Many of us who are highly empathic find ourselves struggling with an abundance of feelings that put us in everything from a mere “funk” to a full on chronic depression. We are rarely aware of our emotional states until we’re sucked into the massive pool of ickiness, obviously a clinical term. At that point we just become slaves to the ebbs and flows of the emotional pool and like all vortices we are pulled down deeper. As the world has been forced into this new reality that a pandemic brings, we find ourselves swimming against the current yet again.
Even as we manoeuvre our way through this difficult and unsure era it’s imperative that we figure out how to make the best of our gifts. Empathy, contrary to some of our experiences, is a gift.
Here are some ways to meet the empathic nature head on, with grace.
1. Ask yourself “Is this mine?
Is what I’m feeling mine? or is it someone else’s ? This question is probably the most important to ask. If it is, good! If it’s not, good. Now let’s deal with it. If it’s not yours and it’s a friend’s, a neighbor’s or just the collective groaning of uncertainty; then allow yourself to release it.
2. Allow it!
If what you’re feeling are your emotions then feel them. We often want to push those uncomfortable feelings away. This is contrary to our highest good and to our well being. Carl Jung said it best when he said “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” I resist being overweight all the time…I’m only growing in size.
We must feel what is ours so that it passes through us, like a storm passing though your city. If you fight it the cycle will only last longer and the pain from the “uncomfortability” will only increase. It’s like facing your fears. What usually comes from it is more resilience and strength.
3. Meditate &/or Pray
Sometimes it’s just a matter of sitting with ourselves and getting to know you. Meditation/Prayer/Mindfulness are ways of quieting our minds and getting us in the moment. While in that quiet space ask yourself questions and sit with them for a moment.
What am I feeling right now?
Am I safe right now?
Am I hungry right now?
Do I need to have that assignment sent in right now?
Most of the time the answers will be in your favor, but if you are “hungry right now” and don’t have food acknowledge the reality of the situation and allow yourself to feel into that moment.
4. Troubleshoot
If you’ve released other’s emotions and you’ve allowed yourself to sit in your own emotions, then what can you do about it? In each situation ask yourself “What can be done?”.
“What can be done” as opposed to “What can I do?”, allows for all the options. It permits for solutions that are out of your scope. It helps put us in a place of allowing the greater good, the collective consciousness and dare I say “God” or “Infinite Intelligence” to come in and create answers. Then open your mind and your heart to the answers.
5. What will be will be
What happens, happens. We are not always supposed to know why things happen or do not happen. The truth is that it wasn’t a pandemic that made everything in our lives unsure, they were already unsure. The one thing I CAN tell you is that it’s not personal. When this pandemic hit it shook up something in me that made me ask “What did I do to deserve this?”.
Earlier this year, I was experiencing, for the first time in my life, everything falling into place. I knew where I was going, what was going to happen with my career and it was very exciting and comforting. THEN…dun dun dun…PANDEMIC. I realized that everything I’d been going toward had changed. EVERYTHING had changed, but it wasn’t an old, angry, bearded, white guy saying “she doesn’t get to be happy”. The epiphany came by sitting in meditation and paying attention to my own emotions and breathing into them.
I’m not sitting here telling you it’s easy. It’s often the opposite. Sometimes it’s hard AF. Meet the hardness. One of my pastors decades ago told me “nothing is very, very good or very, very bad for very, very long.” Those words sit with me to this day. Although it may seem very, very, very long, it’s not. In reality it’s just a blip on the universal timeline and we are just part of it.
Your empathic nature is one of your strongest assets. It keeps you grounded in compassion and can, if given the opportunity, cultivate the strongest of connections to the divine nature within us all. In turn, it can allow you to create powerful connections with others. Yes, even when we’re six feet apart.