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16 Signs That You’re An Empath and 10 Ways To Help You Cope

Happiness | Lifestyle

Last Friday’s Strawberry Full Moon came with a potent hit that left me floored. Now, it’s easy to blame things on the moon. When you’re part of the yoga community, it seems to be an acceptable catch-all for almost any behaviour or circumstance, but there is something in it.

Apparently this moon is one of the most powerful we’re experienced in recent history, flooding the globe with feminine energy and combined with a Mercury in retrograde. Now this may all sound a little far-fetched to you, but the fact is some of us are more sensitive to the earth’s energies than others.

The reality is we’re all swimming in a sea of primordial energy soup that comes with its own particular brand of surf and swell. And I, fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your perspective) am like a gigantic sponge.

Discovering Empaths and HSPs (Highly Sensitive Person)

I first began to make the connection between how I was feeling and what was happening in the universe a few years ago, when a few fairly major natural disasters occurred in quick succession. I noticed that each was preceded with a third eye headache like no other, a sense of feeling ungrounded and dizzy that saw me stumbling into doors and off side-walks into on-coming traffic.

I felt acute physical aches and a heart-shattering sadness that I couldn’t shake. As soon as an event occurred, the pressure would release and I would feel better. I’d have no choice but to dive under the covers – usually exhausted, shaky, and in tears – and seek shelter until it felt like the storm had passed enough to feel normal again.

This sparked my curiosity and I started reading into signs that you’re an empath, HSP’s or what’s now known as a ‘Highly Sensitive Person’ and the nature of empaths.

My Experience As An Empath

As a child, I was always heavily affected by what was going on in my immediate environment. As an adult, I became afflicted by those things that seemed to concern society at large and the sight of a crying child or a homeless person was crushing. I began to think that I’d been pre-programmed to feel things differently than others.

Unconsciously, I was able to reach into people and feel what they were feeling. Often, I predicted events before they occurred and had pre-cognitive dreams. Sometimes I would even wake to hear the earth shifting before the stability of my bed in the dead of night.

Now all of this might sounds a bit freaky, but the reality is that we are all deeply connected to the world around us and each other, because when it comes down to it, we’re all made of the same stuff. The very building blocks of you and I have also been melted and moulded into everything we see around us through a unique blend of elements, the number of which is infinite.

I’m not talking about an abstract idea that is reserved for the bewildered and the bonkers but a very natural and responsive ability to perceive some of those things that are seemingly backstage to most – an intuitive connection to the land and those around us that served the ancients for many years.

16 Ways To Tell If You’re An Empath

  1. Things, people, and situations move you.
  2. Sometimes your heart overflows with sadness and sorrow that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with your life.
  3. Sometimes your heart overflows with the joy and happiness of being human and alive.
  4. You cry easily.
  5. You’re sensitive to negative energies and people.
  6. You find crowds and chaos overwhelming.
  7. When someone tells you about their happiness or hardship, you feel every emotion with them.
  8. You know what people need without them telling you.
  9. You feel the emotional ripples of the collective consciousness.
  10. You’re a great listener.
  11. You get tired easily and can only recharge by taking complete silence and solitude – you enjoy your own company.
  12. You’ve had premonitions, pre-cognitive dreams and get strong hunches of things that then go on to happen.
  13. You can sum people up within minutes of meeting them.
  14. You find the company of negative people exhausting.
  15. You find the news upsetting, rather than informative.
  16. You’ve always had a feeling you’re different from everyone else.

10 things you can do about it to help you cope

  1. Take a few minutes of quiet time at the start of each day, outside if possible, just breathing in the air and noticing how you feel (without judgement).
  2. Keep an energetic record tracking when you feel high, low, and need to withdraw.
  3. Spend time in nature, away from the influence of the city or crowds.
  4. When you next feel upset, question if those emotions are yours.
  5. Journal to process what you’re feeling and thinking.
  6. Practice grounding meditations and energetic clearing techniques.
  7. Schedule in some sacred and secluded alone time.
  8. Cry.
  9. Drink plenty of water.
  10. Practice yoga or martial arts to help move energy around the body and avoid stagnation.

If you have empathic tendencies, I know it can be unnerving and unsettling trying to understand how and why we experience, and identify with, the world around in a way that we do. But the very recognition of our empathic and perceptive traits is the first step towards managing them.

I believe that we’re all born with this innate wisdom and sixth sense, we just don’t always know how to tune in and listen. Maybe it’s time to learn to connect how we’re feeling with the wider sphere of collective consciousness, the environment around us, and the vast web that has been woven to bind us all.

 

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