Empathic Shielding

You know you’re empathic if you find yourself picking up other people’s issues. When they’re sad, you’re sad, when they’re happy, you’re happy, when they hurt, you hurt. Sorting out your issues from theirs can be very confusing and makes living life as an empath rather challenging. I would like to offer a very useful and effective technique I intuitively discovered many years ago to block out all those invading energies. Though I am empathic myself, I have developed the ability to choose to experience the energies of others or not.

Empaths naturally fluctuate their energetic vibrations to match those of other people. When someone is sad, angry, hurt, or happy you match your energy to theirs in order to feel what they’re feeling. Very often, this is done as an attempt to take away that person’s pain; to carry their burden for them. Sometimes it stems from a belief that in order to understand a person’s pain, you must experience it. Whatever the reason, however, a very important lesson all empaths must learn is that it is not necessary to feel or experience another’s pain in order to ease it.

How can you stop matching the energies of those around you? By using the principle of entrainment. Entrainment is defined as the tendency for two vibrating bodies to lock into phase and vibrate in harmony; also, as the synchronization of two or more rhythmic cycles. This principle is universal and can be seen in many every day situations. For example, two beating heart muscle cells will, in time, synchronize. The pendulums of grandfather clocks lined against a wall will begin to swing together. Women who live together for more than a month will have their menstrual cycles at the same time frame. A guitar string tuned to a particular note, when plucked, will cause another guitar string, tuned to the same note but held a distance away, to vibrate.
We can also see examples of this in emotions. Have you ever been around someone who was in a really good mood and you found yourself feeling good as well? Or how about the opposite where you were around someone who was really sad or angry and you started feeling the same way. We tend to refer to this as “infectious”.

Well, you can use this same “infectious” energy to help keep you from picking up everyone else’s issues. If you keep your energies higher than those of the people around you, you will find that you aren’t dipping down to pick up the sadness, anger, pain, frustration, etc. In fact, you will notice that, if you spend enough time around these individuals, they will begin to match your energy and feel better! So how can you keep your energies high? By doing everything you can to stay in a good, upbeat, happy mood when someone with a lower energy is near. Think of someone or something you love, count your blessings, imagine holding a kitten or a puppy or a baby, or just realize that the best thing you can do for that person is to keep your energies high instead of dropping them down to their level. Misery might love company but it isn’t very helpful to have a room full of miserable people. Be the beacon, the shining light during the storm, and help raise that person’s spirits. You’ll both feel much, much better and you’ll begin to learn that meeting a person at the level of their pain isn’t the best way to help them through it.

Blessings,
Jason Hundley