If you are an empath or a highly sensitive person then it’s important to know there are special and important ways for you to protect your energy and shield yourself.
Your ability to feel and interpret the emotions of others as well as your surroundings can mean that you are also susceptible to the energetic imprint of those very same surroundings.
This is how to go about shielding yourself successfully, and without coming from a place of fear, worry, or “gross-ness.”
Being an Empath means you literally feel what other people are experiencing emotionally. You can feel it in your body, your mood, sensations, and in your thoughts. You can also feel it consciously and on a subtle level without realizing it, which is what this recent study found.
What we generally associate as negativity, especially in regard to our energetic surroundings truly just boils down to environmental toxicity
Some of this toxicity is literally from the foods we eat, the air we breathe, jobs we work, families we live within, thoughts we think, emotions we feel, stressful lives we live, the need and race for money, and the pressure for resources that we associate as everyday life.
While there is a lot of toxicity to pick up floating around, some of it literally comes directly from other humans. Leonard Orr most commonly refers to it as “emotional energy pollution.”
Our emotions have a wide range of vibrations within them, and when we carry this emotional energy pollution, it can literally feel like it weighs us down. The energy we carry is dense, and even less harmonic, according to Masaru Emoto’s discoveries on water.
Empaths have a much greater likelihood to not only feel other people’s emotional energy but to take it on as a way to process it. Sometimes empaths can do this knowingly or unknowingly, usually, it’s both.
More studies are revealing that empaths are more likely to deal with depression, social anxiety, loneliness, and introversion. It’s important for those of you who are empathic, myself included, to know how to navigate all of the negative energy floating all around us in our daily lives.
Whether you are an empath or not, negativity is an extremely powerful force, and when it starts compounding in your life, everything becomes difficult and ugly. We have to truly choose consistently in order to not be stuck in a prison of our own making.
Here’s how to make the right choices…
1) Strong Boundaries
Being that Empaths are more sensitive to their surroundings and the emotional energy in others, it can often mean they are more porous towards their environment, like a sponge.
I believe if this is not carefully attended to it can influence your will power, decisions, habits, and behavior. Meaning, that your personal, energetic, mental, and emotional boundaries have been compromised.
No Bueno. You are a sovereign being with free will, yo. Your life, your responsibility, and your choice. In a way you have to stand at a relaxed guard at the gates of the various levels of your being, not fearful but simply aware of “what’s yours and not.”
As an empath if you don’t maintain healthy boundaries, everyone else’s emotions, problems, and all the noise of the internet and media will seep in and steal your presence. Negativity will seep in and consume things, and it’s up to you to prevent that.
Pro Tip: Figure out what your “Yes!” & “No!” is. Practice it and built it like a muscle, it’s perhaps the greatest tool I’ve ever learned to develop my internal boundaries.
2) Communicate Your Needs
It wasn’t too long ago that I was sitting around thinking about all the things I wanted, but absolutely clueless about what I truly needed.
When I came to this shocking realization, I awoke to the fact I was extremely misdirecting my energy. So firstly, I had to realize I was blocking so much in my life from flowing simply because I was out of touch with my needs.
As an empath what I am now learning is once I discover what my needs are, I have to learn how to directly communicate them in a balanced way with others who I require in fulfilling my needs.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs tells us that until your basic needs are met, you are absolutely limited in actualizing the higher levels of existence.
Meaning if your basic needs of food, shelter, rest, sleep, sex and survival are not met, you are severely limited in expanding your consciousness or spiritual attainment, as well as material prosperity in the physical world.
So as an empath or highly sensitive person, if you want to grow and thrive, then you must figure out what your needs are and communicate them into your life.
If you don’t communicate your needs, then negativity can build up in your life and make things overly challenging. You start to live a life created by others’ needs rather than your own.
“Abracadabra, I create as I speak.”
3) Take Your Time & Space When You Need It
When Leonard Orr, the same guy who came up with “emotional energy pollution,” visited a guru who claimed to be remarkably old in age, he found him sitting alone in a giant spiritual hall with all the onlooking visitors and devotees over 100 feet away.
He managed to have an assistant walk across the hall to ask a question to the old man, asking, “What is your key to living to old age?”
The guru responded, and I’m paraphrasing, “I keep a distance from other people.”
It’s important we have an amazing, healthy community and social environments. In fact, it’s one of our core needs as humans and people. However, we also must take healthy space and distance from others to settle back into ourselves.
4) Pay Attention to What Drains You
Empaths have a tendency to be highly intuitive. Intuitive energy is very commonly associated with the ability to detect other people’s feelings and intentions.
This has been attested to have spiritual and healing benefits, but it also has the potential setback that some intuitive gifts have.
You must live by your intuition. Develop a call and response relationship with your intuition. Use it to guide you in choices, environments, and new surroundings.
You can save yourself from experiencing so much negativity when you simply don’t do the things which drain you.
As empaths sometimes we have bleeding hearts to relieve others of their pain, and can even put ourselves in the way of others’ pain.
And truthfully, this is a misguided approach, and not the ideal way to empower someone to grow, it comes from ego and insecurity, and the negativity which can be present behind it.
Figure out what drains you. Flex your “Yes!” & “No”.
5) Develop Energetic Cleansing, Process & Protection Rituals
As Empaths we must cleanse ourselves from the negative energy we pick up in the world.
This can also be a part of the time we give ourselves to rejuvenate and recoup and come home to ourselves. This ranges from long periods of time to daily maintenance.
We have to cleanse the negative energy and emotional energy pollution we pick up, similar to taking a shower to wash off. Then we have to process the emotions underneath this energy.
Even though it’s from the outside world, we still have to take ownership of it. We have to understand what is the lesson for us to learn since this has shown up in our lives for a reason and purpose.
Then we have to protect ourselves from future energy implications. Here are ways to cleanse yourself and protect yourself.
And you can do this from a variety of cleansing methods…
- Getting in Sunshine, Moonshine & Nature
- Grounding with Your Feet on the Earth
- Taking a Bath, Especially with Candles & Crystals
- Saging or Essential Oils Daily
- Prayer & Meditation, and Visualizing white Light
- Doing Energetic Invocations in the Morning
- Having a Healthy Daily Ritual
- Digital Detox
- Having a Gratitude Practice
All of us are on a constant quest to improve and better ourselves, and not try to throw or project back the negativity into the World as our reactions.
Basically, as an empath it very well may be part of your life story to embrace incredible adversity and rise through it and transform it.
To shift negativity to positivity to prove how amazing of a vessel of consciousness you are, and how powerful.
By having a way to plug into the emotional energy of the World, you become a barometer for instigating where we could use change in the World.
You play an important, beautiful role. And like all good gifts, all of them require effort, love, and attention to nurture.
Protect yourself. Go live amazing lives full of High Vibe Energy!
By Amateo Ra, Spirit Science and Metaphysics