An Empath's Psychic Abilities Are Real

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.  

How Can Empaths Handle It When They Know Things They Should Not Know?

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.

empathic Perception is Real

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.  

Harnessing Empathic Psychic Perception

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 Empaths 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

Why Do Empaths Think In Global, Mythic Terms?

Even as children, empaths think globally.  This is because we are born with an awareness that life has meaning.  We’re also born knowing that we have an essential role to play in a grand, divine, magical theater that spans the universe.

When I was in the fourth grade, our teacher had us do a project where we predicted what the world would be like in 2020.  Because of that, 2020 has always stood out in my mind as a signifiant milestone.  While our childhood predictions didn’t come true (society has not become Star Trek), many of the problems I felt keenly aware of back then are still with us today.  

A song from that era has been playing in my mind lately.  One Tin Soldier by Coven (Bell Records, 1971) affected me deeply as a child, and I’m now returning to its theme:

Listen children to a story
That was written long ago
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley folk below
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath a stone
And the valley people swore
They'd have it for their very own

The people on the mountain, closer to god, with longer vistas, are the ones who have the treasure.  In the song, they offer to share it, but the valley people aren’t content with that.  They want to take it.

Wealth and Power

Most of the people around us think that having “stuff” is “being rich,” and this is not just due to “social conditioning” or any other psychobabble.  It’s due to a fundamental disconnect with the cosmic drama.  Rather than realizing that we’re playing on a stage, the valley people think that we are trapped in a dungeon, with a zero-sum battle going on.  They must fight, they must take, they must dominate or they will be losers, impoverished, and subjugated.  

The mountain people are empaths and enlightened souls who see way, way past this. They understand the true nature of riches.  I like the way Eric Fromm, in The Art of Loving (Harper & Row, 1956), explains it: 

In the sphere of material things, giving means being rich… The hoarder who is anxiously worried about losing something is, psychologically speaking, the poor, impoverished person, regardless of how much they have. Whoever is capable of giving, is rich. 

Empaths have this understanding from childhood. (Many of my patients have financial difficulties related to it.) True wealth is attained through giving. We don’t live in a dungeon. We play upon a stage. We don’t see a future of hoarding. We see a future of generosity. We know humanity is capable of this. We know we can help. So empaths end up behaving in radically different ways (we wear our masks!) because we live according to a radically different reality.

Violence and Power

The real world often goes in the opposite direction. 1971 was a grim year, and the 1970s were violent, transformative times in the United States. The story in the song goes on:

Now the valley cried with anger
Mount your horses
Draw your swords
And they killed the mountain people
So they won their just reward
Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
“Peace on Earth” was all it said.

Truth is the treasure, and it will prevail no matter what. But we’re all worried about the path we might take to get there.

What we need to realize is that the empath’s power is stronger than any other force coursing through humanity.  Our energy does not lead to obedience, as does the evil version.  Our energy leads to self-love and empowerment.  Evil magic shrivels in violent death, while empathic magic blossoms to widespread enlightenment.

The Empath’s Global Perspective

You understand all of this intuitively, and this is what makes you an empath, and this is what anchors all of your thoughts in global, mythic, cosmic terms. You were born with this awareness, and even if you tried to repress it because of your situation, you can feel in your heart that the pure perception you had as a child is more accurate and elegant.

For us, the essence of authenticity is being in touch with that core self when you were young.  We play these roles in life, but they’re not truly authentic.  Go back to that time when a hug meant more than anything on the planet.  Remember those times when everything you have connected with all that is.  Experience again that level of awareness, and identify with that, because that’s who you truly are.  Your roles don’t need to change; you can be an empath from anywhere in society.  What changes is the way you feel about yourself. 

With that change comes your greatest impact on the world.  That’s the power you know you can access to help steer society towards it potential rather than its destruction. We hold the true treasure, and by being true to our nature, we encourage others to find it.   

Photo by Juan Encalada on Unsplash

Witches, Angels & The Law Of Attraction

I’ve had three clients give me gifts featuring Guan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion. These people don’t know each other and they could not have coordinated their gifts. Yet when they made them, each told me the same thing: “You are Guan Yin.”

There’s a clear and obvious reason why this happened, but if you’re an empath who is just now coming to terms with your gifts, it might not seem clear or obvious, so let me teach you about yourself by showing you what I mean.

Empaths Through History

The word “empath” is brand new. It’s only been gaining popularity since the 2000s, and it’s been very useful. A portion of our population is always looking for respectful and inclusive ways to describe different types of people, and I think “empath” is intended to be respectful and inclusive.

It’s also a vast improvement. Throughout most of history, people like us were called “psychics,” “clairvoyants,” “mediums” or, most dangerously, “witches.”

All “witches,” men and women, had strange powers that others did not possess and that they could not understand. Sometimes, it was believed that “witches” spoke to angels, like when St. Bernadette of Lourdes had visions of the Virgin Mary that led to the creation of the Shrine of Lourdes. Most of the time, it was believed that witches spoke to the devil. This was especially true under puritanical dictatorships. When any woman taught any other woman how to control her own menstrual cycle or otherwise take charge of her life, she was a witch in league with the devil. I have an ancestor who was burned at the stake in France for just this reason.

