Empaths And Pharmaceuticals

The international trade in psychiatric drugs is in the hundreds of billions.  Forty million Americans take them.

In nearly every instance, suffering human beings are not talked to, cared for, or helped.  They are simply given a prescription.  It’s called “somatic psychiatry,” and the fundamental, underlying concept is that people suffer because their brains are defective.  The drugs are supposed to improve brain function.

The trade is so huge largely because these drugs are designed to make people psychologically or physically dependent upon them, which creates long-term recurring revenue.  Doctors are incentivised in a myriad of ways to promote drugs to their patients, pocketing extra money when they make the sale.  

The Pharmaceutical Racket

But there are numerous studies — rigorous, academic ones — that suggest these drugs don’t actually help much at all.  It is amazing to me that we have to run a study to figure this out.  How could a drug possibly help someone who was suffering from psychological, emotional, spiritual trauma?  They have to come to terms with the cause of their trauma, and learn to heal themselves through understanding and mental training.  

These drugs also have dangerously toxic effects on both the mind and the body.  While there might be rare cases where these drugs can actually cure someone of a brain chemistry imbalance, the notion that all suffering is a brain chemistry imbalance is dangerous.  I have three clients who worked in big Pharma, and we had to agree that we would never discuss their work, because I think what they do is evil.  The actions of big Pharma are exactly the opposite of an empath.  They’re like the leaders of a cigarette company or something.  

True, there are people with strange brain chemistry imbalances, and for those people, certain pharmaceuticals can be really helpful.  However, conditions like that are very rare.  The vast majority of time, people are suffering deep in their consciousness and in their soul, and no pharmaceutical can help you there. 

In fact, psychoactive pharmaceuticals are designed to build up in your system so they can have a sustained impact on your brain chemistry.  Because of this, the vast majority of the time they are prescribed, the reason  has nothing to do with an actual, measured, for-real brain chemistry imbalance and everything to do with a dismissive blow to the head that will dull the mind so it stops suffering.

Almost all of them come with dire warnings that you are not to stop taking them cold-turkey, because your brain has become either physically dependent upon them or chronically altered by metabolizing them.  If you stop suddenly, the abrupt shift in your consciousness can be dangerously disorienting.  Much easier to just keep taking it. Oh, and that’s also a long-term, recurring sale for a pharmaceutical company.

The Victims of Prescription Drugs

Most people are not in tune with the toxicity of these medications, and they get to a point where they want to stop all of them, and by then they are worse than ever before.

And why would forty million Americans need something like this?  You don’t want to think that people can do these things to other people, but when money is involved, everything gets really weird.  You don’t want to hate the doctors making and prescribing them.  You want to believe that they believe they are helping people.  But it is very difficult to sustain that illusion, because the negative effects of these drugs are so pronounced and widespread.

Suffering is an affliction of the consciousness, and only working consciously can address it.  Sadly, a lot of therapy fails to deliver this.  Therapists often don’t hear their patients because they get a referral, often with a prescription included, and everything is already decided before they even have a conversation. They don’t listen to the story.  They don’t listen for what is not said, which is often as important as what is said.  They are like anyone else, thinking about what they are going to say next instead of listening to what the patient is saying now.  And what they plan to say simply reinforces the “diagnosis” and validates the “prescription.”

True Therapy for Empaths

A real therapeutic process takes a journey with someone, creating the journey together with them.  My graduate work was differentiating diagnosis, and my specialty was narcissists.  This is a real personality disorder, which is just a fancy way of saying someone is just a jerk, and they they don’t care.  Sometimes there is a brain chemistry issue, but almost always it can be managed very effectively with diet. 

Most of the time, what the patient needs is a journey.  Why are they are jerk?  Why don’ they care?  In my experience, the answer is almost always that they were so traumatized before they are four that they must hurt you.  They will love you for 5 seconds and then they will hate you.  They respond to people and events from this deeply traumatized state of mind, which comes along with beliefs about reality that are so deep the patient doesn’t even know they are beliefs, much less question them.  The journey takes time, and it takes effort, but even a narcissist can usually do it.  

