Mastering Empathic Abilities - Classic

And then the word sort of went from that science fiction thing. And I can never remember the name of the author.

basically coined by science fiction people. So it's interesting that the dictionary is using kind of the science fiction y definition of it as opposed to our more sort of common understanding of it.

I was being raised up. I was born in the early sixties, and so we're talking like being a kid in the sixties and seventies. This was a point where

nobody was talking about this stuff. The concept of esp or paranormal abilities was very, very fringy and very like not many people were talking about it, and so I was constantly basically being told that I was overreacting, that I was taking it too personally, that I was making too big a deal out of it, to get over it, to stop worrying about it, and that basically I just needed to ignore it and act like everything was okay.

So I started to imagine, by the time I was like eight, nine, ten years old, that there was something wrong with me and that I needed to fix I needed to fix myself, and so I spent the first you know, I don't know sort of second and second and third decade of my life really struggling with what's wrong with me? And how do and why am.

in the state of thinking what's wrong with me? And it wasn't until I was in my late twenties early thirties when I found this spectacular therapist that I started working with was very intuitive and who had done a lot of work on her own empathic and psychic abilities, who started to help me recognize that nearly all the time that I was feeling unexplainable distress, there was a correlation with either reconnecting to other people, or being in

an environment or a situation, or in some cases picking up on something that was coming down the pike that was going to be happening. And that's when I first started to realize that what I was imagining was my own personal overwhelming distress was partially mine, but more of

it was actually coming from the world around me. And in my experience, there are people who are empaths, where what they pick up on is just the people around them, like the thoughts, feelings, energy sensation that are coming from the world around them. But then there are those of us who are so sensitive that we are also picking up on the geopathic stress. We are picking up on the climate change emergency, we are picking up on the

sort of social unrest that is going on. And a lot of times not only are we picking up on what's going on in the current environment, but often if you cannot explain why you're feeling what you're feeling, it can also be sort of feeling like ripples coming from

the future into the present where we pick this up. Now, I can't explain why or how we have this capacity for premonition, but what I can say is that I can say that multiple times in my life, like to the point where I can no longer count, there has been this sort of sense of the rumble underneath my feet, sensing that something is coming, and then maybe anywhere between ten days to three weeks later, sometimes a bit longer, all of a sudden, this big event happens, and I'm like, oh,

that's what I was picking up on.

of it's okay. And so as very sensitive children, we may have had parents who were going through things. And generally, even just because of the way people are taught to suppress and compartmentalize their emotions, we're not sharing them with us,

but as sensitive people, we were picking them up. And what I've seen so frequently happen is the parents, like as children, we sense something, we ask about it, and we're basically told at a very very early age, oh no, oh no, that's not going on, that's not real, that's

not happening, even if it actually is. And I've seen this very frequently, is that one of the things that happens for the EmPATH is that the EmPATH almost becomes the designated emmotor or the designated sensor and the designated feeler in a family and the stuff that other people don't want to deal with, whether it's their trauma, whether it's their you know, their addiction, whether it's their sort of unreconciled stuff that we feel it and they just

they're just like, yeah, no, not going there, not dealing

with it. I actually have a person that I've been working with for a number of years whose mother is sort of the classic denier, and they were in a situation where they were in an accident and the very first thing that happened as soon as they like got out of got you know, as soon as the accident was over, they just jumped up and they're like, I'm fine, and you know, and that's and as empouse We're like, you are not fine, you are in shock, and you are in a state of complete distress. Here.

EmPATH is. And I think Karing you were you were told that you were Claire sentient.

and capable of receiving information than the average bear. We are receiving and getting stuff. But what I have found, and this is what makes being an mpath really challenging, is that where an intuitive, a psychic, clairvoyant, clarecentient Claire, audience Claire, you know, Claire, cognizant Claire Claire, Gustin's Claire alliens whatever. You know, all of these clarity there's one of those jukes you are threatening, you know, and and you know even like and people who are in mediumship.

The thing is that in all of these cases they can distinguish what is theirs and what is not theirs. They know they're picking up information, but they know that they're picking up information that is separate from them there's discernment m paths. By our very nature experience the data as if it's our own. And so not only are we picking up the thoughts, feelings, energy and sensations from

the world around us. A Claires sentient can be picking up the thoughts, feeling, sensations, energy from the world around them, but they know it's coming from the world around them. What makes being an mpath so hard is that we experience everything through our own sensory filters, and so what happens is the information comes in, but then we interpret

it through our own body. We interpret it through our own thoughts, we interpret it through our own emotions, and so we start feeling sad as if it's our sadness. We start feeling fear if it's our fear, We start feeling rage if it's our rate. We start feeling the confinking we're finding the distress like, we will find a way to sort of create the scenario or the story, to dial it into our own perspective, so that then

