by Ora North
Because we’re so absorbed in our own reflections within our relationships, we often overlook the actual other person and instead assign them an idea relating to ourselves rather than an identity all their own. You simply cannot subscribe to the “we’re just mirrors” concept 100 percent without turning into either a smug bypassing jerk who discounts someone else’s important life experiences or a disempowered martyr. Balance and discernment make all the difference.
As an empath, since it’s already so easy to get energies mixed up, it’s especially important to honor the role of triggers while also separating out your experience from the experience of the other person. You are each having an individual experience, even though it’s being reflected through one another. Keeping this in mind as you work with your triggers will help you separate your energy from theirs.
Using Neutrality
When dealing with our difficult emotions and the emotions of others, neutrality is a powerful tool. Contrary to popular belief, in this case, neutrality doesn’t mean that you don’t have any feelings. Neutrality means that you can allow yourself to have whatever feelings you have but without acting upon them. Neutrality means that you can allow other people to have whatever feelings they have but without reacting to them.
When we experience our triggers at the same time our loved ones experience their triggers, our energies get mixed together really easily. The more upset we are, the harder it is to determine whose feeling is whose.
Taking space and processing your triggers alone when they come up is one way to practice neutrality in relationships. By falling prey to your triggers and reacting to them with anger, you’re reaching deep inside yourself, pulling that energy out, and throwing it at the other person. When they react to their triggers, they’re doing the same thing to you. Eventually, there’s so much intense energy being thrown around that it’s no wonder we can’t differentiate whose energy is whose!
Taking space to process your triggers alone doesn’t mean that you don’t get to have your feelings. Your feelings, even the triggered ones, are all valid. By separating yourself from the conflict, though, you create a container for your triggers and your emotions to be understood in a healthy way. Once you know you can create a safe space for your own feelings, you can more easily talk about them with your loved ones.
Knowing how to do this will also help you keep your loved ones’ energies from mixing too much with yours, because you will know to avoid reacting when they are clearly triggered. You can allow them to have their trigger and hold your own boundaries at the same time. You know that their trigger isn’t a true reflection of the current situation, so you don’t have to take it personally. By doing this, you are holding space for them and their emotions. This doesn’t mean it’s okay for your loved ones to consistently take out their frustration and their triggers on you, but knowing how to handle it will keep your energies from getting confused, while also validating your loved ones’ emotions.
Demonstrating a healthy way to handle triggers with your loved ones will make it easier for them to communicate with you too. If they see that what you’re doing helps you to understand things and calm down, they will likely want to learn how to do the same thing. Nobody wants to have triggers; they just don’t know their other options yet.
Learning your own triggers like the back of your hand will help you discern how to handle your relationships with other people. Using your yes/no body intuition will help you discern which relationships are healthy and which are not. I want you to have all the tools to meet your triggers with love and understanding, because you deserve the lightness that comes from healing yourself.
Do the Work
Discerning whose feelings are whose is a challenge. The tools in this section will help you hone your discernment skills.
Yes and No Intuition
Sit comfortably. Close your eyes, and spend a few minutes focusing on your breathing: take deep, slow breaths, inhaling through your nose for a count of three (1-2-3), holding for a count of three, and exhaling through your mouth for a count of three. Do this until you feel your body relax.
When you start feeling relaxed, move your awareness from your toes up to your head, saying hello to all of your body. Say hello to your legs, your hips, your chest, your arms. Silently give thanks to your body as you do this. By doing this, you’re letting your body know that you love it and want to communicate with it.
When you’re ready, take another deep breath. Ask your body, What is my yes sensation? And then focus on steady breathing as you wait to feel your yes sensation. It might be a tingle in your third eye, or the feeling of heat in your belly, or the feeling of your chest expanding outward. Let that feeling grow strong enough to where you know you’ll be able to recognize it later.
When you feel clear on what your yes is, ask your body, What is my no sensation? Again, focus on steady breathing as you wait for your no sensation. It might be the feeling of your shoulders contracting or a poke in your ankle.
Even though you are communicating with your body for this exercise, your sensation may not be strictly physical. It may be an energetic feeling. You may experience your chest expanding for your yes sensation, but your physical chest may not actually expand. Depending on how you experience your intuition, your sensation could be completely physical or largely intuitive.
If connecting to your body is a struggle because of past trauma and dissociation, you can use color visualization instead. Assign a specific color for your yes and a specific color for your no before you begin asking questions. With intention and focus, begin asking yourself yes or no questions you already know the answers to. When you ask yourself a question with the answer of yes, visualize the color you’ve chosen for your yes. When you ask yourself a question with the answer of no, visualize the color you’ve chosen for your no. Once you’ve trained your brain and your intuition to use those colors, you can start asking questions you don’t know the answer to; observe which of the two colors you see in your mind.