Throughout most of modern history, empaths found it much safer to live in secrecy. Most empaths alive now went through a long phase of secrecy in their childhood. By the time you were four, you had already figured out that you were significantly different from the people around you, and you hid it. You had a profound life in secret, often involving mysterious rituals, magical tools and enchanted altars.

There was something instinctive in that. If you look at Jungian archetypes throughout history, humanity has always had a love/hate, angel/devil relationship with empaths. We always elicit a strong reaction because we have access to sources of information that are far deeper and far more “true” than anything based in just the human realm. We are so sensitive to other people’s pain that sometimes what is actually simple logic to us seems to them like we’re reading their minds.

The way people reacted to you when you pulled off feats like that changed your whole life. Most of us are met with suspicion and we quickly learn to keep our “powers” to ourselves on pain of rejection and even outright danger. I’ve been in situations where a person became aware of my empathic powers and then latched onto me far too fiercely. We can be like drugs to some people, and they’ll leech off of us to the point of death, if we let them. More often, we’re just regarded as freaks and we’re attacked unthinkingly, the way gay people used to be beaten to death with no warning or reason.

Empaths in the Universe

We freak out the powerful because we can see straight through them. We can access a deeper source of truth, and we will know it with such certainty that, St. Bernadette-like, we can become more powerful than they are. Ekhart Tolle was homeless in Germany for years, only to suddenly, one day, influence millions. If you’re a fraud clinging to power because your base believes your lies, assumptions, and prejudices, an empath like that is extremely dangerous.

Being an emotional, sensitive, and caring person, who also happens to be really dangerous to people in power, presents empaths with a lot of unique challenges. The negative energies are immense and intense and well-known. A lot of them have been directed at you, and if you’re like most empaths today, you spent a good part of your life protecting yourself. Empath children born to people who are not well, they will take on all of that “yuck,” and, for a long time, make it theirs.

But now, you’ve found me, and that’s not an accident. You’re ready to repair the damage the negativity did to you. As soon as you understand what the bad is, it simply drifts away, I assure you. You’re ready to own what belongs to you so you can spread the good through the world.

More people believe in the goodness, but they are terrified of saying that they do, because the negative dominates the community. You have a role to play in that, and you’re ready to make your debut.

Angels & The Law of Attraction

There was a place and time when you were completely connected, when your heart was not infected by anything ugly. There’s that place in every empath, and the ones who long for it are the empaths who look for me, because I know how to get you back to that place.

People use me as a touchstone to realize who they truly are. When they get that, and when they trust in that, an angel steps in and shows you the light. As soon as you’ve seen it once, you can never unsee it. The Law of Attraction opens up for you.

We think of the Law of Attraction and angels and our psychic abilities as separate things, but they are all aspects of one thing. Our experience of reality is different because we have these extra dimensions attached to our perception. Angels are as real as sunlight, and the energies flowing from the earth are as real as water, and the caressing of other’s minds with our own is as real as the animals who come to us for love.

All three patients who gave me Guan Yin are empaths. They all saw the same thing, in dimensions beyond normal reality. They described what they saw by means of a Buddhist goddess, and since what they were seeing is real, they all picked the same goddess.

This is the glorious way an empath leads their life. The next understanding on the path is for them to realize that they are Guan Yin just as much as I am, and to realize that Guan Yin and all the other gods and goddesses are ready to come into the world through us.

If there was ever a time when they would burn witches at the stake again, it is now. We have a crucial role to play in history. We will find a way to guide people who are not empaths onto a more righteous and beautiful path. And we will do it without weapons and without war.

Photo by Olga Bast on Unsplash

Self-Care When You Feel The World Spiraling Out Of Control

Things are really intense right now. A recent study found that eighty percent of Americans believe their country is “spiraling out of control,” and two thirds of them show “signs of clinical anxiety or depression.” Empaths are dangerously challenged to process it all, because we are so acutely aware of the suffering around us, which encompasses the suffering that causes anxiety, as well as the anxiety itself.

There are two parts to caring for yourself that I want to talk to you about. The first part is developing the ability to get perspective on the heightened emotions you’re tuned into right now. The second is to learn how to preserve yourself for the long-haul.

They both involve memories from your own life. If you’re quite young, then you have seen more than your share of global hardship already. I have patients whose families were devastated in the 2008 financial crisis, and who were on the verge of recovery when COVID or police brutality tore the very fabric of society. The suffering is real.

EMpathic Perspective On The World

When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time with my sister’s grandparents, and her grandmother was of Jewish heritage. I clearly remember one evening at one of their card parties, when the adults were playing cards. I noticed that one my grandmother’s friends had a series of numbers tattooed on her arm, and I blurted out, “Mommy, is she cheating? See the numbers on her arm?” A chilling stillness passed through the room before my grandmother’s friend picked me up and held me in her lap. She told me about the concentration camp where the tattoo came from, and she ended her story by telling me, with intense passion, as you can imagine, “Never be afraid to live every single day, and to ask every single question.”