Empaths have an even more difficult time of this.  It can be harder for them than for narcissists or other similarly self-obsessed people.  This is because their journey has included huge swaths of other people’s journeys.  Since others have been opening up to you deeply and intensely for your whole life, you can lose yourself in their stories.  

Sometimes empaths believe that they are deeply engaged in their own self-discovery, when in fact they are missing the most important journey they need to take.  Often, they need a guide, which is what therapy ought to be.  They need to return to that age of four when the world began to assault them.  And they need to go back to the age of ten, when they had experiences of being fully in the empathic flow for the first time. 

This takes time and effort.  The internal dialog can have a lot of difficult parts to it.  Patients can wonder if taking the real route to mental health is “right for them.”   They can be tempted to take pharmaceuticals as a quick way to dull the symptoms of their extraordinary minds.  Or, worse, they can believe that there really is something defective about their brain, and they need an internationally marketed product to repair it. They can go off the rails pretty easily.

But they come back.  This is why those studies find that the pharmaceuticals don’t work: The only way to come into your own and to direct the powers of your consciousness is through self-awareness.  Pharmaceuticals simply cannot help you there.

Photo by Zulmaury Saavedra on Unsplash

The Inner Child vs. The Original Self

This world and what happens here are only part of your life. 

As a child, you possessed a magical awareness that significantly shaped your perception of the world. During this time, you unknowingly formed beliefs that still linger beneath the surface of your consciousness.

Recall yourself as an eight-year-old empath, a unique individual often considered both gifted and peculiar by those around you. Regardless of whether you directly faced traumatic events, you experienced a profound sense of trauma, as societal norms often clashed with your extraordinary abilities.

Becoming aware of your distinct way of processing reality, you've started to recognize the incredible powers within you. Society, sensing your uniqueness, subjected you to various challenges, pushing you to the outskirts of the tribe. This societal exclusion, even if not overtly confronted, left lasting impressions on your psyche. Every empath, even those from caring families, experienced a form of childhood trauma due to their exceptional sensitivities.

At the age of eight, lacking real-world experience, perspective, or knowledge, you couldn't articulate the complexities of your reality. People who didn't fully grasp your consciousness urged you to conceal your true nature beneath socially acceptable behaviors. Despite this pressure, you witnessed and even caused magical occurrences, understanding the divine connection flowing through all living things. The realization that others remained oblivious to this astonished you, prompting thoughts on how to protect yourself.

As you navigated this heightened and complex world, you lacked guidance, leaving you to rely on your inherent powers and imagination to develop defense and coping mechanism to navigate the heightened and complex world you perceived. 

You did not record only negative experiences as a child 

As an empath, you held extraordinary powers that went beyond the ordinary. For me, one young memory stands out vividly. 

My sister fell seriously ill with the flu. Our mother wasn't around to help, much less offer comfort. My sister desperately needed care. I instinctively wrapped my arms around her, fully aware that I would likely catch the flu, but I didn't care. I had an unwavering belief in my ability to heal both my sister and myself.

Empaths, like you and me, possess an innate strength and a deep well of healing energy. We've been there for our loved ones, even healing our parents when they needed it most. It's a profound connection, a force that emanates from within us and makes us fantastically strong.

Some of us are fortunate to have a sanctuary in our lives. For me, it was my grandparents, not biological but playing the same role. When I was with them, I didn't feel drained. They provided a safe space where I could recharge. Perhaps you were lucky enough to find such a haven, or maybe you're still seeking that safe space.

The ability to care for something beyond ourselves is at the core of the empathic force. It's a maternal instinct that transcends gender, the essence of creation itself. Every empath possesses this instinct, and it's what sustains the human race. It's the force that binds us together, the ability to recognize that something else matters, and in that recognition, we find the strength to continue, to heal, and to nurture not only ourselves but the world around us.

Without it, the human race would not continue.

Switch from “Inner Child” to “Original Self”

Rather than think about the “inner child” who is still causing you to respond to the world in a childish way, try using a term from Zen Buddhism: the Original Self.