Trace Back Your Triggers
Your first step in tracing back your trigger is to step away from the situation that’s triggered you. If you’re arguing with a significant other, tell them you need a moment to yourself and go to another room. If it’s a situation at work, excuse yourself to use the bathroom. Do whatever you can to give yourself the physical space you need to look at your trigger before you react out of anger. If you’re with someone who understands the work you’re doing, you can tell them that you’re feeling triggered and that you need them to hold space for you while you work it out. Most often, though, you’ll want to process it alone.
Once you’ve stepped away from the situation, the first thing to do is name your feeling out loud. Even if you know that’s not the feeling you’ll end up with, even if you know you’re overreacting, you have to be able to name out loud that first frantic feeling after you’ve been triggered. By naming it out loud, you create space for the feeling to express itself.
After naming that feeling out loud, answer these questions:
Why do I feel this way? (The answer will most likely be a statement that blames the other person for what they said or did, and that is totally okay and necessary.)
Why did what the other person did or said bother me so much?
Why is it important for me to not feel that way?
Continue asking yourself these “why” questions with the intention that each answer will peel away more and more of what the other person said or did to you, and each answer will bring you further and further back toward your core wounding, and what happened to you in the past.
Once you reach your core wound, you’re able to see that the pain you’re feeling isn’t just from the person who triggered you. The pain is from years of living with your core wound—years of feeling unseen, or unsupported, or abused. Now use the exercises on core wounds in the Do Your Work section of chapter 3 to work on your healing.
Remember that every time you trace your trigger back, you have another opportunity to heal yourself.
Chapter 6:
Working with Boundaries
Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries—one of the biggest topics for empath gripe sessions.
“You need to set your boundaries!”
“You have no boundaries!”
“OMG, they totally ignored your boundaries!”
Don’t get me wrong. Boundaries really are the bread and butter of healthy empathy. Boundaries are the rules we set for our own existence. The quality of our lives is completely dependent on our boundaries, since they are the gatekeepers of whether we accept, reject, or alter a situation.
But they’re actually a lot easier than you think. Knowing your boundaries and enforcing them will become easier the more connected you are to yourself. Respecting your own boundaries is almost like a practice in muscle memory. Once you teach yourself the habit, it becomes more and more automatic. Soon enough, respecting your boundaries will be as automatic as brushing your teeth before bed or walking your dog each morning.
The Secret to Working with Boundaries
I’m going to let you in on a little secret that will completely change the way you look at your boundaries. You know how we’re always saying that we need to build better boundaries? Well…you don’t have to build anything.
Let me repeat that: you don’t have to build anything. There is nothing to build.
The truth about boundaries is that they already exist in their perfect form for every single situation. Your boundaries are actually already in place all the time. It’s not your job to build your boundaries; it’s your job to be aware of where they already are.
Think of yourself as operating from two different levels at the same time. First and foremost, you’re operating as your higher self. Your higher self knows exactly what’s up, and they’re wise as hell, so they’ve already figured out your needs and your boundaries. They work with your energy body to move and adjust your boundaries accordingly for every situation and relationship you find yourself in. It’s natural for them to do this, since your higher self works in the spirit world, and they do it with grace and ease.
The other level you operate from is your human self. Your human self abides by physical human laws like time and physics, so they’re a little behind your higher self. They get bogged down by heavy energy, and because they operate from that physical body, the process of clearing and integrating energy is a slower and denser ordeal. Your human self is always playing catch-up with your spirit.
Your only job, when it comes to building your boundaries, is to establish a truer connection to your higher self and to establish an awareness of the boundaries that already exist.
You know when someone disrespects your boundaries, even though you had no idea it was a boundary for you yet? You know that sinking feeling you get? That’s because on some level, you already knew your boundaries, so that feeling of someone crossing them feels like an internal betrayal, like a ping of sadness coming from the disconnect between you and your higher self.
Once you’ve developed a dialogue between your human self and your higher self, you will always know where your boundaries are. If you’re struggling with your boundaries, you can ask your higher self where the edges of those boundaries are. Your higher self is the gatekeeper and always knows your edges. You’ll be able to see the moments when you betray yourself by ignoring your boundaries, and you’ll be able to see the moments when you are betrayed by others ignoring them. In the Do the Work section, you’ll find an exercise on getting to know your gatekeeper.
Know the Spectrum
Your boundaries manifest themselves on a spectrum, and knowing where you fall on it will help you find the right balance for yourself.