we are perseverating about something that's going on. So like, for example, I was at reached a conference a number of years ago, and I came there feeling absolutely confident and fine and excited to be there, and all of a sudden, I was like there for a couple hours and I started to feel like a fraud. I started to feel like, who do you think you are? I started to experience my confidence flagging, and I just really

started to like feel like insecure and uncomfortable. And all of a sudden it dawned on me that I was in a room. This was a business retreat for transformational entrepreneurs, and I was in a room where there were a lot of people who were not succeeding, and where the way that this person that the people were leading the event were teaching was that they were helping people to see their deficiencies and what it was that they needed

to address. And so there was a whole room of people who were all having these like like whack upside the head revelations of their inadequacies. But instead of it being like, oh wow, I'm feeling all of this or sensing all of these people who are really struggling with their self esteem because they're realizing, maybe for the first time, that they don't have all the answers, I experienced it

as if it was my problem. And so what I have found and this kind of leads us to the question you asked, which is, how is EmPATH do we deal with this? So the reason that I set up the five step system that's in my book is because what I found is that a lot of the solutions that are being offered to highly sensitive empathic people do

not cut it. And part of it is like, how many times have you been told something like, oh, just put up a bubble of light, Like have you ever been you know, have you either of you guys ever gotten that one? Just put up a bubble of light, you'll be okay, or just think positive thoughts, you'll be okay. And what I noticed was that the problem is that this is this is a step in the process, but

it is not the first step. And if we are already carrying around a whole bunch of distress that we've absorbed and taken on from the world around us, the problem is that we if you put a bubble of light up around that, it's kind of like taking a shower and leaving the bathtub like drain in the bottom of the tub and letting the dirty water sit there and then pulling the curtain back around. It's not going to address what you're already carrying inside.

am affected by these things. The second step is recognizing that you are actually feeling something like going like I'm feeling really out of sorts, I'm feeling really disoriented, I'm feeling really confused right now. And then the third step is to start working on recognizing what's mine, what's not mine, how much of this is actually coming from within me, how much of it is coming from without me. Most of the time it's a combination of you know, like

I'll ask myself is this mine? And I would say that ninety five percent of the time the answer is yes, and it's also something else. So the first step that we need to take is even acknowledging what it means to be an EmPATH and instead of like kind of buying into the gas lighting and continuing to tell ourselves you're making too much of a big deal of it, can get over it, stuff worrying about it. Instead, we need to validate that we are picking something up, that

we are sensing something and it is affecting us. So that's like the first step when it comes to empathic mastery is just to recognize what's going on. And very simply, one of the first things that I like to do is I like to just put my hands over my heart sort of or in the center of my chest, but kind of over my sternum, and I just really love to ask myself, so is this mine? And just

asking is this mine? And a lot of times the answer will be yes and so, and then I might realize that some of my distress is like I mean, lately, some of my distress has been I've been really sort of having echoes of life during the Reagan administration and just kind of like what life was like back then when we were, you know, worrying about acid rain, and also like worrying about the right sort of a lot of different things happening, but I know that there is that,

and then there's also the reality of all the things that are going on in the world around us. So recognize as the first step. The second step before we can protect ourselves and put up a bubble of light is release. We need to release the stuff that is

not ours and let it go. And that's where me as an EFT practitioner and an EFT trainer comes in because in the more than three decades of work that I've been doing as an energy healer and an intuitive I have never ever ever found a tool more effective than EFT also known as tapping, but it stands for emotional freedom techniques, and honestly, I have yet to find something that it doesn't benefit in some way. There are also other ways we can release. We can go for walks,

we can use our breath, we can use journaling. You could just you know, throw yourself into a clean bathtub and sort of imagine all the extra stuff kind of coming out of you you clean bathtub. That idea YU yeah, or you pull the you know, you put the plug in, you run the clean water and then you pull the plug when you're done, and so you know releases. The second step, the third step is when we start to build up our psychic filters and shields. It's the third

step is protect. This is when we can start building up more robust filters and shields, because if we build up filters and shields in a state of distress, the distress that is going on internally is almost like it's kind of like verdict. It's kind of like lacquer remover from the inside. It weakens our filters and shields internally, so it compromises our ability to sustain any.