The Original Self and the inner child are two faces on the same jewel. The Original Self existed before you were born, and it will continue to exist after you leave this world. It is shocked by what it finds here on Earth, and since empaths are so in touch with their divine nature, they are extremely aware of its sense of disorientation. Empaths see the world through the eyes of the Original Self, and seek a higher meaning, because they know that the world exists in a vast cosmic context and they are driven to make sense of it

Accepting the Original Self

Embracing one's true self is the key to healing a wounded soul. It's a journey of self-acceptance, understanding who we are, and why we became that way. Only then can the process of mending truly begin, allowing what seemed 'killed' within us to come back to life.

Often, much of our time is spent in the recesses of our minds, desperately trying to appease the lingering voices from our past, especially those that inflicted trauma. This interconnection between our present and past can lead us to believe that we are inherently broken or that all the hardships we endured were somehow deserved.

The path to healing lies in recognizing that adversity is a shared human experience. By understanding that our survival instincts are universal, we can acknowledge our intrinsic value. Each of us plays a vital role in the ongoing creation of our individual narratives and, collectively, the creation of "whatever comes next."

At the core of this healing journey is trust. Trust in our actions, feelings, and the ongoing process of learning and evolving. It's about acknowledging that our way of being is not only valid but also essential for our growth and well-being.

Trusting the universe and testing its limits are intertwined. It's not a cop-out; rather, it's a recognition that we cannot pass judgment on the universe. By embracing this perspective, we free ourselves from the constraints of judgment and open the door to a journey of self-discovery, growth, and ultimately, a more profound connection with the universe.

Photo by Almos Bechtold on Unsplash

Childhood Beliefs Can Choke Your Magic

Your magic has not fully manifest because you still carry childhood beliefs with you. Despite your efforts to ferret them out, some still remain. The deepest ones, the most influential ones, have yet to be discovered. Finding them will be an important part of this next transition. 

You do not want to dwell upon the past because you cannot change it. That’s a good attitude, except for the fact that you can’t know yourself and accept your empathic nature until you understand what happened to you as a child and how it affects you now. 

You don’t want to blame others, and you don’t want to come to hate your parents or family or clergy or teachers because of what they did or what they said. You’re strong enough to take responsibility for your own life. This attitude is also admirable. Your angelic nature makes you capable of forgiving them, and that is beautiful and proper. But their actions and their words affected you deeply – far more deeply because you are an empath – and you need to understand how you responded to them to take care of yourself today. I assure you of this: you can forgive them and love them and, at the same time, understand how they affected you.

Photo by Jessica Rockowitz on Unsplash

Much of what you are coping with now results from fundamental, ontological beliefs you formed  when you were a child. Going back to your childhood and understanding how you responded to what you perceived will unlock deep insights into your habits of mind today, and will enable you to take control of your consciousness and actions in new ways. Doing this is far better for you than drugs, prescribed or not. This has been true for every one of my clients.

But I don’t want to just gloss over the fact that many empaths have a very hard time doing this. The more traumatic your upbringing, and the more intense your empathy, the less memory you will have. People who were under a lot of stress as children have only disjointed flashes of memory. These memories are not strung together by a story of their life; they are strung together by their empathic journey.

Processing Childhood Indoctrination

It’s remarkable but true: we spend much of our adult life processing the indoctrination and the traumas we experienced as children. Those who had power over us imposed their will on our lives, and there was nothing we could do about it. 

While everyone responds to this differently, when we are very young, we all form assumptions about the world that stay with us for our whole lives, either consciously or subconsciously. These assumptions go so deep that we take them to be absolute truths, and they remain absolute truths at the core of our understanding of reality.

Some of these assumptions benefit us, and some work against us. Not many people can make the distinction. If we could select the good and disregard the bad, there would be far less mental anguish in the world than there is. Most of us internalize all of it equally, and we can’t tell what is good for us from what is bad for us.

