Top 2 Lessons for Empath Souls
Prior to my spiritual awakening, and during my deepest healing years, I witnessed my emotions controlling my life experiences. I always knew I was a sensitive soul, yet I saw my sensitivity as a problem rather than learning how to honour it.
As a Spiritual Mentor and Intuitive Guide I have spent many years in the depths of emotional healing, dissecting the outdated programming of my subconscious, and awakening the voice of my soul. The work I focus on with my clients and community members is about breaking free from the limits society placed on them; finding courage and compassion to live from their true authenticity; and strengthening their faith and trust in their own intuition to be led on their soul path.
The empath soul is the being who naturally feels and understands the emotions and energy of the people around them. Not every human is energetically dialed into understanding the emotions of others, and yet the empaths of the world have been taken advantage of for generations.
It’s your natural inclination to think about other people and how they might feel in a situation. You became a ‘yes’ person, putting the needs and desires of others before your own, because you want to be of service and you don’t want to see them suffering.
The problem I have seen play out again and again, in my own life and in the lives of my community members and friends, is that we don’t understand how to process and transmute the energy of the heavy emotions in a healthy and supportive way. Instead, we carry the weight of the overwhelming emotions, and it leads to exhaustion and emotional burnout.
Taking the time to understand the energetics of your emotions, and building practices to safely alchemize the heaviness into light, is how you shift from the exhausted empath into the empowered empath. I could talk about emotional wellness until I lose my voice, and even still I would be trying to share what I’ve learned and how you can live with more peace.
This is a topic I will never grow tired of, so for now I want to share a couple top lessons that can support your journey of becoming an empowered empath.
I had a conversation with a good friend recently, as she was asking for support in a time of need for herself and in a time of need for one of her friends. As an empath, you not only need to learn how to honour your own emotional experience, with tools and strategies to regulate your nervous system; you also need to learn how to hold space for someone else’s emotional experience, in a healthy and aligned way, so you aren’t taking on the pain of the world around you.
I hope these lessons provide some insight into how you can continue to heal your emotional well-being and create a sense of peace in your everyday experience.
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Back to the blog - Top 2 Lessons for Empath Souls
1 - Don’t suffer because you’re suffering
Life is meant to have contrast, which means there will be suffering and there will be blessings. As someone who has connected with the Spirit Realm many times, I wish I could say that one day the suffering and challenges life brings will be over. It can be a difficult moment to accept, and yet the way I see it and how I’ve been led to understand it, there will always be moments that are hard, and we all experience different versions of hard.
Your emotional experience will move along the sliding scale of emotions, and the key is to not stay in the suffering for longer than necessary. How can you guide yourself back to peace? How can you lead yourself back to calmness? How can you usher joy into your life again?
I’ve caught myself many times choosing to suffer because I was suffering.
When it felt like a challenge had arisen in my life, I became fixated on the problem. Feeling sad for myself because of my life experience. Perpetuating the struggle and strife I was feeling, pitying myself, and staying in the mindset of “problems always occur in my life, nothing ever goes the way I want it to”.
How did I learn to shift my perspective and my life experience?
Over time I began to realize how the thought patterns in my mind were causing the perpetual suffering. It’s not the original emotion of frustration, sadness, or anger, that was the issue. The issue was the story or narrative I had become attached to in my mind that was the issue to my prolonged suffering. I allowed myself to become a victim to the situation.
**Disclaimer** There are going to be moments in life where you actually are a victim to something awful and traumatic. In these moments you need to seek support in order to be free from the situation you are in.
The extended suffering occurs when you become fixated on the narrative as to why you are feeling the heavy emotion. “My financial situation is never going to change, and I’m always going to be in a state of lack.” “The teacher wants me to fail, he is so hard on everyone, and he is going to be the reason why I fail.” “My partner never listens to me, they always become defensive and never allow me to share my opinions.”
Your thought patterns are infiltrating your emotional body, reiterating why you should feel bad about yourself. This never ending cycle will continue to occur in your life, in all situations, until you realize your thoughts are causing you to suffer over your suffering.
The takeaway is learning how to feel your emotions, without getting stuck in your mind, overthinking the reasons why you feel heavy. On a more simple level, emotions are energy in motion, and when an emotion is triggered in your body you have built up a pattern of shifting immediately to your mind. The moment you shift to your mind, you aren’t allowing the energy of the emotion to move through you and be released, instead that energy sits stagnant in your body as you reiterate the issue in your mind.
