Are you an Empath?

Being sensitive in this world can be tough. Business and traditional school certainly have not been designed to support intuitive, gentle people. It’s time for a change!

Here’s a blog about empaths, unmanaged empathy. Later I’ll be writing about our empath super powers and how we can tap into those!

I’m a healer, therapist and coach and my purpose at this time is to help empaths and sensitive beings to regain our health, find self worth and self love and be the person we came to be at this time.

I’ve spent fifty plus years, evolving, researching, healing myself. I’ve had many different treatments and am delighted to help other find what will support us to be whole and functioning and most of all ENJOYING LIFE!

I firmly believe that now is time where we can create the world we want. The world needs sensitive people to create the world we want for ourselves and future generations, more than ever.

So, if you’re a sensitive, introvert, empath, Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) this is your time! The support is here, the world is ready. For more support come and join my Facebook Group Empowered Empaths in Life and Business.

More people now have sensitivity being awakened in them.

In my group Winning Women, women were talking about how their corporate roles starved them and they could never be themselves. They always had the hard face for work and then outside work had to remember who they really were.

When you run your own business, you choose who you want to be but it can take years to implement that. We don’t always know who we are when the job and roles are stripped away.

Here’s a little of my empath typical background that may resonate with you.

Maybe you’ve come across the idea of being an empath recently. Me too, mainly in the last 3 years. Looking back, I can see it’s affected me all my fifty something years.

I was a very sensitive child. My earliest memories, all around three years old are around fear and shame.  There was no physical violence but to a sensitive child these feelings are a huge shock to the spirit and body.

1. My dad being so angry with me. I have no idea why but can remember the shame and helplessness.

2. Looking up to the loft/attic as my doll, Jill was handed down by my dad. She had been up there for a few days as a punishment for some misdemeanor I had committed! I can only imagine the separation anxiety that must have caused me if I remember that 50 plus years later. We had no idea how to parent sensitive children and are only just learning now.

3. I can feel the shock when my mum being so angry with me, my sister and our friend next door when she caught us playing a game that she considered dirty. I can feel her anger almost throwing me against a wall. That was a lesson that playing, having fun was naughty and made people angry.

I’m sure we all have similar experiences but I’ve learnt that some of us internalise these much more than non empaths.

We internalise the belief that life isn’t safe. 

It’s not safe to trust others, that it’s unsafe to play or listen to music. My super sensitive sister Heather and I used to turn pop music down off when my father was about as we were scared of his reaction.

I hid so much, to avoid the potential pain of getting found out, shamed, facing anger, maybe having to justify myself. And my parents were nice people trying to do a good job! Such is the way of the sensitive child.

We also spent time, at school and home, terrified that others would get in trouble. My fellow empath friend Cathrine told me how she was always terrified that her sister would get a spanking from their mother, while her sister just went ahead and brushed it off. I remember being frozen at school when the cane wielding head master was about.

These incidences get stuck in our nervous systems.

The imprints are stored in us, especially in the lowest three chakras, energy centres of our bodies.

The shocks I mention above can be such that we almost move out of our lower bodies.

That leaves a gap that we can fill with other people’s emotions and we can even tap into other people to ground ourselves. This is as our own grounding can’t happen until our energy system is healed.

Who is an empath?

According to a 2007 study on empathy, published in Nature Neuroscience, only one to two percent of the population consists of true empaths. I believe that many of the children being born now are more empathic and adults too are wakening up to having more empathic tendencies, which is why there was a flurry of books being written around 2019.

There are several quizzes available online to test where you are on the scale too.

I thought there was something wrong with me.

I was continually beating myself up for not moving forward, for losing my confidence, for seeing money come and go, more go than come a lot of the time.

Unmanaged empathy can affect us in many ways.

The anxiety, absorbing the feelings of others, feeling there is something wrong with us as we feel different all affect a nervous system.

For me this manifest as hyper sensitivity to foods, asthma, eczema and addictive tendencies. My late sister Heather had anorexia and addiction problems that really affected her mental and physical health.

Unmanaged empathy can result in illnesses like fibromyalgia and even long covid.

Recently I’ve seen clients diagnosed with Long Covid.

The people I’ve worked with have often been empaths and their souls are exhausted after a lifetime of trying to be there for everyone, perfectionism, people pleasing and endless striving.

In my many years as a therapist, I’ve seen clients with Chronic fatigue, many with fibromyalgia, exhausted thyroids and adrenals, depression, anxiety, digestive issues and much more.

A thorough consultation and conversations always showed up where they were carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, sometimes manifesting as a frozen shoulder as their soul was calling them to stop and consider where their life was going.

Is this sounding like you or someone you know and love?

My purpose is to help empaths and sensitive beings to regain our health, find self worth and self love and be the person we came to be at this time. I’ve spent fifty plus years, evolving, researching, healing myself. I’ve had many different treatments and am delighted to help other find what will support us to be whole and functioning and most of all ENJOYING LIFE!

If you would like a chat to see how I can help you more, do email me info@rosemarycunningham.co.uk or book a free phone call here. https://rosemarycunninghamcoaching.as.me/