Countless times I have worked with clients who are dumbfounded by their own behavior. They suffer addictions of all sorts, sometimes to drugs but more often to ways of thought. Some deep force controls their behavior before their conscious mind has a chance to intervene. They find themselves in situations that are eerily familiar, over and over, no matter how hard they try to escape them.

This happens because everything we do is ultimately controlled by our subconscious mind. Lots of self-help literature talks about the “lizard brain” or something similar, and they try to explain that our addictions come from survival instincts that attach themselves irrationally to destructive behaviors.

There’s a deep truth in this perception, but it misses something essential. It fails to explain how these survival instincts attached themselves to destructive impulses. The “how” is incredibly important. Only by understanding the “how” can we detach the instinct from the destructive behavior.

The Cause/Trigger is Childish

The cause can be deceptively simple. Ridiculous, even. But ifIf you're an empathic child, little things can be really traumatic when you're a kid. For example, I saw the first Godfather movie when I was way, way too young. It’s just a story, right?  But as a child, it seemed like this overwhelming reality that was playing out was beyond my control. I reacted viscerally. Witnessing such cruelty, done so casually and matter-of-factly, made me vomit. My reaction was itself very scary to me. I came to believe that the sort of tribal violence and utter viciousness depicted in the film existed all around me. I internalized this perception of reality and believed it to be completely true. For years afterwards, the music alone would make me sick.That was just from a movie. 

Empathic children, like the one you were, can have something just as solid and real arise from something very simple, something said to you, something done at the wrong time when you were in a vulnerable space. Maybe somebody told you something, or you had a dream, or you were told a story. These things can affect you indefinitely.

Food is always involved as a kid, and food and money are linked deeply. Of all the power your parents and authority figures held over you, the fact that they controlled food affected you at a core survival level from infancy. The way food was handled in your household taught you deep lessons about the world, lessons that are so deep you are probably still unaware of them. What you think is truth is actually an assumption.

If there was love at the table every night, when you ate with your family, then you would suffer far less trauma than others. Mother must give the milk and the honey, and ideally the child knows that the mother gives it to herself as well. Few are that fortunate. 

You knew exactly what your mother was feeling as she provided milk and honey. If she was not whole, if she was not happy, then you knew it. But you had no way to understand it. You had no context. So, you felt that you took the milk and honey from her. You helped kill her, you helped make her miserable, your existence itself made her suffer. None of that may be true, but you made it true in your child’s mind, and that belief is still there in your subconscious, guiding your behavior and dominating your perception of the world.

If you had to get your own meals out of the fridge every night when you were a child, and if the food available was not enough or just packaged junk, then you have experienced abandonment. You were not fed. You could not feed yourself. All you could do was scavenge for what was left over.

Empaths who go through something like that—even if it only happened a few times—will suffer for it decades later. They will have eating disorders, or they will suffer financial troubles because they believe in scarcity, they believe that they do not deserve love, they believe that when there is something there they can obtain, they have to consume all of it immediately because there is no knowing if anything will be there later.

When they manage to create security for themselves, they believe it can be snatched away at any time. When they find some glimmer of love from another, they live in terror instead of happiness because they fully expect that love to evaporate randomly.

That’s what happened when they were seven, and powerless. So, therefore, that is what will happen when they are fifty. That’s how deep this goes, and how long it can affect you.

The Shape Of Thoughts

Those who are clever, who have a Brain, never understand anything.
—Winnie the Pooh 

I have a lot of patients who are exasperated by the types of information that people are believing these days.  It sometimes seems that in order to have a normal conversation, you first have to make sure that you and the person you’re talking to hold basic concepts, like measurement, in common.  Sometimes you don’t, and when that happens, it’s hard to imagine how something like getting someone to think empathically is ever going to be possible.  

Let me begin with the ending:  yes, it is going to be possible.  It’s possible now, and it is happening all the time, all around us.  That shift is gathering force, and empaths have a crucial role to play.  We need to have compassion for the people who are lost in strange worlds of information.  Like Winnie the Pooh says, they’re not stupid, its just that their intellects unfold under the influence of strange forces.

