Self-Care for Empaths

by Tanya Carroll Richardson

  • Cushion with buffer. Your system is telling you it’s overloaded, so create more buffer around yourself. Buffer could look like scheduling a massage, attending a yoga class twice instead of once a week, or some other way of mindfully increasing your self-care to create buffer. When you feel on red alert or very anxious, it’s as if you are a car and the shocks or brake pads are worn too thin. Buffer is protective cushioning inserted into your schedule to help calm you and to soften or take the edge off daily life.

  • Let go of some responsibilities temporarily or create open space in your immediate-future schedule. You may be doing too much now, and managing everything is creating the overwhelm. Empaths need retreat-and-recover time to re-ground, and if you’re so busy you’re not getting that downtime, it could quickly lead to feeling on red alert. Create space and let your system catch up.

  • Make some bigger changes in your life. Are you people-pleasing and not prioritizing yourself? Are you taking on too much because you, not others, are expecting too much of yourself? Even if what’s causing you to be on red alert is a temporary issue, it could be helping you see some deeper truths or patterns that are reaching a crisis point. Empaths are extrasensory but not superhuman!

  • Slow down. As a society, we’re frequently impatient and on red alert. Are you ever moving quickly when you don’t have to be, or rushing through errands or conversations or projects simply because you’ve gotten used to moving very fast? Walk slower, talk slower—eat slower! This technique helps quiet your mind too.

  These techniques work for sporadic stress. Feeling overwhelmed almost all the time, however, might lead to a chronic fight-flight-or-freeze response. When you enter this territory, the adrenals and other systems in your body go on red alert, and in a primal way that makes you feel unsafe. Animals in the forest may feel this way if they smell a fire, for example.

  If you’re feeling anxiety and panic on a regular basis, talk to a healthcare professional. A counselor can give you coping skills or determine if this is related to a past trauma; a doctor, nurse practitioner, or naturopath can help determine if there is a physical cause; and a psychiatrist can help determine if there is a brain chemistry issue. Get any support you need so you can savor life more again!

  Bless Your Meals

  Small, easy rituals throughout the day help empaths mindfully ground back in to their own energy, keeping them centered and calmer. The beginning of a meal—whether it’s dinner or just a quick snack at your desk—is the perfect excuse to stop and perform a simple ritual.

  The following is a sample for a blessing you can perform over any meal, whether you’re at home or in a restaurant, eating alone or sitting with a group of people. Use these steps as a guideline, but feel free to adapt them to your preferences.

  1. Express (silently or aloud) gratitude for this food and the life force it’s transferring to you. If you consume animal products, you could thank the animals for what they have contributed. If you are on a plant-based diet, remember to thank them for their nutrients. Don’t forget to thank humans, like farmers or the people who work at your grocery store. You can even thank the person who earned the money to buy this food—maybe that was you!

  2. Set the intention to use this food as fuel to love yourself, to be of service to others, to spread compassion in the world, or for any other noble intention that resonates. (Again, this can be communicated aloud or silently.)

  3. Begin your meal, and let the sacredness of this quick and easy ritual make you more mindful of the blessing of having healthy food. Feeling blessed is the best!

  Tune In to Why You’re Feeling Ungrounded

  A healthy self-care practice is the best way to feel grounded—or safe, confident, calm, and centered in your own energy. If you’re feeling ungrounded—consistently feeling scattered, unsafe, insecure, or anxious—lean in to any self-care techniques that are especially supportive for you or for empaths in general.

  For this exercise, you’ll be using your clairsentient psychic pathway to feel in to the possible reasons why you may not be grounded. Ask yourself the following questions, and don’t go to your logical mind to deduce or strategize the answer. Wait for your feelings to tell you which questions hold important clues for you now.

  When a question resonates as possibly true for you, the energy around you might feel heavier or thicker; you might experience physical sensations, like chills; or you might experience any other mild physical or energetic change, like a wave of energy or emotion washing over you. When you read a question from the following list and it doesn’t resonate as an issue for you, you won’t experience a physical or energetic change, and instead you will feel neutral about or uninterested in this particular issue.

  Are you feeling ungrounded because:

  • The future feels particularly uncertain (where you’ll go to school, where you’ll live, where you’ll work) and you’re having trouble being at peace with this uncertain future?

  • You don’t feel settled in a home, job, or relationship that is new or in a transition period?

  • You’re having real concerns about survival issues, like food, shelter, physical safety, or other survival needs being met?

  • You have not had enough time or space to connect with yourself and come home to your own energy?

  • There’s too much pressure being put on you right now, either by yourself, a boss, a friend, or a partner, and instead of just being an extrasensory empath you’re trying to be superhuman?

  • You haven’t spent time in nature recently?

  • You haven’t been sticking to a healthy diet or you haven’t been taking supplements and medication that you know work for you?

  • You are trying to go it alone and need to ask for support?

  • You’ve been numbing out a lot and aren’t being present enough in the moment?

  • There’s something coming up that needs to be looked at and healed, either from the recent or distant past, and you need to get support and tools to face it?