One end of the spectrum is the “not enough” side. This is where your boundaries have been underutilized and where you haven’t discovered your edges yet. Being on this end will make you extra vulnerable to other people’s energies. This will cause uncontrollable weepiness, powerlessness, and hyperfragility. This is the end where everyone crosses your boundaries all the time, leaving you exhausted and overwhelmed.
On the other end of the spectrum is the “too much” side. This happens when you’ve attempted to create firm boundaries for yourself, and by trying to protect yourself, you’ve built solid steel walls instead of flexible boundaries. Being on this end keeps the bad out, but it also keeps the good out. This end will keep you invulnerable to others, but it also leaves you lonely. You may find yourself out of touch with your own sense of compassion and empathy, and you may find that no one can truly reach you.
Where do you find yourself on that spectrum? Most empaths have found themselves on either end at different times as they’ve tried to deal with the realities of being so sensitive, but one side usually predominates.
How have you been too soft and yielding?
How have you been too rigid and cold?
Can you think of a few instances in your life where you felt like your boundaries were constantly being betrayed, or where you felt like you couldn’t let the good in because you were so preoccupied with keeping out the bad? I want you to find a balance in the middle. I want you to have a strong but flexible identity in your own boundaries—strong enough to keep you in your own power, but not so strong that you keep yourself locked away behind a wall.
You can also use these feelings to create specific energy signatures. You can create an energetic signature for boundaries that are too yielding, and an energetic signature for boundaries that are too rigid. This will assist you in knowing when you’re swinging too far one way or the other.
Even though boundaries can be a really complicated subject, simplifying them makes everything easier. Knowing that your higher self already has your boundaries perfectly constructed for you will take the pressure off building them. You only need to tune in and feel where they are.
Ground Yourself
How can you tune into those preexisting boundaries? The first step is always to ground yourself. Grounding is an important process that keeps your energy stable. The general concept is that when grounding, you connect into the energy of the earth and draw excess energy in your body to your feet to be stabilized in the ground.
That excess energy is usually found in your higher chakras and, if not grounded, can lead to anxiety and spiritual madness. Many spiritual types exist primarily in their higher chakras, and they often become out of touch with reality because all of that energy, even if it’s generally a good energy, isn’t stabilized.
Because your boundaries are there to protect your physical body and your spiritual body, grounding both your physical and spiritual energy is necessary. And because your physical body is slower to integrate energy, it’s especially important to be connected to your body and take steps to ensure it’s being taken care of.
Grounding can be as simple as a visualization of connecting with the earth, sticking your toes in the sand at the beach, walking in the woods barefoot, or doing something physical that’s enjoyable.
When you ground, your spiritual energy is distributed evenly throughout your body and your chakras. That kind of balance is key to becoming more aware of your boundaries, and will make your ability to see and enforce them all the more powerful.
What are some of the ways that you already intuitively ground yourself? Do you like to hike? Do you love the feeling of burying your feet in the sand? Do you notice yourself being drawn to the color red in times when you need grounding? Red is the color of the root chakra and is the best color for quick assistance with grounding. Maybe you already tend to eat a lot of root vegetables or warm foods or chocolate when you need grounding.
Build a practice of grounding out of things you already love to do. Make grounding a part of your everyday ritual. Be intentional with the foods you eat and the way you move your body. In the Do the Work sectio
n at the end of this chapter, you’ll find a grounding visualization that can be done easily every day.
Feel Your Edges
Once you’ve grounded your energy, you’re in a better place to be able to feel where your boundaries are. You can then use your yes/no body intuition and your energy signatures to help determine the details. Remember the sensations you felt with your yes and your no? Remember the energy signatures you built? Those sensations are related to your boundaries, and you can test them out in any situation.
If you’re wondering where your boundaries are with your coworkers, imagine various scenarios and situations where they’re involved, and with each imagined scenario, notice your sensations. If one situation gives you strong no sensations, then you’ve found the edges of your boundaries where you need to turn back. If another situation gives you strong yes sensations, then your boundaries are already healthy and active. To take it a step further, after you’ve imagined a scenario with strong no sensations, you can then imagine how you would change the situation to feel like a yes. Simply following your feelings and your body cues will help you find the edges and the curves of all your boundaries. This is an exercise in imagination, and all the creative work you’ve done with your victim, your villain, and your energy signatures will make this process easier.
This process is even clearer when you work with it in person. There’s some trial and error involved, but it’s completely worth the effort. Start feeling out your yes and no sensations and energy signatures when you’re working through your relationships. Notice the sensations when you answer questions in certain ways or when you’re spoken to in a certain manner. Does it feel like a betrayal or an expansion? Does it feel like a yes or a no? Does it feel like a certain energy signature you’ve built?