I’ve worked in all sorts of therapeutic environments, and I’ve witnessed all sorts of strange forces.  Some of the associations and assumptions of causality that people make today, which can be amplified a zillion-fold in a few hours, are clinically schizophrenic.  They can’t possibly match, but if you make that judgement, you just cause them to cling to the belief ever more strongly.  This affects the world they live in, and so long as they keep their head in a hall of mirrors, that world will become more and more of their reality.  

But they wake up all the time.  Let me give you a really magical version of how this plays out.  Not long ago, one of my patients was walking with a friend in Washington Square Park, one of my favorite places in New York.  A female stranger wearing a long wool coat and a purple felt hat caught her attention, and smiled warmly.  My patient immediately reacted with a New Yorker’s distant gaze and blank expression, and suspected that the woman was going to beg or con her.  The woman approached anyway, and offered her what looked like a business card.  She snatched it with a shake of her head, hoping that would get rid of the woman.  It did.  

Before she tossed the card, she glanced at it, to see what the scam was.  It said simply, “You are loved.  Love, Irene.”

My patient was floored.  In that moment, she realized that everything about her attitude towards that woman was stained by negative assumptions.  By the time she recovered from the impact of this revelation, she and her friend had to chase after Irene for a block and a half.  When they got her attention, my patient apologized and tried to explain the magnitude of the awakening she had had.  Irene’s peaceful gaze and warm smile never wavered.  She said only, “You don’t have to apologize.  I love you,” and ambled away.  

Winnie the Pooh also counsels us, “If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that they have a small piece of fluff in their ear.”  

The forces that bend our thoughts are more powerful than the thoughts themselves.  Empaths like Irene can help others break the surface of those forces, and realize in an instant that there’s an entirely different set of forces they might think along instead.

That’s how it’s going to happen.  People who feel they are done with the ugly, and with the anger, and with all of it, they are not going to get angry back.  They’re going to do just the opposite.  They’re going to say, “I love you,” and mean it.

Photo by Ravi Patel on Unsplash

How Do I Handle It When I Know Things I Should Not Know?

There’s a powerful moment in the movie Powder (Buena Vista Pictures, 1995) when the title character, an empath from another dimension, holds a hunter’s arm in one hand and the neck of the dying deer he just shot in the other, and telepathically connects them.  The hunter’s face fills with terror.

In so many ways, that’s what you and I wish we could do with some of the people around us.  We want to believe that they would act differently if they would just take a moment to understand.  If they would just take a moment to look at the other living things in world around them, they would certainly act differently, wouldn’t they?  But, they don’t take that moment on their own, and so sometimes, we feel like grabbing them by the arm.

Obviously, that won’t ever work.  We don’t have Powder’s Hollywood lightning-powers, and we can’t force thoughts into anyone’s mind, nor feelings into their heart.  

Empathic Superpowers

But we do have certain superpowers, and one of them is that we often have a great deal more information about a situation than anyone else around us.  That’s almost the definition of being an empath.  Yes, we feel; but those feelings are more than emotions.  They are a source of knowledge, and information, and understanding.  

And along with that sensitivity comes other information, as well, including things that we could not possibly know.  When I was in school, a doctor who was also a teacher and mentor said to me, “you will always know when someone is unwell because you have ‘it.’” I asked him what “it” was.  “You know,” he said, “the hairs on the back of your neck rise up.  You feel it throughout your body.”

The coolest thing about being an empath is the way other empaths come into your life so often.  We’re a small minority, but somehow we find each other.   He understood what I was before I had a name for it.  

When you have those moments, you will instinctively pause and remember them.  Memories of connection like that help you evaluate future incidents when you aren’t entirely sure how to handle the additional information you have about a given situation.  Those memories give you confidence, for starters, but they also give you skill in understanding which parts of your additional information are relevant to how you can help, and which parts you can reveal to others without freaking them out too much.

And when things don’t go your way, which is what happens ninety percent of the time, you can use that part of the experience to gain experience and skill as well.