I was shocked by her story and followed her advice by learning everything I could about the Holocaust. I was astonished at what human beings could do to each other. All empaths have these experiences when they are younger. Something like that is thrust at them, and they can’t help but want to understand what it is. That’s their response: to understand, to know.

It gives us purpose, because even as children we know that we can actually do something about it. Empaths want to do everything they possibly can. As a child, you might remember believing, as I did, that if I was thinking about you, I could protect you. As a child, I wanted to prevent you from being hurt in the first place. Over time, empaths learn that they rarely get the chance to do that. Most of the time, they help heal others after they’ve been hurt, and in that situation, it actually is possible for us to help someone by thinking about them. We can give healing energy to others simply by force of will.

The Empath’s Broken Dreams

Young empaths just naturally set out to heal the world with this ability, and most all of us have grand ambitions of healing everyone and preventing all future pain. This is a child’s understanding, a child’s wildly innocent hope. But, even as adults, we never fully abandon it. We really do have magical abilities, after all, so we tend to think that having a global impact is just a matter of getting enough magic to flow through us.

We also intuitively realize that the way to heal the world is to start with the people around us, and that leads to our first disillusionments. We find out that we can’t heal people who do not want to be healed. Years ago, when I was just starting my practice, I was assigned to a suicidal patient. This person was so far down the hopelessness hole they couldn’t see the sky, and they eventually did commit suicide. I was crushed. It was one of my darkest moments, even though everyone who had worked with the patient assured me that we had done all we could.

We find out that, sometimes, we can’t heal people fast enough to save them. We can’t heal groups of people just by thinking about them, either. This gives us a clearer understanding of what we’re up against. There are a million media outlets dedicated to serial killers, torture, rape, war and mayhem. There are only two, that I can think of, about the wonderful things happening in our world.

Why do so many of us have an innate desire to submerge in this negativity? Why are people so ready to believe that “other people” have to be met with violence and power? Why are they so eager to believe that, while they are kind and loving, the “other people” are inherently evil and dangerous?

Empaths don’t get it, and we don’t like it. We can fall down the hopelessness hole. I had one very scary moment when everything went completely dark, and I felt like I had no control. I was plunging down the hole, shocked. There wasn’t even any precursor to it that I could perceive at the time, no photo or headline that “hit me” — it just came out of nowhere.

That’s a real danger that you are facing right now, too, because of our historical moment. When you start to fall, use your intellect to recollect that we’ve been through history like this before. From a black person’s perspective, we’ve been cycling through this for four hundred years, with almost no spiritual progress. Putting it in that larger context can help you breathe.

Self-Healing For Empaths in Dangerous Times

But it won’t help you flow emotionally or cosmically. For that, you need to remember your life as an empath. There’s something else that you’ve been doing since you were a child, and it’s really important to think about it now, so if you fall down the hole, you’ll have a ladder to get out.

Since you were little, you have always remembered those rare moments when your good deeds actually seemed to dawn on somebody. You were always empathetic, always good, always working your magic in your thoughts, but most of the time, no one knew. Every now and then, however, a glorious moment would come when someone would let you know that you helped them.

These moments thrilled you, and each of them still does. Every one is like lighting a match in Plato’s cave. There is truth. There is beauty. The universe is miraculous. Once the match is lit, even when it goes out, you’re going to know that there was light. You’re going to know that light itself is real.

You collected these memories for a reason. It’s an empath’s instinct to collect them. Because when you are being sucked into the hopelessness hole, you can use those memories to save yourself. When I was little, I imagined keeping them in a box, and it wasn’t until decades later that I found out a lot of empaths do this, and it’s actually been formalized into a therapy.

When I fell in, I literally opened my box, and intentionally remembered the times when others noticed I had helped them and said something to me about it. This was so powerful that, out of nowhere, I had a spiritual experience. I heard someone saying, “You have to stay here.” It was information from the universe itself, and it has become one of the most important memories I keep in my box.

Empaths know: “The Times They Are A Changing”

There’s one more aspect of our historical situation that I want to help you process, because it’s connected. When there is so much pain screaming at us from every direction, we tend to worry that the apocalypse has begun. The prophecy was about four horsemen, and when we look around, they’re rampaging now.

But that’s prophetic thinking, religious thinking, false thinking. You’re an empath. If this really was the end of the world, you wouldn’t be wondering if it was. You would know. Since we know it isn’t, you can reject the notion, because the notion comes from your societal training, and not from your intuition.

You and I also know that all things in the universe ebb and flow. Right now, we are awash in pain. But when the tide turns, it will be one of the most amazing transitions humanity has ever produced. We may not witness it in our lifetimes. Transformations like the one we’re in take a long time. Previous, local ones, like the Age of Enlightenment, took over 200 years. We’re looking at something global in scale, and so it will certainly be even more epic.

