Empowered Empathy

In a world where people can have so much cruelty and indifference toward one another, it may seem strange to say that there is such a thing as too much empathy. While it is true that the average person would do well to have more empathy, for those of us that are born innately empathic, to live life in the empathy channel can be self-annihilating when we take the roles of victim, martyr, and wounded healer. Like a lot of things, empathy arises as both a gift and a wound. All children are born sensitive, but “empaths” orient to the world differently with their sensitivity. The primary direction of interaction is receiving. My mother tells the story that as a baby I would often start crying and she couldn’t figure out why. After a while she realized that every time a sad song came on the radio, the tears would well up, little baby me would feel all the heartbreak, and then when the song was over I would be back to my giggly self. I was lucky that she understood this about me. However, often there are crucial stages of development where our innate sensitivity isn't validated and protected. When this happens we don’t have a strong psychic immune system, and we are vulnerable to all sorts of abuses, entanglements with wounded others, codependencies, and needing to fix others so that we feel okay. I have always been attuned to the suffering of those around me, and in my younger days it fueled a lot of self-destruction and numbing out with substances. It took me decades to understand that empathy is a skill that we have the power to turn up or turn down.

When we are in an empathic entanglement—one where our system is being taken over by someone else’s energy—we can feel this as a tightening and disturbance in the gut, a headache, depression and anxiety, and a whole array of other psychosomatic issues—joint pain, skin issues, etc. We feel off. Because our ego views ourselves as open-hearted, we can trick ourselves into believing this is a heart chakra experience. It is not. It is an energetic entanglement of the lower energy centers. The medicine is to come back to self-agency and authority, and to authentically come into the heart.

While it sounds counter-intuitive, one method for coming back into heart-centered authority is a practice called Tonglen—giving and receiving. Intentionally breathe in the experience of the other person (we’re absorbing it anyway, but now do it with authority!), and breathe out peace and good will back to them. Do this for several breath cycles. What is interesting is that while doing this practice we aren’t absorbing more of them and fading away, instead we are gaining authority, presence, and recycling the energy through the vast potential and power of our heart center.

Connecting with the experiences of others, whether it is a specific person or the global community, should always come from the authority of the heart. It is more powerful, more clean, and more alive with purpose. Connecting through the wounding of the lower energy centers feeds the parasitic pain body, and is ultimately draining of life force. While it may feel comfortable to relate to others in this way, if we are honest with ourselves, it doesn’t necessarily feel good and keeps us very stuck. Instead, come into alignment with the things that nurture the life force within us—our creative gifts, nature, our higher power, connecting with people that see our soul. No other ego has the right to dominion over our energy field, and unless they are psychopathic, most people don’t know that they have that effect on us. We invite it in, and it is only ourselves that can come back into balanced alignment and interdependence. This is self-mastery.