They’re Real, But…

The main thing is to accept that all of this is going on and to let it be part of you.  You were told as a kid that this made you “weird” or “dyslexic” or “ADHD” or whatever, forget all those labels.  This thing that you can do makes you an empath.  We have always existed, we still exist, you are one of us, and this stuff that you know is real and is a part of who you are.

You’ve pushed it away, we all have, and that’s what causes the anxiety disorders and other problems that we go through.  I think, in retrospect, after having had some really disastrous and evil encounters, that pushing it away makes you more vulnerable to bullies.  

Embrace it instead.  I’ll sometimes completely require exploding for five minutes.  Sometimes it has to come out that way, but as you get more skillful, you can make sure it happens when you’re in a safe space.  After exploding—really going for it, to the point of physical pain in my voice, if that’s what’s required—I go to humor.  You need that YouTube playlist of ridiculous anything that makes you laugh, just for this purpose.  

Then I realize, “Ok this is exactly what it should be right now, where am I going and what is going to happen.”  

You have to understand that sometimes when you are doing your most artful and profound work, no one knows it.  No one knows who you are.  No one knows what you’re up to.  You’re just operating with all this extra knowledge on some other level, and they do not get it, at all.  That’s OK.  Keep true to yourself, and ultimately, you will end up where you need to be. 

Your intuition gets better and better.   There have been so many times where I thought I was about to commit an impulsive act, but then, in the end, it was exactly what was supposed to be.  As Pollyanna-ish as this sounds, a true belief that the universe is good is how you know that your truth is the real truth.  The universe wants us to figure it out.

Embracing it more brings it in more.  You literally get feelings throughout your body, a tingling.  The more you lean into it, the more evidence will come forward that proves it to be true.

In the movie, the hunter was a cop.  He had also been hunting Powder, because he was so weird and different.  When Powder connects him with the deer, he screams in pain and fear, and collapses to the ground.  He feels true empathy for a deer the first time in his life. 

But, and this is really the brilliance of the plot, the cop responds by becoming even more certain that Powder must be driven out of the community.  He is incapable of seeing what a beautiful gift Powder has given him.  He only saw something freakish.  So, he must insist on his small, simple, hatefully light-or-dark world, and for that world to make sense, Powder can’t be part of it.  

…Don’t Expect Acceptance

It’s a tragic commentary on our position in society, but it’s real.  You will always have a deeper understanding of the people, in any situation you are in.  Use that power to do your work as an empath, but be sure to protect yourself at the same time. 

In the movie, Powder is lifted up into the sky by lightning, to “go home,” as he has always wanted.  That’s Hollywood, obviously.  

That will not happen for you, and do not run towards death as though that’s your goal.  What happens in the real world is you trying, over and over, and becoming more knowledgable and more skillful.  What happens in your life is that you meet more empaths who are like you, and you can help each other become even more powerful.  That’s our mission.  Use your extra knowledge and perception to change the world, but above all else, protect your ability to carry on.

Accept your place outside the norm.  Accept the fact that you will never have a “normal” frame of mind.  That acceptance is the freedom you seek.  Through it, you acquire the courage to be as unique as you are, and to act on the knowledge you have that no one else does.

Photo by Peter Forster on Unsplash

How Can I Generate A Positive State Of Mind?

Empaths have a heightened awareness of the world around them.  They are extremely sensitive to the experiences of others, and they suffer greatly when others suffer, and they instinctively want to help.  This causes empaths twice the angst:  first, they feel it in tandem with other people, and second, they feel it in isolation, because they know they could do something about it and they think that they should.  

Making this situation even more difficult, and lonely, is the fact that most people don’t experience the world in this way, so empaths have very few people in their lives who understand them.  Often, there’s no one for them to talk to, so they suffer alone and their situation gets worse.

The Empathic Mind in Real Time

Before I give you some tools you can use to pull yourself out of a complex situation like that, let me tell you something about the way you think. Empaths react to the world, rather than respond to it.  

Your mind is so fast that, in a moment, it puts together a complex, emotionally articulate, politically erudite, and culturally precise understanding of a person.  Then, in the next moment, you are fully experiencing what they are experiencing, often to a much more intense degree.  

