The Blessing and Curse of an Empath

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”

― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

I was 13 years old when I found out I was an empath. Just a teenager trying to navigate high school, friends, and this new ability to soak up all the feelings around me. A time when friends used to think I was just ove- dramatic or too sensitive. I was in training with my father, Patrick, and my sister, Emily, to enhance my psychic abilities at the time. But I constantly felt like I was falling behind her. Emily has a natural gift for hearing and seeing spirits, and she excelled in training much faster then I did. It took me a long time to realize that, as an empath, I was exactly where I should have been in my training. I wasn’t falling behind or not as good as her. My skills were different and I had to learn to trust my empathic abilities.

I used to think that being an empath made me weak. I used to think that feeling everything so deeply made me uncontrollable. It took me years to understand that being able to sit with a random stranger and understand their pain was a remarkable thing. I’ve never had a friend feel like they couldn’t talk to me. Never let anyone feel left out. Never let someone sit in the painful silence of grief or depression. My understanding of emotions meant that I could help people. I would soak up everyone's pain, anxiety, stress, or whatever they may be feeling. Living as an emotional being made me driven to make sure no one felt the pain or sadness that I had felt.

I started learning to regulate how much of others' energy I could feel, and it’s something I now teach to other empaths. Transmuting is taking another's feelings and transforming them into something positive. This regulation is a process of shielding to see how much emotion you can handle without it negatively affecting your auric energy. Then training to make sure you stay in a constant state of absorbing enough emotion to understand (regulation) and then cleansing it out.

Being an empath is a large part of who I am, it is a blessing that comes with many challenges. The joy at a party. The love at a wedding. The bliss of a new baby. The downfall of depression. The stress of anxiety. The bitter darkness of grief. Empaths feel it all. In my opinion, being able to handle emotional changes like that is a thing only warriors can do.

So, to all my empaths out there, I hope you know that you are understood and that your ability to show unconditional love no matter what is a blessing to the world. Never let anything dim your light!

“You are not the darkness you endured.

You are the light that refused to surrender.

― John Mark Green