I think it’s instructive to consider what Ruth Nanda Anshen wrote over sixty years ago in her introduction to Eric Fromm’s masterpiece, The Art of Loving (Harper & Row, 1956):

“There is in mankind today a counterforce to the sterility and danger of an…anonymous mass culture, a new, if sometimes imperceptible, spiritual sense of convergence toward world unity on the basis of the sacredness of each human person and respect for the plurality of cultures.”

We’re still on that path. Your responsibility to the world, as an empath, is to help humanity reach this convergence. Your responsibility to yourself, as an empath, is to keep yourself strong, so you can.

Photo by Ben Mater on Unsplash

Empaths Often Know Their Therapy Is Flawed

You’re different. You’re hyper-aware of what’s going on around you, and so you react in ways that others don’t understand. Only 20% of the population is like you. I’m like you.

When I was a kid, I was put in a special class with only a few other children. No one explained why. Something similar probably happened to you, but if you are in your twenties or thirties, as are are many of my clients, you got even worse treatment. You were so “different” that they gave you drugs to make you “normal.”

People like us have always been singled out. In the deep past, we were respected as healers and visionaries. In modern times, we have been persecuted as witches as “weirdos.”

Our sensitivities and our fearless willingness to protect others makes us extremely annoying to authority figures. They put me in a special class to get me out of the way. They gave you drugs to crush your unique abilities. In my decades as a therapist, I’ve seen institutional situations where I was disgusted to find every single patient sedated. It had nothing to do with what their mental health. It had everything to do with making life easy for the staff.

Our society is organized this way, truth be told. If you’re perceptive and fearless to the point of being a threat to the powers that be, the path to persecuting you is straightforward: They “diagnose” you with a “disorder,” and they give the disorder a name. Then they arbitrarily decide that your “disorder” is negative.

On some level, especially if this happened when you were young, and even more especially if your parents agreed with the diagnosis, you let yourself agree with it, too. You fell into their idea of who you are. You think about how awful your “disorder” is. You fight it. You consume drugs to control it. You judge yourself for anything slightly “abnormal” that you perceive or know.

But wait a minute. Why all this negativity? The psychologists’ scripture, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), once listed “homosexuality” as a disorder. For generations, unimaginable suffering was forced into queer people because of it. Then, in 1973, they came to their senses and removed it. How many “disorders,” like OCD or ADHD or any of dozens of others, will be dropped from its pages in the future? I think a lot of people’s true potential is being wasted with negative diagnosis like these.

Empaths Have Two Wolves Within Them

You are probably reading this because you intuitively know that there is nothing “wrong” with you; you intuitively know that you are “gifted,” not “abnormal.”

Your main mission has been to identify the thoughts that are the deepest and most authentic expression of yourself. You already know that there are many different kinds of thoughts pulling you in many different directions. You have spent your whole life trying to sort them out, and you have tried to get this “right” according to the authority figures who prescribe you drugs.

This effort is reaching a high level of intensity within you. Your intuition is pulling you out of the judgement of others, out of the judgement of society, out of the whole mental construct that drives our society. This can happen at any time in life; many of my clients are Millennials who are deeply questioning their understanding of reality while they are in their twenties and thirties. I've worked with many older people who reach this crisis after faking it at being “normal” for most of their lives.

Empathic Wisdom Is Balance

It’s highly disorienting. It’s easy to become afraid and confused. Let me give you a mental exercise that can help you find your way.

Think of it like this: there is a fight going on inside of you between the “light wolf” and the “dark wolf.” Light is optimism and love, while dark is righteousness and anger. The light wolf and the dark wolf are both part of you; you need both.

But for your whole life, you and everyone around you has focused on the dark wolf. You throw drugs at the dark wolf. You police the dark wolf. You fear the dark wolf. It’s true that sometimes the dark wolf can cause dangerous behavior, and it’s important to remember that. But just trying to eliminate the dark wolf by treating it as a “disorder” makes those dangerous behaviors more likely.

By focusing so intently on the dark wolf, it get stronger. The more you fight it, the more fierce it becomes. The dark wolf feeds on negative feelings. It also feeds on your efforts to fight those feelings, or by pretending you never have those feelings. Ignoring or denying the dark wolf feeds it. We can’t deny that we have negative experiences of mind.

At the same time, But your light wolf is thrashing around in pain and confusion. It feels neglected, and it longs for expression. The attention you focus on the dark wolf has made your light wolf feel like you don’t want it. The authority figures don’t know that the light wolf is there. Authority is all about power, which is why it provokes your righteous anger. They have focused you on your dark wolf your whole life because that way you submit to their power. You submit to their definitions, and to their definition of your “disorder.”

Therapy ought to do the opposite. It ought to guide you to the light wolf. It ought to show you how to embrace your unique perceptions and use them constructively, for yourself and for others. We want to learn how to feed the light wolf. We want to focus more on the good feelings. We want to come to a place where we accept all parts of yourself while definitely wanting to live in the positive space.

