How to cope with being an empathic, highly compassionate or sensitive human being

Some tools to help us sensitive souls.

I’ve always been able to tune into people and how they’re feeling. I first noticed it in my teen years, at school I often found myself exhausted by the clangour of everyone’s emotions. I always knew who needed a listener or some extra support that day.

There began a lifetime of people opening up to me. They’d ask how I knew something was wrong, before the story came pouring out. And not only with friends, it happened with strangers sitting next to me on aeroplanes, with acquaintances I hardly knew at Uni, at parties, at cafes, or standing in queues.

I was always happy to listen, to hold space.

So I went on this way for years, seeing it as a gift. I could be a container for people’s stories, like an external hard drive there to back them up.

My energy could expand and make space for the experiences and emotions of everyone else, perhaps leaving little space for my own, but did that matter, when surely what counted was that I was ‘helping’ people?

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Can you relate? I know there are so many of us like this - clairsentients, emotional sponges, empaths - we absorb everything around us, we get easily upset by the news, we feel what other people go through as if it happened to us.

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This year, on two separate occasions, I manifested physical symptoms in my body that made me realise it was time to shift this into something more productive, and to block that emotional drain.

One was with a friend who told me about a harrowing experience she went through. I felt the pain, I think anyone would. My body held onto it, for over two weeks. Every time I tried to relax, I thought of her pain and felt myself cringe, my body was constantly tense, my mind playing out the images like watching a film.

Not long after that, I met a woman on a trip. We got chatting and she told me about some truly unpleasant UTIs she had been suffering from. She described the pain and naturally, I listened and commiserated on how rotten it can be to be a woman. Within two days, I was at the doctor with a UTI. The first one I’d had for years, sudden and severe.

I didn’t want to manifest physical symptoms any more, or to always be that container holding onto other people’s pain.

If I could see, feel, and sense people’s energy, story and emotions, then I could do something powerful with that, rather than weigh myself down over and over again, wishing I could fix things for them, simply by feeling their pain (that doesn’t work btw!)

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So if you’re also a chronic empath, what can you do about it? You don’t want to block people out, you want to continue to offer relief to those around you, but you can’t go on, constantly overwhelmed by it either, putting yourself last.

I recommend starting with these simple steps:

• If you get something like a headache, upset stomach, etc, ask yourself: does this belong to me? Is this mine, or did I pick it up from someone else? Just become aware of it first.

• When you feel sad, overwhelmed or tired, can you identify who you were with, where you were or what you were doing before you felt that way? Again, is the feeling yours or did it come from elsewhere? Was it caused by a certain environment?

• When a partner, friend, or colleague is ranting or complaining, or simply offloading about their day, if you notice yourself start to feel impacted by it, pause and take a deep breath. Remind yourself that your mood doesn’t have to be affected by theirs. Try imagining a protective barrier around you and name the feeling that comes up. By identifying the emotion, we already detach a little from it.

• Then, ask yourself what you need in that moment to reset to how you were feeling. A few minutes of deep breathing/meditating/journaling/moving your body/connecting with nature?

• Emotion comes from the Latin word ‘emotere’ which means energy in motion. Remember that emotions are energy, and energy needs to move in order to transform. So the best thing you can do is shake it out, dance, or sing.

• Remember that being empathic truly is a gift, but you must be compassionate towards yourself first. What do you need from you, before what everyone else needs from you? Make a list and prioritize things you can do to nourish yourself.

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And if you’re interested in working together in creating a more solid foundation that prevents these energy leaks and drains on your well-being, get in touch. There are a number of ways to address it.

Until next week,

Tamzin xx