  • You’re staying busy to avoid your emotions, an issue, or a person?

  • You’re being rigid and inflexible, even about smaller issues? Is this because you feel out of control in some area of your life and are trying to exert control in another area?

  • You haven’t been sticking to a healthy routine?

  You don’t have to possess magical solutions for any of these issues. Simply getting in touch with what is making you feel ungrounded will help you tune in to your own emotions and energies, and that in itself always helps an empath feel more grounded. If anything you discover in this exercise upsets you or makes you want to change, get support from loved ones and experts. Seeking help can be an act of courage, wisdom, and self-love.

  Try Beauty Therapy

  Whether you’re experiencing joyous times or very tough times, beauty is a sustaining, nourishing force for the human spirit. Beauty can instantly create warm, positive emotions, like joy, peace, and even awe. Because empaths are sensitive to emotions, beauty therapy helps them quickly tune in to feel-good vibes. For one week, commit to bringing more beauty into your life or noticing the beauty already there.

  • Day One: Find beauty in unexpected places, like a gnarled tree trunk or the tears of someone grieving a loved one.

  • Day Two: Concentrate on feeling more beautiful, like wearing your favorite outfit or having an attitude that radiates beauty.

  • Day Three: Bring more beauty to your workspace, like clearing clutter from your desk or placing a small plant or crystal on it.

  • Day Four: Notice the beauty in other people, like the kind smile of a stranger or the warm, nurturing energy of a close friend.

  • Day Five: Bring more beauty to your home, like buying a lovely vase at a secondhand store or purchasing one on sale at a chic store, or listening to beautiful music and letting it fill your space.

  • Day Six: Breathe in the beauty of nature, like visiting a local park for fresh air or burning sweet-smelling natur
al incense.

  • Day Seven: Make a meal beautiful, like creating a restaurant-level presentation of your dinner or using different vegetable shapes and colors in a salad.

  Beauty therapy does not have to cost a lot of, or even any, money. Sensitive empaths pick up easily on subtleties in their environment, so a little beauty therapy goes a long way.

  CHAPTER 3 Mindfully Tune In and Out of Other People

  An empath’s default wiring is to tune in to what’s around them—the energies and emotions of other individuals, groups, and spaces. Yet it’s important to remember that you are not at the mercy of this sensitivity—at least not all the time! You can learn to mindfully tune in and out of others, and while this is not a perfect science, it’s an ability you can practice and hone using the techniques in this chapter.

  Many empaths have a fear of being drained by other people’s energies and emotions. Sometimes this fear can protect you, and other times it can hold you back. While you should not feel victimized by being an empath, protecting yourself is a legitimate concern. So is feeling free to pursue things you’d like to experience.

  To understand this concept, visualize a knob on a panel that’s labeled empath sensitivity. This chapter will help you get better at turning your sensitivity up or down. The key to managing your intake of others’ energies and emotions is to turn the knob toward observer mode when helpful. Other times, the dial will point more toward opening up to feel so you can actively engage and enjoy your sensitivity. While you’ll have more control in some situations than in others, you can usually do something to mindfully manage your sensitivity. At times you’ll want to let the moment organically dictate your response and not think about your dial at all. The techniques in this chapter provide tools to manage your empath sensitivity in an empowered way.

  Tune In for Intuitive Insight

  Focusing on another person can enable you to tune in to them in a powerful way. Before an intuitive session, I focus on my client—what I know about them if we’ve had a session before, and the questions they sent me to meditate on. Within seconds of turning my thoughts and full attention on them, I start getting insightful intuitive hits about my client via the four main psychic pathways (hearing, seeing, knowing, and feeling).

  The following exercise will help you practice focusing—on people, situations, or anything else—so you can gain more intuitive insight. Learning what it feels like to tune in and tune out (which we’ll cover soon) are vital self-care lessons for empaths so they can decide which is the most useful and healthy option for them in the moment.

  1. Decide what you want to practice focusing on. It might be your pet as you play together, or your coworker over lunch as she asks for your advice. It could be someone or something far away, like a lover who’s asleep on the other side of the world or a vacation spot your family is considering. You might also focus on a situation, like how you want to grow or adapt your business next year.

  2. Stay calm. Remind yourself that this is not the type of focus used when cramming for an exam. Your energy should feel soft and open, not intense and concentrated. Gently let everything except what you are focusing on fade away.

  3. Get comfortable. Take care of any physical concerns so you’re not distracted. Go to the bathroom, grab a snack, or get settled in your chair.

  4. Encourage your focus. If you’re researching vacation spots, pull up images online. If you’re focusing on a friend across the table, make eye contact and notice the details of their outfit. If a stray thought about something else enters (such as “What’s for dinner?” or “Did I send that email?”), let it float on by. If it’s important, it will resurface after the exercise.

  5. Notice what intuitive hits you’re getting. Observe the words you hear in your mind, thoughts you have, images you see in your mind, and feelings you experience that are related to what you’re focusing on.