Because these are also traits that are very common for mpaths because we feel people's disapproval, We feel people's like disappointment and we don't and it's uncomfortable, and so we will often want to please people so that we don't have to feel the discomfort. And that's a whole other piece of it, because what I have found is that, you know, some people would say that empafs are codependent because we are sort of enmeshed or invested in helping people,

are rescuing people. What I believe is that we feel better when other people feel better. So it is absolutely understandable that we're going to want to rush into rescue and we're going to want to help people to feel better.

to come back. And so what I have found is that we need to start connecting to a force, a power, a wisdom, a love that is greater than ourselves. Now, I'm not going to tell you what your sense of a higher power is. I believe that is an incredibly intimate thing, and that is a very very deeply personal thing. But in order to not keep on repeating the same pattern of taking on all the energy that's coming from the world around us, we really need to connect to

something different. So it's sort of like we're replacing the energy with a more positive energy, with a more positive frequency. So instead of us running away from things, what we're starting to do is we're moving towards our desire and

moving towards the things that feel good to us. And then the final step of empathic mastery, which comes after we've really kind of gotten ourselves stabilized and we're not wobbling all over the place, is act, which has to do with really looking at how are we living in our How are we living our life in a way that allows us to be of service in the world, but also allows us to do the things that keep us healthy and thriving, and living in a way that

reinforces and supports us as opposed to keeps getting us into trouble. So long answer but the thing is that where some people might have a short, sweet, quick, easy answer, you know, I wrote a three hundred and eighty page book about what we need to do to deal with this, and I have spent the last like multiple decades of my life really learning how to navigate it because it is complicated.

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first wave of empaths. We are the ones who are awakening to our sensitivity in order for this planet, for our Actually, the planet is going to survive regardless of what we as human beings do, Like the planet will find her way and we'll keep going. But us as a species, we are on a precarious We're kind of on a precarious moving in a direction that like we need to.

and we must understand what that is. And the thing is that this idea, one of the things that they keep on I keep hearing over and over again, is that we are the cells in the body of this earth. We are not individuals, We are not separated. We are all cells in the body of the earth. We are part of a larger organism. And as part of a

larger organism, we are not actually separate. And so when we are feeling ourselves compartmentalized, when we are feeling ourselves in this sort of you know, world of human dominion, we don't feel the repercussions of our choices and our actions as a species. And what I believe is happening is that there are those of us who are sort

of born in the first wave. And I'm imagining, Karen, you and I are kind of in that first you know, sort of those first really highly sensitive people who are sensing what is going on, not just with ourselves, but you know, like whether it's like within your environment. It could be just in your community or your circle of people, it could be in your region, it could be it could be just and it can it can sort of

expand out to globally. But I really believe that we are the ones who are feeling what is happening on the planet and weird, and part of it is that our job is to actually feel it, but also to access love and to access hope and possibility. But in many ways, it's like we we are here to feel what everybody needs to be feeling in order for us

to turn this around. And what I will say is that in my experience, the more comfortable I have gotten with feeling my own grief, my own anxious, my own fear, and my own disappointment and anger, and the more work I've done around sort of reconciling the past wounds, the more capable I am of holding space for the pain

without having to finding myself being submerged in it. So but it is It's a tall order because we are hidding crisis for portions a as the species right now, and you and me, those of us who are feeling it. It is not easy by any means, and especially these last like two and a half years with the pandemic, it has been brutal. And I will just say, Karen, if you're not talking to a lot of mpaths, you are so not alone, Like this is the experience that many of us are having right now.

no suppression of emotion. It's like it's all like big, big, big feelings all the time. And for mpaths, when people own their feelings, we don't have to own them. So there was almost like a comfort of being able to see people processing their feelings on Grey's Anatomy without having to be the person to process the feelings for them.

And that Goodwitch, which I don't know if you've ever watched it, and it's a very adorable Hallmark series about this lovely healer named Cassie Nightingale and runs metaphysical shop somewhere, like you know, in this lovely little small town in Canada, and it just has, like you know, like episode upon episode with just very very benign and tame things where the villain literally wears a black hat and like you know, it's it's so tame, it's just so sweet, and those

about what I could tolerate. So I also, I would say, I learned to curate, not necessarily mental life about to curate.

or one group of monkeys would teach their young how to do this, and then eventually, sort of these other monkeys started to pick it up from the other monkeys and they started teaching their young. So eventually the entire the entire population of monkeys on this one island were

washing their potatoes. And then all of a sudden, these other scientists who are sort of observing this or observing monkeys in another island separate from this, starting to notice this phenomenon where all of a sudden, these other monkeys

were washing the potatoes. And so the theory of the hundredth monkey is that when we get to critical mass in terms of a consciousness or an awareness, there will be a quantum shift where suddenly the under the monkey sort of flips the switch and everybody has this access to this thing. My theory is that, you know, Karen and I are in the eighty seventh monkey category. We are getting there, but as a species, we haven't quite

hit critical mess. And our job is absolutely to be turning the switch and to be doing the things that not everybody is doing yet, which is expressing love. And I want to speak a little bit more about why do we have this ability. The thing about an mpath is that we have both the ability to receive, but

we also have the ability to broadcast and beam. And so when we are taking on the thoughts, feelings, energy, sensation of the world around us, and we're spinning out with the misery of it, it is very, very very

hard to do anything else. But as we learn how to release this, and we learn how to find our center and sort of recalibrate within, what we can do is we can start to become beacons for love, for compassion, for hope, and for healing, and we can actually start broadcasting a signal instead of being part of the problem where we're just absorbing and then amplifying the distress.

