The Agony of Empathy

For many light-workers and healers, like myself, it is often comforting the first time we are able to put a label on what it is we are experiencing. While it can be a relief to finally be able to put your experience under the umbrella of "medium" or "psychic", "wanderer" or "volunteer". For the empath, this is often just the beginning of a very long roller coaster ride.

Once you realize you have the ability to feel the emotions of others you then understand why you seem to feel things more deeply than others. You soon realize that KNOWING it, doesn't keep you from FEELING it.

So what does one do? We learn from other healers and empaths how to center ourselves, use our gifts and most importantly, how to protect ourselves from other people's energy. Once you learn these things, you can begin to feel empowered by your gifts, instead of being at the mercy of them. And you can avoid some of the feelings of being emotionally drained or overwhelmed at the end of your days.

Doing the energetic work to protect yourself, like any exercise or meditation routine, takes time. Every day!

So we now have a name for our gift. Our extreme emotional responses to things makes sense to us. We learn how to protect ourselves, and how to differentiate between our own energy and that of another. We do our spiritual work, expand and hone our gifts, and hope we are helping the world.

But then there are those days. When you can't seem to look past the divisive anger in the streets...or the crazy man preaching hate, who is running for president! Or the dumping of millions of gallons of oil into our Oceans. Days when the pain is so palpable you can hear the Earth herself groaning in pain from inside your own heart. And no amount of centering Yoga, qi gong or meditation can quiet the sobs coming from deep inside.

I saw a video on youtube today of a young boy (4 or 5 I'm just guessing) crying hysterically from his car seat: "The planet is gonna be wrecked. People are just being rude to it"..."They need to think about what they are doing to it and what they are doing to animals. They are being SO BAD"..."I hate them!..I wish I was an adult, so I could do my job right now". (He already knows that his job is to save the planet)

I cried for this boys pain, as I am crying now quoting him. I remember BEING that boy! feeling that...the agony of empath. Almost 45 years ago now. Maybe I was crying for me...for all of us "volunteers" who look around and see how much work there is yet to do for the world that this little boy envisions, to be real. The world we all envisioned as little light workers.

I hear people say that this is just the storm before the calm. That is must get worse before it gets better. And I want with all my heart, to believe that, and to offer that hope to the little boy in the video. But today, I can only cry with him and pray.