  6. Transition your focus. To end the exercise, mindfully take your focus and your thoughts somewhere else. Give your system a break, and if any essential intuitive insights still want to pop in, they will.

  Use Focus with a Sensitive Friend

  This exercise provides another way to practice using focus for intuitive insight. If you have another sensitive friend with a naturally strong or open intuition, it can be a special bonding experience to try the following exercise together. It might become something you do periodically whenever one of you is looking for some out-of-the-box intuitive insight on a situation in your life. Always trust your own guidance, of course—but going to someone else for their intuitive opinion can be enlightening, especially if you’re feeling very emotional or stuck around an issue in your life.

  Before you begin, find a friend who is excited about trying this. If they’re not familiar with the four psychic pathways, or “clairs,” explain the concept of hearing, seeing, knowing, or feeling intuitive guidance. After you’ve set up a time to meet, either in person or over the phone, do the following.

  1. Decide who will be the first subject of focus, you or your friend.

  2. Decide what issue you will be focusing on. (For example, you could decide to focus on your friend first, and the issue is a challenge he’s currently having in a romantic relationship.) For this exercise, pick a situation that isn’t too emotionally loaded for your friend. Concentrate instead on something merely annoying or frustrating (like how his partner has been working too much lately). This keeps the exercise fun and your energy light and curious.

  3. Encourage focus by clearing your mind of anything else and turning your thoughts and full attention to your friend and his issue for 15 to 20 minutes. If you’re meeting in person, notice his outfit and facial expressions. If you’re on the phone, concentrate on his voice. Ask your friend to share what’s going on by giving you some details of the situation. Give your friend space to process some of his emotions, frustrations, or confusion aloud.

  4. Listen between the lines. As you listen to your friend, also pay attention to what insightful thoughts pop into your head about his situation or what feelings you experience about it. For example, you might have a thought that your friend’s partner is trying to prove himself at work right now yet it’s tied to fears about a job loss he experienced in the distant past, or get a feeling that an idea your friend has about how to address the issue is a good one. You might even see things, like the face of a family member of yours who went through something similar, pop into your head, or hear things, like “This is a special love,” when your friend talks about his partner.

  5. Share what you are sensing about your friend’s situation with him as natural openings in the conversation occur. (If you think something you picked up might upset your friend, or you’re not sure if something is helpful advice or not, don’t share it yet. Go away from the exercise and sit on it for a few days.) Stick to advice that’s inspirational and practical and expressed in a way that is loving. Remember: You’re not trying to tell your friend what to do or fix his life—just diplomatically offering suggestions and practicing mindfully tuning in to others.

  6. When you’re done, repeat the process but reverse things so you and one of your issues becomes the focus.

  Take Your Focus Off Someone Who Is Triggering

  Certain people might be particularly distracting, because what they say, do, or represent to you is so triggering. These people can appear in any facet of your life, like a coworker who dominates meetings or a well-meaning neighbor who always offers unwanted advice. You might even find someone in the public eye, like a Hollywood celebrity or politician, triggering.

  The following protocol for dealing with a triggering person can be illuminating for empaths, and after trying this method, you may find your energy refreshed or your relationship with this triggering person improved.

  1. Admit that someone is triggering you. Instead of downplaying their effect on you, just get honest with yourself and maybe even someone else who is safe to confide in about how much this person’s energy and presence is ge
tting under your empath skin. Remember that you’re sensitive to the energies of others, so finding yourself in this situation occasionally is natural.

  2. Identify why this person triggers you. For example, an acquaintance might like to gossip, and you hate hearing them speak poorly about other people. Or someone you like and admire might have suddenly become triggering because they got married, landed their dream job, or got out of debt and it’s making you a bit jealous because you’d love something similar.

  3. Determine what this trigger is telling you. When you are having trouble tuning out of someone, it might be because your sensitive energy body is trying to get your attention. What do you need to see here that this person represents? It could be that you should have better boundaries with your loved ones, for example, or that there’s a goal this person has achieved that you’d like to go after in your own way. Ponder what this person’s triggering energy is inviting you to do—often it involves some type of healing. For example, it might be that this person reminds you of something painful from the past that needs more healing. Feel the feelings, and discern the messages within them.

  4. Take action. What can you do about what you discovered in the previous step? Once you set better boundaries or start going after a dream (or let it go and count your other blessings instead), or simply process emotions that want to be felt, this person’s energy should become less triggering and it will be much easier to tune them out. Sometimes simply realizing why they trigger you and admitting it to yourself is the most helpful action.

  5. Turn your thoughts elsewhere. When this person isn’t around, try not thinking about them, unless the thoughts are productive and related to the third and fourth steps. Sometimes we cannot avoid being around someone—like a coworker, neighbor, or an extended family member—yet we can certainly work on not thinking about them when our time around them is over. Thinking about someone, or not, is a powerful way to tune in or out of that person’s energy. If thinking of them has become a habit, start a new habit of switching to thoughts about gratitude when this person comes to mind.