In fact, the only way you will learn to truly embody your authentic self is to realise that you will never be at peace until you embody both the light wolf and the dark wolf, with the wisdom to know the limits of each, and to know how to get them to work together.

Your subconscious mind is calling out for this balanced approach. That’s why your therapy feels wrong. Your subconscious is saying, “Don’t eliminate any of me! Let’s channel these abilities!”

When Your Therapy Feels Wrong, Do This

• Think about the names of “disorders” you have been “diagnosed” with.

• Drop the names, and forget the notion of “disorder” and “diagnosis.”

• Wonder about the powerful abilities inherent in who you are.

• Acknowledge that these powerful abilities can be dangerous to you and to others.

• Wonder how you might use those abilities to give yourself power instead.

• Learn techniques to tell the difference between power and danger and to find your balance.

Training Wolves

The light wolf is amazing. The light wolf can benefit from the dark wolf, but only if the dark wolf feels safe. They’re pack animals, right? They need each other, and they need you. If you try to kill either of them, you are attacking yourself, and your sub-conscious mind will never cooperate with that. It will suffer for it, but it will never cooperate.

The best path forward is to train both wolves. Get to know both wolves. When you befriend them both, you can have all the power, without worrying about the danger.

Understanding this, you can enjoy all of yourself and basically wake up to who you are inside. You don’t judge yourself, because actually those judgements come from outside of you. Those outside judgements cause your anxiety. They cause you to live inauthentically, at war with one of your wolves. Once you actually allow yourself to feel how you feel, dark and light, you gain your voice with confidence.

You will once again be the person the authority figures needed to neutralize. You will be wise enough to protect yourself while you become your authentic self. Your potential is vast.

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Empathic Spirituality & Why You Are Here

One of my younger patients told me about a meme that went viral in earlier this year: “Fun fact: some people have an internal narrative—and some don't.”

The meme sparked so many conversations it was covered buy the mainstream media asa story unto itself. People didn’t know about this difference, and were astonished.

Those who have been listening to a continuous internal dialog for their whole lives were incredulous: “No voice in your head? How do you think?” Those who who don’t have an internal dialog were equally astounded: “How could you possibly function with a voice in your head all the time?”

People without a voice in their head still think in words, but for many of them, that plays out in a rather straightforward way. One of the best examples I can give you is from David Foster Wallace’s collection of essays, Consider the Lobster (Little, Brown & Co., 2006). In How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart, he reviews Austin’s autobiography, although his main theme is about the consciousness of world-class athletes.

He tells us about the young tennis star’s meteoric rise to two-time Grand Slam winner, and her subsequent demise, due to injuries and fatigue—all before she was 20. Then, on the eve of her comeback, she was stopped in her tracks when her leg was crushed in a car accident.

An empath’s response to such a horrific, life-altering tragedy would be significantly different than Austin’s. She writes, and I think you will agree that this is remarkably succinct: “I quickly accepted that there was nothing I could do about it.” Wallace wonders, with his usual perspicacity and humor, “What if…that statement is not only true but exhaustively descriptive of the entire acceptance process she went through?”

There are people like that. Their inner discourse describes reality directly, and they accept what they cannot change and move on with their lives without a whole lot of inner turmoil.

The Empath’s Search for Meaning

You are not like that. An empath’s inner discourse thrives on the search for meaning. Your objective is not to get past life events, good or bad, but to understand what they mean.

And here’s why: There must be meaning, because you have always known that there is meaning. There is something greater than you, greater than you and me, greater than you and me and the universe, cradling all that is. You have always, from your very first moment of conscious thought, known that this is true.

No matter what confronts you or confounds you or hurts you, you understand it in this greater context. And, you live your life according to an ethic and a code of honor that arises from this aura of meaning that permeates everything.

You have since birth. For me, it was knowing how to care for my sister and my mother. I intuitively knew what to do in any situation. My mother was brilliant and we had a tumultuous relationship with her. My sister needed me first, and I just knew that singing to her was the way to drain the pain out of her and into me, where I could heal it for her. This led me into musical theater as a young woman, but more importantly, throughout our lives, my sister has felt free to call me at any time she needed a song. My mother was an empath, too, but she drifted into addictions, and I knew how to help her, as much as she would allow, along that merciless path.

From the outset, I knew that I was here to help them. You have also had this experience of knowing that you are here for a reason. Pause to think about the way we phrase this to ourselves in our inner discourse: “I am here for a reason.” Here from where? Why do we feel like we have arrived in this world? It is because we are also born with an awareness of some other place from which we came.

The Darkness Within an Empath

We came here to do special work, and every empath I talk to feels like they were meant to be here now, during this historic moment.

Before we get to why, let me give you a word of caution. You are painfully aware of how humanity’s intuitive awareness of something greater has been twisted into religious justifications for war and mayhem. This has been true throughout all history and across all cultures. The story is always the same: clerics tell you that the only divine things that matter all happen after you’re dead. They tear your spirit from your life and place it beyond your grave, so you will charge screaming into battle to go get it.

