There are many women who find out they are empaths later on in their lives.
What is an empath? It’s basically someone who can feel other people’s emotions. They can easily sense other people’s energy, their mood, what they are feeling and even thinking.
They are very attuned to other people.
And if a woman is disconnected from herself, she can even have a hard time distinguishing from what are other people’s emotions and what are her.
And also, if she lack boundaries, she’ll also might take other people’s emotions into her body, making her feel awful, because very often the kind of emotions and energies she takes are negative.
An empath who lacks boundaries will more easily sense negative emotions than positive, and I’m about to tell you why.
A lot of women when they find out they are empaths, they believe they were born this way. With this ability or sensitivity.
I have a different way of seeing it.
Most women who are empaths (if not all), experienced some kind of trauma in their childhood and teenage years.
They most likely had narcissistic parents or caregivers (or one of them) and had a chaotic household.
They didn’t experience true love and care, but the opposite of it.
When they arrived home from school they never knew how the environment would be. If their parent or caregiver would be calm or something would trigger them and there would be aggression and abuse (emotional and/or physical).
This situation would constantly activate their nervous system and send them into fight or flight mode.
The emotions a little girl or teenager would experience in this scenario would be very real and the body would feel like there is a real survival threat.
Very often fighting wasn’t possible (or would make things even worse), and flight wasn’t also possible (because they were a child and couldn’t just leave the house), so the body’s response was freeze or withdrawal. Ignoring the pain and the emotions. Stuffing everything down.
If this happened over years and many repetitive times, is like they were being trained to function this way.
The consequences of this (besides physical, emotional and mental) was that a woman in this environment would shut down her feminine essence and activate masculine traits of protection for her survival.
Also, she would shut down her own emotions but become very aware and attuned to that parent or caregiver’s emotions.
The attention would always be on that person (or persons) instead of herself.
This is a survival defense mechanism. If she entered the door and could instantly feel how the other person is feeling and thinking, and read the energy of the room, she would know how to cope and know if she can remain calm or have to go into defense mode.
Also, very often she would become a people pleaser, trying to do things to please that other person so the consequences for her survival would be minimized.
Now you can imagine doing this a million times growing up, this was like a muscle being trained.
Also, she would grow up without the awareness of this happening inside her.
So she would become an adult woman but her nervous system would still be functioning like when she was a child or a teenager.
Her focus will still be on others. Not on herself. On how others feel about her, on what others want, if she is safe or not.
This would probably lead her to many other toxic and dysfunctional relationships all her life, with people very similar to her parents or caregivers, in same dynamics, recreating the same familiar patterns over and over again.
And most probably also affected all other areas of her life, like her financial situation, where she lives, her work, her health, etc. Everything was a rollercoaster.
I am explaining all this because I want you to know that you are not alone. Many women go through this kind of situations but now you are here and safe and SEEN.
Because you had that sensitivity muscle so well trained, is very easy for you to feel other people’s emotions. And this is what is called an empath.
So if you relate to all this, chances are that you weren’t born an empath, you were trained to be one.
The good part is that once you have awareness of all this, you can change the script at anytime.
You can train yourself and your nervous system to act differently and be different and live the amazing calm and normal life you craved all your life. It starts with you making that decision.
How to do this?
Honour your emotions
One of the most important steps is to reconnect to your body and your emotions.
To start listening to yourself, to how YOU feel. So shifting the focus from others and into you.
Yes what you feel matter, even if you grew up feeling differently. Now is the time to honour it.
And I’m not talking only about positive and pretty emotions. I am talking about FEELING IT ALL!
The not so pretty emotions too. Let them all out! You have to feel to heal.
Make peace with your past
Making peace with your past doesn’t mean forgiving who did you wrong and hurt you in so many ways.
It means that after all the anger and feeling like a victim (yes and you were a victim), it comes a time when you have to get out of that energy.
You need to accept that things were as they were and that can’t be changed, and that the way those people were have NOTHING to do with you.
