So, you got yourself all open to the Universe and now you can’t shut it out, huh? Don’t worry. I can help.
Overactive empathy is a new kind of buzzword for the energy crowd. It’s one of my favourite new things because it helps to highlight why I teach stuff the way I do.
First rule of energy management - take care of yourself first. You are responsible for you. That means that you are responsible for only you, not anyone else. How someone else feels is not your problem. Your job isn’t to have to mitigate anyone else’s emotional reactions. Your job is to mitigate yours.
Overactive empathy happens when we forget rule # 1 - take care of yourself first.
Second rule of energy management - you cannot solve an energy problem with energy stuff. I know, sucks right? You went looking for a solution to all of your problems in the woo and found that it just amplified your problems instead of fixed them? That’s because that’s what it does. Hence rule the first.
You need a good, solid, physical, real world foundation before you start reaching for higher level stuff. Because Law of Attraction - whatever you’re vibrating at resonates with the world around you to bring you more of what you already are. So if you’re reaching for energy stuff because you’re lonely and looking for connection, guess what? The energy world is just going to bring you more experiences that make you feel lonely and looking for connection.
You have to solve you first before you start sending any vibrations out into the world.
The way to look at it is that the Universe is trying to help you learn you. So it will helpfully bring you everything you need to understand your own blocks. That means playing them out over and over until you see the pattern.
In non-energy speak, this is called behavioural conditioning and why cognitive behavioural therapy has become such an important tool to understand your behavioural loops and change them. So, to solve an energy problem, we can find the solutions in the non-energy world, and them apply them to the energy world.
Sometimes, this can be difficult to do. So, another way we can do this is to utilize the energy world to help us train and practice something in a non-confrontational, risk free way, and then apply that to our real lives. This is the basis for a lot of spiritual therapy or energy management practices. It’s basically just neuro-rehabilitation exercises but dressed up in fun and fancy woo speak.
A great example I use is Angel Therapy. Angel Therapy was designed as a treatment program for, basically, mom guilt. Mom guilt stems from the feeling that you’re not being ‘mom enough’ if you’re not putting everyone else first. That leads to burnout and overwhelm. As a treatment program, you’re taught the names of the angels, their colours, what they do, and then you practice asking your angels for help with stuff. It’s a neuro-rehabilitation program. You get to practice asking for the things you need from the appropriate people to ask it from in a risk free, non-confrontational way. And then, once you’ve mastered that, you begin to apply it to your real life - asking your husband to do the dishes, asking the kids to pick up their toys, etc. Suddenly you feel better, have more energy, good-bye mom guilt, and life seems so much rosier.
That’s what I mean by you have to solve an energy problem in the real world. Without fixing the underlying reasons for your burnout and overwhelm - not having learned the skills to ask the right people for what you need in a way that gets those needs met - you’ll just continue feeling crappy and searching the woo world for solutions that don’t help, compounding the problem.
Remember that saying, ‘happiness is an inside job’? It’s true. You have to get yourself to a good place first, then go exploring the woo. Don’t look to the woo to fix you. It’ll just amplify what you’ve already got.
So, what is overactive empathy in real world speak - boundary issues. It means that you struggle with feeling confident in asserting your boundaries and having them respected somewhere in your life. You feel like you are responsible for someone else’s emotional responses, so you take over the job of ‘feeling’ it for them so that you can mitigate their reactions.
So, how do you fix it? There are two ways - address it by practicing boundary setting in real life. Or, if that’s too hard at first, strengthening the areas of your brain responsible for boundary setting with ‘energy exercises’ until you feel more confident and then practicing setting boundaries in real life.
See how both solutions end up with you doing it in real life? It’s honestly the only way to fix an energy problem.
So, what are some good energy exercises for boundary setting? Shielding exercises are a great one - that’s visualizing light bubbles around you and others that keep your emotions and energy yours and their emotions and energy theirs. You strengthen that part of the brain that recognizes ‘my responsibility’ versus ‘their responsibility’.
Once you feel confident with that, move on to practicing it in real life. When someone is upset, try not to rush in and fix it. Practice surrounding them and you with the light bubbles and saying in your head ‘your feelings and energy are your responsibility, not mine. My responsibility is to my energy and emotions.’ And then do something to get your mind off of it instead of ruminating on everything that you should have done to fix it for them.
Luckily, the Universe will provide you with all kinds of opportunities to practice good boundaries until you no longer need the practice. That’s when you know you’ve ‘levelled up’, so to speak. You will no longer be vibrating at ‘I have boundary issues’ so you won’t be bringing stuff that keeps you having boundary issues to you. See how that works?
If it’s all clear as mud, feel free to reach out and we can chat about your specific situation and come up with more tailored exercises more specific to you. We’re in this together. Don’t feel like you’ve got to figure it all out on your own. I’m here to help!
Til next time, folks!