That story goes really deep, and it might affect you without you fully realizing it. You can catch yourself striving for a reward beyond the grave in lots of ways. I have patients who are deeply empathic care givers. They are doing sacred work. But, sometimes, they drive themselves perilously far into the threshold between here and where they came from.

Your empathic nature can easily be dangerous to your health, in the world as it is right now. Your inner dialog and your sense of purpose can make your life seem like a speck in the overwhelming expanse of which you are aware. You can subconsciously place the fulfillment of your purpose beyond the grave. There are several ways to deal with this; have the courage to examine them all. An empath can fulfill their calling from anywhere in society. Above all else, preserve yourself.

Why Empaths Are Here

Your purpose does not lie beyond the grave. You are here now because you are needed here, now. In almost any population of mammals, there are always a few animals who take it upon themselves to stay at the perimeter, keeping the tribe together and scouting for danger. They spread awareness.

We are them. We see more of the terrain than others do, and we understand the lay of the land. We can roam farther because we can draw energy from the cradling force holding everything. Our internal discourse rings with information from something greater. Our perimeter is our heightened understanding of what is happening to humanity and to all living things today. We are here to keep the tribe on the path to enlightenment. We are here to scout ahead and find the way to go.

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Why Do Empaths Ignore Intuition, And Wish They Hadn’t?

When I was little, my grandpa was one of my favorite people. He wasn’t my biological grandpa, but that didn’t matter to either of us. When we went walking, he would smoke a cigar, which was one of our special secrets. No one, especially grandma, ever found out.

When I was in primary school, he gave me The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943). He said, “I know you’ll understand this,” and he was right. I treasured the book. The golden-haired Little Prince, visiting Earth from a small planet, was one of first empaths I ever met. The story is ethereally beautiful, but for today, let me call to mind the reason the Little Prince left his home, and why he decided to return.

A rose grew spontaneously in his garden, and the Little Prince fell in love with it. She was rather demanding and something of a hypochondriac. Over time, the Little Prince began to fear that she was taking advantage of his empathic nature, to make him tend to her all the time. The more she demanded of him, the more he wanted to explore the universe. So he stopped letting his love guide his actions, and took off.

Empaths deal with this exact same problem all the time.

Empaths Have Unusual Intuition

Empaths know they’re empaths by the time they’re about four years old. They don’t have the words to intellectualize it, of course, but that doesn’t really matter. An empath’s internal dialog is not based on words. It’s based on feelings. And empaths feel everything, deeply and personally.

So, even at four, you fully experience yourself as an empath. Most other people think you’re an alien. They have no idea who or what you are. You do not react to situations the way they do, and so you’re incomprehensible. When I was a child, there was a great deal of stress in my household. But I didn’t merely process what was directed at me. I was mostly concerned with my sister. Even as a child, I intuitively knew that she needed me to sing to her every night. That became the only way she could fall asleep. I clearly remember how good that made me feel. I had purpose, and I had the ability to fulfill my purpose, and it was wonderful.

Empaths are able to absorb other people’s pain into themselves, which makes the other person feel better. Most people have to give their pain to someone to get rid of it. They learn not to give it to people who would use it to hurt them more. They can’t give it people who would be hurt by it, because those people don’t make themselves available.

So they give it to you, because you offer to take it. And you offer because you know you can heal yourself from it. You know that you can metabolize their pain, and it’s true. You draw power by singing to others when they are crying and frightened. You will listen and care, and you will ask for nothing in return. You were born this way, and it is so different, it’s freakish. They used to burn us at the stake.

The Problem With Empathic Intuition

So what happens to a person like you as you grow into adulthood? Well, at several points along the way, you have times when you feel like the Little Prince. It seems like the roses in your life are asking for too much. Everyone has always told you to “toughen up,” and, sometimes, it seems like they have a point.

But really, the voice telling you to “be normal” is your mom, or society, or authority figures or religious figures, telling you not to fall in line with who you are. Part of your attempt to be normal is to think in terms of “being taken advantage of.” While this might seem like practical guidance, acting on it has dire consequences for an empath. It’s not you. If you think in those terms, you’re not being true to yourself.

This is why it can be so difficult for an empath to follow their intuition. Empaths feel their intuition, so it’s hard to understand the need to explain it intellectually. When you are cornered and forced to justify yourself with a logical discourse (complete with footnotes), you can’t construct the argument. If you have cornered yourself, which is so often the case, you might throw up your hands and, intellectually, decide that since you can’t defend yourself with logic, you have lost the debate.

You internalize all the “toughen up” voices from your past. None of them is your intuition. If you act upon those voices, and “toughen up,” maybe even admonishing some of the roses you love, or leaving them, you’ll hurt yourself even more. Later, when you realize that you didn’t follow your true intuition, and you regret it, this is what actually happened.

You can always tell what your true intuition is. Always. You might not like what it’s saying—but you will always know which voice is truly yours. There aren’t many people like you around, and your intuition is going to lead you in directions that seem insane to others.

