TEXT
I suspect that all humans are born empaths although some of us may inherit a much stronger empathic ability through our bloodline than other people. Most people have this ability socialized out of us by parents and a society that just doesn’t understand what it means to be an empath. Most of us that kept our empath abilities needed that skillset to survive our dysfunctional family of origin.
Family of origin is a term that usually includes everybody that had a role to play in our formative childhood years whether they were blood relatives or non-biological adopted family. For our purposes here, I am including blood relatives – especially your biological parents – even if you were adopted, because there is a much stronger tendency for our empath abilities to be biologically inherited rather than socially learned. More about this in my talk “Factors that Influence Us as Empaths“.
Whenever I have a roomful of empaths in front of me, I like to ask “How many of you know who you inherited your empaths abilities from?”. Whether it be parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles, about a third of the room will put their hand up.
My next question is “And how many of you have mental health challenges in your family?”. Being a misunderstood empath In a family that is trying to conform to the mainstream culture is a huge challenge. There are plenty of mental health care professionals who are more than happy to provide diagnoses, and drugs so that someone who doesn’t fit into mainstream culture has an assigned place. Of course, in many indigenous cultures the same person would be treated as a potential shaman. When I ask this question about mental health, another third of the room will put their hand up.
My last question is “How many of you have chemical addictions, drugs or alcohol, in your family?” At this point, I usually have all, or nearly all of the remaining hands being raised. It’s hard processing other people’s emotions and one of the attractions of putting chemicals into the body is that it provides a form of escapism. The physiology is so overloaded processing the chemicals that the emotional input is overridden. There is a respite from the emotional overwhelm. An empath with no other tools can get a sense of peace.
Having mentioned chemical addictions, it is worth mentioning a less damaging form of self-medication, namely food. Food is a way of overloading the body with the mechanics of digestion so that the emotional input is not so overwhelming. For this reason many empaths end up carrying extra weight. As you learn to control your abilities the need to buffer yourself as a form of protection falls away and the weight itself can be released.
The point throughout this talk is that struggling empaths need an understanding of their abilities, and tools to be able to cope with them, in order to become a thriving empath. I hope you find my other talks here useful in providing more understanding and more tools to help you on your path.
Thank you for listening to this talk. Thank you for helping yourself learn to become a thriving empath.
For more videos see … Thriving Empath Videos
For specific tools that can help, start with The Light Projector Exercise.