Day 6: Overcoming Emotional Overload
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“Ouch,” I cried out instinctively as my best friend and I walked down the beach. It was only when Sarah turned to me and asked me why I yelled out that I realized it was Sarah who gashed the side of her foot open, and not me.
“Because it really hurts, throbs even,” I answered her. She looked at me curiously and said, “But it didn’t hurt you. It hurt me. I’m the one who has her foot all gashed open.”
It hadn’t dawned on me that feeling other people’s pain/injury wasn’t a “normal” reaction to most.

All my life I have been extremely empathic, but for the first half of my life I didn’t even realize that this was a unique character trait, that not everyone shares.
When I was in close contact with people who were stressed out or yelling at someone, I would literally shake with what i called the scream wobbles. When those around me were sad/down or scared, I would drink in those feelings like a sponge and hold on tight to them, not realizing that these feelings weren’t my own.

As a result, I felt on edge a lot of the time, my moods were all over the place, up, down, big black hole, ray of sunshine, as I was carrying not only my own feelings (I have to wonder sometimes if I even knew what my own energy really looked like) but also the emotions of many people around me. However, I was not in touch with this anxiety—I didn’t even know it was there. It was unconscious. I felt different and thought there was something seriously mentally wrong with me for a long time because the change came so quickly and without warning.

Because I was so empathic, I was often sympathetic to the journey's of others and concerns of friends, family, extended family, co-workers, customers you name it I was there with a listening ear and a kind word.
Even as a child, people turned to me for guidance in resolving their problems. At the time, I didn’t mind because I was happy to offer whatever support I could at least I was being useful right?

However, as I entered my teen years, the burden of other people’s emotions, on top of my own unresolved feelings, struggles, bad situations, big band aids i was using to try and cover up my own issues it just became a cross too heavy to bear. But I didn’t know that consciously. I wasn’t even aware of what was happening for me.
I turned to food, alcohol, and other substances to numb the intensity of what I felt.
I felt a strong need to withdraw, hide away, lock myself in the deepest, darkest place I could find and I could no longer be in the same room or the same house with people who carried intense, often unconscious, emotions.

I had to learn ways to cope, to manage the emotional energy—both my own feelings as well as the energy of others—that I was absorbing but I had no awareness of it even happening for such a long time, that when I did realize it felt like the weight of a sack of bowling balls just slipped off my back...I could breathe, I was free and it felt weird.

This was a major key for me in breaking free all addiction, all those band aids i'd used for years to try and run from the emotions or how i was feeling to a place that was empty....if only for a little while. There were many bumps along the road as I learned to do this. And many suggestions, some that worked, some that didn't. Over time, I discovered really powerful ways to help manage emotional energy and allow myself to step into my own energy far more often and enjoy the balance that it brought.

• Don’t take anything personally or to heart. One of the main reasons I came to see that I absorbed and hung on to other people’s dramas and intense energies is because I bought into their suffering at some level. But over time I realized that 1) I really was enabling some of these people into not helping themselves on their own journey and 2) I had no boundaries whatsoever, I couldn't for the life of me say no, so I'd spend sometimes hours with people (time i didn't have) to make sure that i could find the solution for them (see the enabling pattern?).
  
  
• I don’t have to control or find the solution for the caterpillar for it to become a beautiful butterfly. I realized that the same power within me that has turned every difficulty and challenge I have faced into an ultimate lesson and blessing is in everyone else, too.
  
  
• I have learned to trust that other people, even those I love the most with all my heart, need to learn life’s lessons through their own experiences and insights.
  I’m not responsible for fixing the energy/illness/frustration or the situation. My only responsibility was and is how am I managing my OWN energy: am I adding joy in my own life? Or am I exhausting myself often in to times of burnout with this fixing or over helping behavior that had crept up on me so fast! 
  
  
• Practice awareness ALWAYS. I noticed that if I wasn’t aware of what I was feeling, either in response to an internal shift, such as a hormonal or mood change, or a reaction to another person’s strong emotion, I was much more likely to be reactive and act out in a way that wouldn’t feel good to me.
  With awareness, I could consciously choose a response and an action that I could feel good about.
  
  
• Understand the nature of energy.  A big key to healing for me has been the understanding that my response to my environment also feeds the energy. Therefore, if someone throws me a stone and I throw one back.
  Not only will I add fuel to the fire and cause pain for the other, but I will be increasing my own suffering. Energy feeds on energy and the sooner be realize that just because another has an opinion about something doesn't mean to say we should jump in, take control and push our beliefs on that person.  Maybe just maybe what they are venting is an internal struggle that they are reflecting outwardly.  Sometimes silence, self-care and boundaries are better than fighting a fight of opinions for both parties involved on many different levels. Spend your time being loving, caring and kind and change the energy to the positive for both of you.  That's because love is all the soul seeks and when we can come back to a loving place, everything in life suddenly becomes more manageable. And better yet you are not manifesting more negativity into your life, you are manifesting only good, supportive and positive things.
  When we drift from a place of love, kindness, wholeness, and forgiveness, we feel “out of sorts” and often express bad energy (anger, fear, complaining, etc.).
  
  
• Balance yourself wherever and whenever possible. The key to staying balanced for me personally is to continuously stay connected to my heart—my deeper, spiritual self—and when I stray from there by getting caught up in the voices in my head or the drama unfolding around me, to know the short-cut back to center.
  For me, the most powerful way to do this is to stay in the solution.  I ask myself these questions.
  
  Does this add to my happiness?
  Am I wasting energy on something that isn't important?
  If I only had this moment am i using it productively?
  Does this serve my journey in a positive way?
  Am I putting out to the universe what I wish to get back in return?
  
  
• Being empathic and super sensitive to energy is not something that I can just decide to change, but I can become more aware of how it affects me and find the tools that work for me to live a happy, healthy and balanced lifestyle, the life I desire and the life each one of us deserves.
  The empowering thing is the realization that I can change my reactions and my own behaviors, no matter how overwhelming the emotions—my own and others—feel to me, in the moment.
  Because 90 percent of the behaviors we do are habitual—meaning we are only doing them because we did them yesterday—we can literally re-train the brain to respond in a new way to the exact same situation.
  I used to think my only two choices were to react to negative energy with negativity or to withdraw and detach (have you ever done or experienced the push/pull factor?). Neither option was conducive to building strong, supportive relationships or adding to my own happiness.
  I now know that when someone throws me a stone, I can throw back love, kindness, and I can feel great about it!  Because we really don't know what the other person has gone through, nor do we know the experiences that, that person has written out for themselves in their soul contract to experience.
  
  I wouldn’t change my empathic nature even if I could because, on a positive note, it has helped me to understand people and open my heart to them—to realize that we are all on the same human journey together, seeking compassion and love, even if we’re not going about it in the most effective way.
  Every storm passes and when it does it brings with it a rainbow. The blessing of empathy and feeling emotions as strongly as I do and i'm sure many of you reading this do to is the opportunity to connect to our deepest strength, are internal wisdom and transmit something greater that can bring healing to our self and all that come into our contact.
  
  If I go somewhere that doesn't feel right energetically I imagine foot prints of joy, love and good blessings are left behind with every step that I take.

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Much Love and Happiness to each of you.