The hard part is having the courage to follow it, no matter what. Being an empath is difficult. People see your kindness and your tears, and they mistake that for weakness. In fact, you have mystical abilities to heal others and yourself. In some ways, you are one of the toughest people in the world. You didn’t ask to be like this. You were born this way. The judgement about being an “incomprehensible alien” comes from outside of you.

You stumble when you internalize it. Instead, trust your intuition, even when that means trusting it with your life. Especially when that means trusting it with your life.

Proper Empathic Intuition

Your intuition is connected to something greater than you. You’ve always known this, too. If there’s some religion or dogma stuck to this knowledge, I’d encourage you to peel that away for a moment so you can feel the essence of it. No words, just you and the universe.

When you’re being completely authentic, you’re giving. You’re also receiving, even if the way you receive is not the same as others. When you see that you have healed someone else, and when they realize that you healed them, that’s love taking a beautiful form, unique to you. A lot of pain is exchanged, true. But your soul will always know how to heal itself. Your challenge is to let it.

That’s what happened to the Little Prince. After he left his rose, he visited several planets before he came to Earth. On each one, he met a grown-up trapped in some “toughen up” way of thinking. But after talking with de Saint-Exupéry in the Sahara for a week, he realized that he had left his rose because he had listened to “toughen up” voices in his mind, and not his own intuition. He remembered how much he loved his rose. More importantly, he remembered how much his rose loved him. She expressed her love as best she could, and even though that was less than perfect, it was true love. He decides to go back to her.

That love is why you’re here. Know this. You’re an empath. Once you get that this is you, it’s ok — just, all the sudden, you’re ok with yourself. You have to give yourself permission to be who you are. You’re here to be a very special person. The world may not understand you, but the world needs you. Now, more than ever before.

Why Do Empaths Have To Give All the Time?

Empaths have to give all the time. They have to be “on” all the time. It’s their job to “be there” — it’s an innate part of them. They don’t try to save themselves; they try to save everyone else.

An empath will always help others because if they do, their own fear and anxiety disappears for a while. Crises in the world make it even more difficult for them. Empaths are really caught in a riptide when people turn to them for comfort due to their own problems, and when people turn to them for comfort because the world is spinning out of control.

But the thing is, if you fight a riptide, you drown. If you fix your eyes on one spot on the beach and swim for it, the ocean will kill you. Your fear will make that happen even faster. You won’t make it.

Empaths Need To Know How to Survive Riptides

To get out of a riptide, you swim in it. You’ll either escape from the edge of it, or you’ll ride it, but either way, you’ll get back to shore. You might be miles away from where you meant to be. But that’s only frightening if you think it is.

Just because you are not in control doesn’t mean you are not living your best life. You can’t control the world-events riptide, but you can be in control of your own riptide, your own emotions.

Empaths Must Learn to Pause with Purpose

Self talk only works when you actually hear what you are saying. Empaths today are hearing their own meditations at a far deeper level than before.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it is that most people know what they need to do. Empaths, especially, have a deep understanding of their situation. All you have to do is trust your own wisdom and intuition.

Sure, there are moments of sadness. You can’t ignore the realities. You can’t accept anything, or grow, or heal yourself through hatred and anger, either. Just like you can’t break a bad habit by hating yourself for it.

Empaths feel the whole world, and you’re sad because you see so much that could be done. You can vividly imagine how we could get away from selfishness and help each other instead. I can relate. When I was a kid, I had a “It’s a Small World” Disneyland toy, and I played the song so incessantly my parents actually broke it.

Wishing for utopia is a beautiful thing. It’s a gift. But only if your utopian wishes leave you in a positive frame of mind. Use those thoughts as teaching moments where you learn about yourself. Really let yourself feel how how big and wonderful this empathy you have truly is. To be able to really feel other people is an incredible gift.

You can feel yourself, too, if you let it happen. Happiness can’t be given to you. It has to come from within. Self love, and gratitude for life, like a kid playing at the beach. We’re all in this riptide together. The survivors are the ones who will be willing to land miles away.

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When An Empath Can’t Control Their Thoughts, Try This

In your mind, you’re carrying around all this stuff, but it’s all jammed together, tangled, and you don’t even know what’s stuck in there. Thoughts have a life of their own, like when a song you don’t really like plays in your head over and over, and you can’t stop it.

When a lot of thoughts are out of control like that, it means you’re stuck in these mental loops that are actually very real addictions. Your brain and your mind do a dance that gets rewarded with hormones, which are amazing drugs and which, high or low, happy or terrifying, are always very intense. Sometimes you might go on a binger for one kind of drug and you’ll repeat this certain type of thought over and over. Sometimes, you’re all over the place, careening through one loop and jumping to another.

The only thing you know for certain is that you are not the one in charge. You are just along for the ride. Your own thoughts can make you cry because they won’t stop. Your own thoughts can make you scream because you can’t channel them. You are at their mercy, and sometimes that is a very dangerous place to be.