But when anybody, including my father, even now had any sort of life issues, who's the one they talk to and who's the one that hangs up the phone crying? And so I was thinking about you know all you're speaking and just how you know it shouldn't only be

the sadness that you hold. I'm like, well, and this is not like I'm not tooting my own horn, but I have been told hundreds of times that when I walk into a room, it lightens up, that I bring happiness and joy, and I think maybe I'm just getting those little bits in everybody and just reflecting that out that it's not me, it's their own joy that they're saying.

and just really living with knowing that we are enough, that we are a beacon for love, that we do have a mission, that we are here and actually, and recently I've been I've been starting to do what I'm calling the Fairy Godmother Apprenticeship program with a number of people who I've been working with and mentoring, and where it's all about not just fixing the problems and focusing on the problems, but taking it to the next level, which is how do we share joy in a world

that is so focused on so externally focused on issues and problems. And I think that's another part of it,

is like we do. While I am not a fan of spiritual bypassing or lightwashing or ignoring the major social issues that are going on in our planet right now, I do think that we have a tendency as a species to perseverate on all the wrong things and not give ourselves permission to feel pleasure, to play, to have fun, to go for delight, and if anything, Like Karen, your job in my job is to radiate love and to share joy, to share a pleasure, to share fun, and

to help people flip the switch so that they're not just sinking in despair because you know, I've been really getting the sense of like, At the same time that we have people who are aged in just abs salute, abject terror, and agony, we also have a mother who has just been handed her brand new baby, who is

falling in love for the first time. We have people who are having their first like they have fallen in love and they're you know, haven't They're getting it on for the first time, and that ecstatic reunion of like I just found my boo, I just connected. We have people who are performers, who are musicians, who are out in the world in stadiums experiencing the ecstasy of an entire stadium of thousands and thousands and thousands of people grooving with their music and feeling it. We have people

who are dancing. We have you know, football players and other athletes who are doing their optimum performance, who are winning awards and championships, and who are just elated. All of this is going on at the same time. And yet so as a society, you know, turn on the news and find out what's wrong. And so I think that for those of us who are highly sensitive empathic, it's really important to start trying to feel the joy that is in the world as well as feeling or acknowledging the sorrow.

We're not really like easy to access like up until recently. Sugar is a very modern concept. It was a very very special treat until very very recently. And the problem is that sugar influences and affects our blood. Sugar our and it deeply, deeply imp our mood. But it also compromises the bacteria the flora that grows in our gut. And essentially there is more understanding that our gut has the same cellular makeup as the gray matter of our brain.

And there's a sort of you know when people talk about trusting your gut, that's because there's a deep connection between the gut. We're pointing at my head. There's a deep connection between the gut and the brain.

our internal gut. And so, if you have ever heard the saying in metaphysics as above so below or as within so without, when we compromise the the filters and the sort of extremely resilient internal lining of our gut, we are not only compromising our internal gut, we are also compromising our external filters and shields. So, sugar is something that affects us deeply emotionally, and it affects us

and it affects us also very much physically. And so what I have found is that while there certainly are exceptions to the rule, and there are some mpaths who are way more physically resilient and able to kind of get away with it, or they're just so much younger that their body has not reached that sort of critical mass.

But in my experience, once you start talking about people getting into their mid twenties and beyond, the more sugar you concern consume, or the more and the more sort of processed carbohydrates you consume, because you know, like whitebread turns into sugar, the more compromised your gut becomes, and the more compromised, your entire hormonal system becomes, and the more disregulated one becomes. So I have found that stopping sugar is actually one of the very it's it's one

of the most important things we can do. But what I will say is that if you do not have healthy alternatives in place, and you just go cold turkey. In the same way if you ever quit smoking, and you know that, like when you quit smoking, it's sort

of like all your stuff comes up. If you've been using sugar to self sued, then the challenge is that unless you've got some kind of other way to take care of yourself and support yourself, it is going to really excuse can I say, use it, use it letter word.

Karen her life has now been changed. So thank you so much for taking the time to share your expertise with us, because it's something that we've been wanting to tackle for a long time and something that I think will help Karen and a lot of folks who are listening right now at all crazy.

And I just want to say, Karen, my heart, I know what you I really can identify and relate with what you're going through, and that it does get better. I promise it can get better. You are not crazy, You are not making stuff up. You are and you

are like and for a reason. You are here for a reason, and you are part and I really believe that you and the rest of us, and you know, the empathic tribe that is rising up in the world that we are here to be part of the solution and to help birth a new world where things can be better. So you guys, thank you so much for having me on this time is whizzed by Sure. Oh my god, what an amazing conversation. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you.