Feel the emotion, the emotion will then flow through your body, and with a calm breathing cycle, you will be able to release the energy of the emotion. Later on, when you are not in the emotional state, you can process the emotion on a deeper level, if you feel called to understand it.
This idea of not suffering because you are suffering is something I explore deeper inside my self-led course, Healing from Your Lowest Point: The Path Back to Your Soul. Understanding your emotional experience and being able to guide yourself through difficult times doesn’t need to be scary or overwhelming. This course breaks it down simply for you, so you can cultivate a more regulated nervous system, and break free from your emotions controlling your life experience.
2 - Holding Space versus Being an Emotional Caretaker
This is for all my people pleasing empath souls who truly desire helping other people. Whether you want to help people in your profession, or you want to support and take care of your loved ones, this is a lesson you need to learn.
I was speaking with a good friend the other day and she asked me for some advice. She has a friend that is going through a really difficult time and my friend, let’s call her Sally, really wants to be there for her friend, but Sally has been busy. Sally knows that her friend is hurting, and it’s hard to get through to her. Sally’s friend doesn’t have a lot of people she can lean on in this difficult time, so Sally really wants to help, but she doesn’t know how to and the whole situation is really heavy for Sally.
When I listen to this situation it reminds me of so many times my friends, family members or even my clients were going through big challenges and I wanted to do everything I could to take their pain away. I wanted to give them relief, and I wanted them to not be in a state of suffering anymore.
You cannot take someone’s pain away. You cannot carry someone’s pain for them.
I think the message I sent to Sally was the message that everyone needs to hear, and it went like this…
“That is really hard, all of it. Watching someone else in their state of suffering, knowing there isn’t anything we can really do to pull them out of it. All we can do is remind them they aren’t alone and try to be a glimmer of light and support. You can’t take their pain away. You can’t feel it for them. They will have to move through this pain and these emotions themself. That’s the unfortunate part about emotions. You being a safe space to confide and a support system is everything you can offer. You bringing your own light and compassion and joy into their life will be helpful too. It’s important you don’t take on their pain and try to own it yourself. It’s one of the hardest parts of being a sensitive person, we feel it all. You are doing everything you can and that is more than enough, even when it doesn’t feel like enough.”
It’s not your job to take care of someone else’s emotions, that is their job and can only be done by the person experiencing the emotions. Holding space for someone to process their emotions, understand their emotions and express their emotions is about allowing them to have an emotional experience in a safe, supportive and healthy capacity.
It has taken me a lot of time and practice to be able to understand how to hold space for someone else’s emotional needs in a healthy and supportive way, without taking on the weight of those emotions as my own.
The takeaway is knowing your own emotional state first, because if you are not in an emotional space where you can actively hold compassion and grace for someone else’s emotions, then it will be a detriment to both of you.
Emotions are part of this human experience, and as an empath soul you naturally feel and understand the emotional experience of yourself and others.
The key to understanding is that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to express and understand emotions. The overwhelm and exhaustion you’ve been feeling is a clear sign that you’ve been carrying unhealthy and unsupportive patterns when it comes to your emotional needs. Your nervous system and your soul are urging you to learn more supportive and healthy practices when it comes to emotions and the emotional experience.
This is where you learn to live as a peaceful and empowered empath.
Here are 2 steps you can take right now to transform your relationship with emotions, and begin to live a more peaceful and empowered life.
1 - Become a member of The Soul Care Space
You know you can hold yourself accountable in creating small shifts and upgrades in your life, yet you’ve plateaued on your journey because your stuck in knowing how to create those shifts. This is the space for those who want to show up to a session a couple times a month and be guided through empowering energy shifts and to feel part of a community who is prioritizing a soul-led life.
2 - Apply to the Spirit of the Empath - 1:1 Mentoring Program.
You are ready to go to the next level with your spiritual expansion and you’ve been waiting to connect with the right mentor. This is the space for those who are committed to this personal development journey and want the 1:1 support in breaking free from old patterns, and truly awakening the voice of their soul.
Your empathic ways are a gift to this world, it’s time you stop seeing your emotions as a sign of weakness.
Until next time, forever holding space for your spiritual journey,
Sydney Smith
Spiritual Mentor
Founder of Adventuring with Poseidon Wellness
