Controlling and Protecting Empathic Responses

Empathy is one of the most difficult abilities to control. It can be very confusing in that the individual is so easily influenced by others that discernment of one's true feelings can become difficult.

If you are unaware of how outside forces affect you, your own energy system can become weakened. This is even more true if you are in the least bit empathic. These weaknesses may manifest as actual physical illnesses or as mental/emotional imbalances. The key to preventing this from occurring is to strengthen and protect your auric field.

Most beneficial to this are general positive health practices. Proper diet, exercise and fresh air are essential.

The Natural Way: Fresh air and sunlight is cleansing and strengthening to your energies. Spending regular time outside in the fresh air is balancing and healing. It will help you stay grounded and be less sensitive. Whenever you are feeling over-emotional or sensitive in any way, get out into nature. Nature is always strengthening and insulating. It heals.

You could go and sit under a pine tree for a few minutes. Pine trees are cleansing to the human aura. Their own energy fields serve to draw out negative emotions and balance out highly emotional states. In many ways they use this negative energy debris almost like fertilizer, so there is a nice balanced exchange which occurs.

Use Cleansing Exercises: Every day when you shower and bathe, see it not just as a physical cleansing, but a washing off of the connections you have established in the course of the day. Remember: every time you interact with another, there is an exchange of energy.

For empathic people, a bath or shower at the end of the day will be most essential to your overall health. It will help rid you of the debris you have accumulated throughout the day. It will help you discern what are your feelings and what aren't.

Learn to Disconnect from Others: It is most essential for empathic people to learn to disconnect from others. Ideally this should be done immedialtely upon leaving a place or leaving the company of others.

You may find it helps to wash your hands several times a day. Empathics often connect strongly through physical contact, and while this is not the case for me, you may well find it to be of benefit.

Visualise yourself disconnecting from others you encounter throughout the day, either as each encounter ends, or at the end of the day, whichever is most convenient. The best way to do this is to visualise their connection to you in a physical way. There are several areas in the body where the energy exchange is thought to occur, and it seems to vary between individuals. I recommend visualising the energy in whichever way seems most real and most appropriate to you, see it flowing either as fluid, a thread or some such. Then see yourself severing this flow of energy, either with a giant pair of ethereal scissors, a knife, sword or any method you feel comfortable with. Cut the flow of energy to end the energy transfer.

There are also more physical ways to protect yourself. Crossing your feet at the ankles is a simple yet effective method of ceasing energy flow when in the sitting position. You can also bring your fingertips together, to stop the energy flow from your hands; energy which you can usually feel if you hold your fingertips close together, without them touching. Try these methods when you are on the phone to someone who normally prattles on forever and try variations to see which method seems to work best for you.

Try not to sit or stand directly facing people who usually manage to influence you strongly. You can also fold your arms across your solar plexus - you know how comfortable that seems to be when you are in uncomfortable situations - and this protects the energy flow from there.

Most importantly, be aware of your aura as a shield. It is also your psychological personal space, upon which so much importance is placed, violations of which can cause serious upset.

The most important things to remember are, to remember to sever energy connections at some point during the day and to perform some kind of cleansing. Either use variations upon the examples I have given, make up your own or use one you found in a book. Remember that you are an individual and must therefore tailor it to your own personal needs. Just because it works for someone similar to you doesn't mean it will work for you. Do what feels appropriate and effective, but most of all what you feel comfortable with. There is no point having a complex two-hour cleansing ritual if you only have a spare half hour every day.

Do what is right for you. You need only to be true to yourself. You need not justify any actions to anyone. Remember that if you forget everything else I've told you!