When you’re an empath and support others for a living (either as a practitioner and/or a parent), it’s very common to become drained and worn out by the roles you play… Even when you Love and are excellent at what you do. I see this partly coming from what I call “living from remote control”.
As a highly sensitive person who can feel what the other is feeling, and who often cares and is very impacted by the feelings and experiences of others.. you quite likely learnt how to regulate the emotions in the environment (or at least feel vaguely safe) by tuning into others and changing your behavior to soothe Them. This leaves you in the precarious position of needing Them to be regulated (or loving, or kind) in order for you to be ok. The alternative to this is to learn how to regulate your nervous system as a distinct and self-loving survival function, inside your own body. Which is great. Because that’s where your incredibly intelligent survival and intuition impulses originate!
When you’re inside your own body (and trusting it), you can experience regulation, settling and resilience regardless of the psychic/emotional noise around you.
This is Big. And has a BIG impact on whether you feel you have Choice and the ability to step away from situations that don’t serve you. Cause lets be honest.. when you’re living from remote control, it takes way more energy to operate things, and isn’t really that satisfying longterm.
The thing that stops many empaths from moving from remote control to inhabiting their own animal body, is that when we first turn attention to the inner experience, we may initially feel a lot of strong and even “unsafe” feelings, sensations or emotions. Many folk will take this to mean “I just need to try harder to regulate everyone else” or “Shit, it’s not safe in my body, so I’m leaving the whole Body-thing altogether and disassociating to somewhere safer!”
So rather than these 2 (exhausting) options.. We can instead treat it like we’re wooing a wild animal.
Imagine with me that your nervous system is a wild tiger who’s retreated into a cave and is definitely not sure about whether it’s safe here. It’s holding a long history of strong feelings and quite a bit of overwhelm and it would secretly really love someone to come and help it feel safe in the world. All this wild animal knows so far is that it’s told to be quiet when it’s upset, or that it blows its lid when it can’t hold back anymore. … So you wouldn’t start by going right up to the tiger and talking to it, or poking it.. You’d start by being general and open. You might start by just sitting down and being quiet a distance away from it, looking at the sky or the dirt under you, Being.. Allowing the animal to feel that you mean to be kind and to listen without any pressure or demand.
How is it to be here? in this moment, in the room or space you’re in? Is there anything pleasant or okay about your experience? If there is.. Can you ask yourself – how do you know that you know it’s pleasant? What tells you? Maybe there’s a warm feeling in your belly, or your eyes soften a little at the edges. Maybe you notice your breathing is a little deeper than normal and stroking the fabric on your pants feels soothing?
When you spend time noticing and attending to these pleasant or okay things, it’s like placing treats at the entrance to the cave for your nervous system, and giving your felt-sense animal time to come out, check things out and be nourished by the treats…
From here, this incredibly simple practice (of taking time with what’s ok and feeling it in your body) will have helped your nervous system settle enough to get closer and get curious with it.
In my sessions with clients, this part of our work is a lot about experiencing the different branches of the nervous system (flight, fight, freeze, social connection/fawn) as safe.
If, as you hang out with feeling and sensing your body, the settling that came with the pleasant sensations shifts into agitation in the legs .. we’d spend time checking out if (contrary to the automatic response to start thinking, leave or reach out to charm me or get angry) this agitation is ok to feel.
This is groundbreaking for many people. That their uncomfortable sensations Aren’t a signal they need to react by Doing something to get away from them, but a signal the body has something to say, or the body is storing stress.
Together we gently move from something nourishing (a pleasant emotion, thought or sensation in some part of the body) to the thing you’ve previously avoided. The agitation, the fear, the anger or the vagueness. As you experience that you Can handle the sensations inside your own body, they will begin to settle and disperse and change to something more regulated. And like this, you are building your capacity (and love!) for staying with and IN your body.
Slowly you start to trust that feeling of constriction when someone asks you to help them with a task, and you say “I cant do that, sorry” rather than (internally) “what do they need? will they be super upset if I don’t say yes? Am I safe to say no?” .. and then overriding yourself and saying yes when you actually mean no.
You start to build a primary relationship with You, your animal body and your life force. Life in a body then becomes pleasurable, becomes open, becomes free(er).
I take female practitioners through this process in my 3 month 1:1 program and it makes such a huge difference to how they feel in themselves, to their energy levels, their resilience and enjoyment of their good work in the world, and also of their precious love for themselves… from inside their own body.
Shifting to embodied self-connection also means the boundarylessness and confusion of living from remote control is no longer there. You know what you want, what you feel and eventually, clearly, what’s right for you. Of course, this impacts your clarity with stating your rates at work, your boundaries/choices in relationships and your capacity to step away from dynamics that drain you. Being and empath is a gift.. but not when we ignore the messages from the sensitive apparatus that is your body.
This program is a good fit for you if you’re ok with feeling your feelings, have done a decent amount of inner work and are spiritually oriented. It’ll be good for you if you want to serve your populations (clients or family) but don’t want to do the same old over-giving and exhaustion, and if you hold a thread of knowing to the wisdom of the earth (even if it’s dormant… I have a particular love and gift for shining a light on the wisdom in You). We move through 3 phases, embodying your spiritual and animal knowing, healing unconscious patterns held in the nervous system and attachment system and strengthening your relationship with your inner judge and your mind so you can move forward with strength, resilience and self encouragement!
If you’re interested, reach out HERE, I’ll ask you some questions to see if we’re a good fit and we could begin soon