Q1: I am very empathic (extremely useful in my line of work as a vet!). This often gets me into big trouble as there are times when I’m not sure that what I feel is mine or someone else’s. Have you recommendations of exercises or techniques to sharpen my skills and selectively filter out background noise so I can make better use of this gift?
Q2: One thing I notice about myself is a strong empathy for individuals. Is empathy a form of or a part of psychic energy? If the answer is yes, what’s the best way to develop my empathetic skills? (It can be draining but I want to use it more constructively)
A1 & A2: Yes, empathy is a psychic ability, functioning on the emotional and intuitive levels. An empath tunes into emotional undercurrents, intentions and atmospheres and 'feels' what another person or animal or spirit being is feeling.
Empathy is a two edged sword. While it can be useful knowing how others are feeling, this can impinge upon your own feelings. If these feelings manifest in yourself rather than you just sensing them in others and knowing they have an external source, this can cause problems. Feeling other people’s feelings in yourself, as if they were your own feelings, is usually the case for most empaths. In severe cases, strong empathy can lead to agoraphobias; fear of crowded places, and a host of other psychological disorders.
There is no easy solution. A good way to help overcome the negative aspects of empathy is to train yourself to tune into only good emotional radiations. For example, when you enter a crowded area, look and feel among the people around you for happy people who are giving off good vibes. Focus on these and only on these with your empathic senses, and use this ‘tuning’ to keep negative emotions at bay. Also, keep your thoughts positive and do not allow negative thoughts to creep into your mind space, as these will tend to switch your orientation to receiving negative vibes instead of positive vibes. Basically, reach out and find some happy feelings and cling to them.
Time and experience are the only ways I know of to selectively train empathic ability and tuning. Personal and spiritual development and energy work and meditation will help improve and hone this ability. Details on how to do all this are given in my book, Astral Dynamics, and in my online 'NEW Energy Ways' tutorial. Also, the integration of all aspects of your personality, and dealing with past negative experience memories and their effects on you in the now, provide a stable base that helps avoid the majority of empathic and psychic problems.
Strong empathy can wreak havoc in relationships, if you do not know what is happening. For example, lets say your spouse gets into a bad mood but does not tell you. You suddenly feel in a bad mood yourself, but do not tell your spouse. Then your spouse picks up on how you feel and starts to experience an even worse bad mood. This reflects back to you, back to them, and so on, with a reflecting and compounding effect upon both of you. Before long, serious arguments can break out and your entire day is ruined.
The trick to overcoming the problem when two empaths have a relationship is good communication and loving support. So, when you feel a bad mood or negative emotion arising for no reason, tell your partner immediately. Your partner must do the same if this happens to them. This way it can be identified where the bad mood comes from and what caused it to happen. If you communicate openly and support each other, this empathic compounding effect can be overcome by understanding, loving support, and cheerful thoughts. At a higher level, this can lead to an incredibly close loving relationship.
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