You don’t want your consciousness to be mostly your mind running amok. You want to be in charge. But how do you get from a chaotic tangle of addiction loops to being in control?

How an Empath Can Control Their Thoughts:

• You need to see your thoughts and experiences, because, as soon as you see them, they’re not that scary anymore. As soon as you see them, they’re in the world with you, they’re real now, and they don’t have to be stuck inside anymore. By looking at them, you gain power over them.

• The “whiteboard technique” is a great way to do this. You need to write, by hand, on something physical. A whiteboard or a chalkboard is best, believe it or not, for cultural and visual reasons. Writing by hand is crucial. Write down the worst thoughts in all their glory.

• Actively do not judge yourself. Give yourself permission to have felt the way you did, and let the act of writing drain the experience of its power over you.

• Then, erase the thoughts you want to let go. This is a critical part of the technique: with your hand and your arm, you literally erase thoughts you don’t want to have anymore. This gives your brain a strong physical understanding of what you want to have happen.

• That might not be enough. It might be that an action needs to be taken. But with this, you have begun to take control.

For example, I’ve had many patients plagued by thoughts about an emotional experience at work that they cannot clear away in the workspace because they have to be professional. So they play loops in their mind and it gets them nowhere while exhausting them. Shifting out of a hell realm like that is as hard as it gets. To do it, you have to be accountable to yourself first, and then deal with whatever has to happen in the workplace. That way, when you act in the world, you come from a safe place of reflection and wisdom.

How Empaths Gain Control Over Their Minds for the Long Term

That’s one of many ways to regain control of your thoughts, but there’s a deeper level you can go to as well. Rather than stopping loops, prevent them from arising in the first place. If you can legitimately get to the erasing part of the whiteboard exercise, then you can get here, too. Every morning, sitting on the edge of your bed, take care of your mind and your brain and your soul. Consciously breathe, from your stomach to your nose, nose to stomach.

Set your intention for the day with one word. Repeat it to yourself. Think to yourself, “That word will be my intentional thought that will carry me through the day.” Anything that occurs during the day, all the good and the bad, attach that word to it. “Abundance,” “Integrity,” “Compassion,” “Love,” a hundred others, names of people even, you use it to frame your thoughts intentionally. You don’t waste energy on loops; you spend energy to gain perspective. Things will still come up, of course, but they won’t take up as much room and they won’t stay as long.

There is always hope, and there is always a way forward from wherever you are. When you can’t control your thoughts, you are suffering in a really disorienting and discouraging way. The fact that you’re reading this article means you’re taking care of yourself, which is exactly what you should be doing.

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Why Are Empaths So Afraid In The Middle Of The Night?

You care deeply. It all begins there. Ever since you were a little kid, you cared deeply about everything. When a puppy was slapped, you felt it more than the puppy. When another child was under attack, you were the one who comforted them afterwards. When you saw awful photographs in the media, you didn’t just witness suffering, you experienced it intensely.

All of that is still with you, because it is a really important part of you. It’s a really beautiful part of you, too, and we’ll get to that in a moment.

Empathic Fears

• Because all the things you haven’t been able to solve during the day are still there.

• Because what you said was less than perfect, or what you did was less than perfect, and you have to plot and plan and imagine how to fix it.

• Because all the suffering you saw during the day is still there.

• Because you are angry at the fact that there is suffering, even though there doesn’t have to be, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

• Because, in this state of mind, your fear of death is far more acute.

Since you feel other living things so intensely in yourself, you draw all that is happening around you into your experience like a sponge. During the day, when your rational mind is mostly in control, you can channel it into action. Medics working in the pandemic, for example, just work harder.

But at night, everything you have absorbed floods your soul, and ancient instincts come up to respond to it. Your body reacts like it’s in immediate danger, like you’re being chased by a lion, even though that’s not what is actually happening. All these survival instincts are in play, but they’re working against you. For you, the intense way you have internalized everything around you creates real fear, actual fear, and your body responds as if it was immediate danger.

At night, all of this takes place in your sub-conscious mind and in a dream-like state, so when you can’t sleep, there’s often no specific thing that you can latch onto. Or, if there is a specific thing, you know full well that it’s only one small part of what’s really going on.

So, what do you do?

When You Are Afraid in the Middle of the Night, Do This

• Breathe, and remember a time in your life when you were really connected, and really appreciated, and really good. Maybe there was a birthday party when you were twelve when you did some random little thing that meant a great deal to someone else. Get the visual, imagine the smells, remember the songs, put yourself there.

• Remember the child you were before you became the adult you are, when you were truly connected, running around naked in the sun.

• Find some comedy on YouTube. Deep laughter makes us remember that we can fill our minds with the good and beautiful things in life. (Personal favorite to get you started: Robin Williams doing standup.)

Empaths Need to Pause with Purpose

The fact that that you care so deeply has always made you a special person. Train yourself to cherish yourself. Train your mind to find those memories when you were the good and just hero. Develop a mental Netflix full of them, so you can scroll through several the next time your deep and beautifully caring nature morphs into a racing heart in the middle of the night.

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