet, sympathy is a negative feeling of taking on someone else’s problems. When we take on sadness or anger for others without the full perspective of their soul journey and the necessary events needed in their life to trigger their greatest learnings and gifts, we are displaying a lack of respect and trust for their Divine blueprint. Empathy is getting on their level, deeply listening to their situation and offering sincere presence, while not taking on their emotional disposition. It holds a space for them to be present with themselves rather than allowing them to believe they are pulling you down with them. When you choose to drown with them in misery, it is disrespecting the divinity within their experience. All darkness, ultimately is a growing medium. A space to cultivate and remember the light within. The work of an empath is to dig past the turbulence of events and emotions of other’s problems and be the mirror of their own light. Anything apart from that isn’t true empathy. 

5. Take a deep breath again and give up being their savior. We are not here to save someone from their life choices. Even our children, by the age of eight, they are perfectly capable of making their own life choices. Sometimes all people really need is to be heard and fully accepted for where they are in the present moment. Be mindful that you are respecting what they are going through and are not expecting them to be a ‘perfect’ version of themselves or a version of themselves that YOU want them to be before they can be truly seen and acknowledged. What would it look like to be present with someone without trying to fix, change, preach, scold, judge, or deny them of their experience of life. Are you a boundary invader, trying to control someone else? Are you in their business pushing your ideals or beliefs onto them? If you have your hooks in someone else’s sacred space, that gives them permission to hook into your business. 

6. If you have a boundary invader sucking your energy then check in and ask, “who am I? What is my truth? Do I want this in my space?” It’s about checking in, making sure we aren’t taking responsibility for others, yet, taking responsibility for drawing boundaries ourselves about what treatment we accept in our life. If someone is continually attacking you about something, check in and ask, “Is this happening because I am forcing my will upon them? Am I desperate to be heard yet unwilling to listen? Am I desperate to defend my truth, and force them to understand?”. This likely means you are holding on to something outside of your control. As you loosen your grip and allow yourself to trust life more, you may find that what you thought you needed or wanted out of them starts to dissolve. If they are blaming you for anything, you do not need to defend the truth. Defending is giving away your power to them. Listen to them deeply, repeat what you have understood, acknowledge their space without welcoming these energies into your being. Respect yourself enough to clear your sacred space of their issues and declare your boundaries with kindness but firmness. 

7. Choose to send them love rather than judge their reasons for being in your space and taking your energy. They cannot take from you what you do not give them. You are the only one in charge of your sacred space. By making them wrong, you are in their business. You are in their sacred space deciding for them how they should live their life. Maybe they are there because you have a need to fix them to feel loved. They may be there because you needed the experience to teach you to respect and honor yourself. Blaming them for being in your space makes you feel powerless and hopeless. Stand for who you are, and be a stand for them to find their own power and self-respect. 

Phrases to use when someone is in your sacred space:

That does not work for me

Please give me some space 

I hear and respect your truth yet that is not my truth, it does not belong to me

I approve of my Self thank you

I am my own person and I choose out of this conflict

This is the life I choose to live, and I am at peace with it

Thank you for giving me your perspective, I will check in and consider what you are saying

I choose to step back and observe this behavior, but I will not engage

I stand by my truth, I will no defend it or explain it.