You are your own person and not a by product of them or attached to them.
Making peace with your past will help you keep the past in the past so you are free and empowered to focus on the present and build a much better future for yourself.
Step into your feminine energy
A lot of women who went through all this developed survival mechanisms and one of them were to live mainly from masculine traits.
To be in doing mode, working hard, always being productive, always pushing and forcing.
This was because they felt they had to do this to survive but all this “busyness” was also a form os escaping, a way to not having to address your own issues and face painful emotions.
When later in life a woman has her feminine awakening (or womb awakening), she starts to feel this desire to leave all that behind.
To step into a softer energy. To live a normal life with a calm nervous system and abundance, beauty and joy.
The kind of normal life she would have had if she had lived differently as a child.
She starts to realise she can create that for herself NOW.
Regardless of her age, country, nationality, job, etc. It starts with a decision you make, and putting yourself first for the first time in your life.
You matter and your emotions matter and your inner little girl who needs attention and validation and probably is still afraid, deserves it. It’s time to pay attention to her, nurture her and be kind to her.
Because no one is going to do this for you. No twin flame man is coming to save you in a relationship, no job is going to heal you, and no amount of chasing external things will ever give you fullfilment.
This has to be done internally, reconnecting with yourself, with your beautiful feminine essence. It’s about re-parenting yourself. Be to yourself the parent or caregiver you wished you had and needed as a child. Be THAT for yourself now.
No matter how much trauma and hurt you endured, your feminine essence and energy never left you. It’s inside you, waiting to be activated.
This all has to do with starting to put yourself first, start having standards and boundaries, and stepping into your feminine empowerment.
You start treating yourself so well that you start to only accept in your life people who match that amazing healthy energy, and stop entertaining toxic situations, because you are not an energetic match to them anymore.
You stop repeating familiar cycles and you start training yourself to only have amazing people and experiences.
Over time and with training, you’ll recognize red flags easily and immediately say no and remove yourself, attracting less and less of these types of people and situations, and starting to attract different and healthier.
Therapy
Depending on the level of trauma and hurt you had gone through, therapy can be a good thing to do.
But choose a therapist that has experience in healing from narcissistic trauma in specific. So they understand and relate to what you went through and can truly help you heal, and also give you tools to regulate your nervous system when you are triggered, and also to know how to deal with the narcissistic people that might still be in your life (for example a narcissistic ex with whom you have children with).
It should also be a safe space to elevate your self-esteem and self worth, probably damaged from years of abuse.
But therapy should never be a crutch or something to avoid doing your inner work seriously. You are the only one who can change your life.
Feeling safe
The point is for you to learn to regulate your nervous system and feel safe.
Knowing that you are safe at all times. No matter what happens externally, your internal world is solid and safe.
The Universe got you. You are safe and protected. And always were. Now is the time to become secure in yourself, because as within, so without.
The more you step into your feminine power, and transform yourself into the amazing woman you are, honouring the whole of you, the more your external world will shift too to match that new energy you are in.
In other words, goodbye to living in a rollercoaster and with toxic situations and people, and hello to peace, stability, abundance, joy, happiness, and healthy situations and people who adore the real you!
Using your sensitivity as a gift
So and what do you do now with your ability to sense other people’s emotions and your sensitivity to energy?
Well, whatever you want really. You can use it as a gift (instead of seeing it in the past as a curse), to help yourself and others if you wish.
When you are empowered in yourself and the focus is on you, you are no longer at mercy of feeling other people’s emotions and feeling powerless like in the past. You can also choose to tune in and out as you wish. Your choice.
Many people who are empaths choose to use their ability as a gift to others, helping them in some way, like healing or counselling, or you can also express it in art forms or other creative ways.
Empowered empaths are also usually very in tune with their intuition and inner wisdom, and can use it to create a different and much better life, by following that intuition.
It is part of who you are. But the power is in you now.
I have written a great book to help you navigate all this, where I tell you how to remove your masculine armour, reconnect with and embody your feminine energy.
