Understanding I was an Empath, was only the beginning.
In 2010 I started a new job in corporate America.
I was on a new team for the company, and one of the first things we did was @CliftonStrengths.
Personality testing was brand new to me, and our team did a lot of it.
My #1 strength, was Empathy. Something that wasn’t understood or valued in the business world. Funny, because I worked in a Consumer Insights dept…
I spent the next 10 years, feeling like this was a liability. I could sense other people’s feelings. Yay me. It also felt like a burden, because I didn’t understand how to ‘control’ it.
During my yoga teacher training, I took a workshop on energetic boundaries, but the way Empaths were described didn’t feel like me. So I kept the info in mind, but didn’t know how to apply it.
Fast forward when I started doing the work to understand who I really am. I’ve said this before, and will continue to say it. I don’t think you can start a business, or work for yourself, without doing a lot of self-work. It isn’t always pleasant at the beginning, but in time, it does get easier, and the payoff is huge.
I had a LOT of work to do. As I started to breakdown the stories I’d told myself, or been told myself, one of the first insights I had was around my intuition. Turns out, I’m pretty intuitive. Part of me knew that, and part of me didn’t.
One of the second things I learned was that I was indeed an Empath. I might not have been as strong, or the same as the woman teaching the boundaries workshop, but I didn’t care about the level.
Knowing this, lifted a lot of burdens I didn’t realize I’d been carrying. I started to understand that certain people I didn’t want to be around weren’t because I was a b*tch. It was because I felt the energy they carried too much. I could walk into a room, and immediately want to walk right out.
Understanding the “why” behind some of my behaviors, was like a concrete answer to a question I didn’t know I’d been asking. It allowed me to give myself permission to take different actions.
If I have an off feeling about someone, I don’t dismiss it. I don’t berate myself for having that feeling about someone other people seem to love and adore - true example.
I also use my feelings to figure out who I want to work with - both my clients and my mentors.
I’m also more aware of when there are feelings that aren’t my own. It took a while to hone this one, but now I can sense the difference between when I’m feeling something and when it’s someone else’s.
Recently, I learned about how some of this shows up in my Human Design, and it’s taken me to a whole new level. The tl;dr is that I have an “open” solar plexus center, and when I’m around someone who has theirs “defined,” their emotions feel amplified to me. So they may be frustrated about something, and it’s a 2/10 to them, but I feel it like it’s a 6/10. That nugget of info, now lets me shrug off any of their emotions I feel. It’s like the emotions come at me, but I shake them off immediately.
This is why I’m so passionate about helping women understand who they are, and how to work with themselves. The freedom and the transformations we can have, are beyond compare