Boom.  You react with a massively complex, interwoven, holistic perspective that links you to other people.  You have an instinct that says “we all must survive,” and it kicks in at this speed. 

How do you get a handle on that?

A lot of empaths never really do.  Many of us never really leave childhood.  Well into adulthood we hold onto a child’s magical thinking.  We clap for Tinkerbell, we tearfully identify with Kermit the Frog singing It’s Not Easy Being Green, we chase rainbows. We dream that it will all magically get better.

The ability to do that is beautiful, and incredibly powerful—when you are leading it.  When it is leading you, it causes a disconnect with the physical that makes a lot of empaths sick.  Everything from headaches to allergies to perpetual colds plague them, because they are out of synch with their gifts.  

Physically weakened, and with your sensitivities out of control, you become really vulnerable to triggers in your environment, and you can find yourself kicked into a negative spiral at any moment, where the world can keep you spinning.  

Prepare To Protect Yourself

You want to strengthen yourself to the point that you can pull out of a negative spiral under your own power.  Self-care when you are able to control your thoughts and emotions helps you attain this ability.

A good first step is to find a way to be alone and safe for a while.  Make your situation as conducive to positive feelings as possible. No two people are the same when it comes to what this means.  For me, it’s listening to music, like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, that moves me deeply.  It’s running (I was going to be in the New York Marathon this year, and I will be when it opens again).  It’s baking.  And above all else, it’s singing.  For you, it could be anything, so long as it’s healthy and gives you wholesome joy. 

While you’re in that space, taking care of your mind, intentionally remember times when you were a child and were fully in flow with the joy of life.  Intentionally remember times that people appreciated your unique gifts.  Remember songs that moved you to tears of ecstasy, and stories that made you dream incredible dreams.  Create these thoughts, and revel in them, so they will be there for you later.

Tune In To Signals from the Cosmos

A good second step is to fully come to terms with the fact that when you’re about encounter something that will trigger you, a part of you knows what’s coming before it actually hits you. 

This isn’t being psychic; it’s just part of your sensitive, acutely aware nature. It’s like you’re in the flow of singing a song, and suddenly you go off key.  You hit a note wrong, and the whole of reality warps a little.  Rather than scramble to correct yourself, realize what’s actually happening. That wrong note is a clue from the universe that something is coming and you are supposed to protect yourself. 

The more time you spend in a positive frame of mind, the more sensitive you’ll become to those warnings. They will help you prepare to deal with triggers before they debilitate you.

But even if you miss them, you can still pull yourself out of a negative spiral.  You do that with all those intentional thoughts from before. You keep those at the ready, so when something triggers you, this is what you do:

What Can I Do When I’m Unable To Generate a Positive State of Mind?

• Find your breath, and before you do anything else, pay attention to it and get it to be steady and fluid. 

• You have a box of treasures in your mind.  The treasures are rare memories from your life when people noticed that you were an empath and loved you for it.  Open it.  

• Remember or experience works of music, art or literature that take you back to childhood moments when you felt at one with the cosmos. 

• On a whiteboard or chalkboard or using a stick in the dirt, write down the very worst aspects of what you are experiencing.  The physical process of writing is crucial, and so is seeing it.  Then erase the parts that you want to get rid of.  Your subconscious mind understands this and will do its best to follow through.

• Journal in great detail about the worst possible parts of what you’re feeling.  The more directly you express what is disturbing you, the more power you will drain from it.

The most important thing is to get good at using one of these methods when you really need to. Don’t let the negative spiral overwhelm you. Learn how to turn on one of these methods, even in the worst of situations. That’s the essential skill.  There’s more you can do, but you need this first. 

You must learn to protect yourself, because if you don’t prepare, you can end up lost, believing that there is no way back. Let me assure you that there is always a way back, even when you are certain that there isn’t. The universe didn’t give you your special abilities so you would suffer more.

You are the way you are because you have fantastic potential to help others and to help the world. The world needs your positive qualities and your profoundly giving leadership, and you can give that only if you take care of yourself first.

Photo by Nathaniel Chang on Unsplash