I would guess that many of us who are Empaths and Highly Sensitive People (HSP) have felt heavy and overloaded when sensing and helping process the more extreme acts of destruction and harm in the world.
It is certainly important to take care of yourself when your empathic nature takes on the task of helping negotiate the pain of others.
I hope you respect the importance of continually be helping your own system get back to healthy neutral and nurturing opportunities for joy and laughter when you are doing this work.
I am at The Monroe Institute this week, in a week-long training filled with meditation, didactic teaching, and practice with our fellow students in giving and receiving Reiki. As is common at TMI, the participants here come with powerful energy* filling the room and touching the mountains around us.
Yesterday morning, we got our Reiki I and II Attunements from our instructors and a participant who is already a Level 3 Reiki Master. Our level III comes later in this week.
As I was receiving my attunement, I connected with the spirit of my recently departed cat—a cat whose Swahili name translates to “Gift from God,” and who indeed was that (even when he felt he needed to make sure that we all remembered it). I know he is now joining my team of guides, but his energy also touched my deep missing of his physical being.
That recent loss of him, in turn, began to touch off the various experiences I have had in working either directly or remotely with some pretty big tragedies, which brought up a LOT of both energy and emotion. Many tears, much energy and emotion poured out of me.
While I am not at all concerned when this happens, I do know the process requires some clock time to let the psychic and emotional experience work its way through. How lovely to have one of my fellow participants working her Reiki and Eden Energy Medicine on me to help me deactivate the rest of the big charge and get back into my own grounding.
Thankfully, here at TMI we have long breaks in the afternoon after lunch. So I chatted with cows, hiked through the pastures to the lake, and took time out to walk among the early flowering trees. When this happens, I need alone time to get back to my version of “normal.”
I am reminded how CRITICAL integration time is when you tap into something energetically powerful. We have to, Have To, HAVE TO take the time away to let the process cycle through. If we can’t complete it immediately…we’ve GOT to MAKE time later to finish the process.
The really good news about having to postpone your deactivation of charged material is that making time later to continue—and finish—processing helps you develop the ability to temporarily “put it away” and take it out again when you have supportive conditions to finish the processing.
But let me repeat—healthy containment happens when you HONOR THE COMMITMENT to let it fully deactivate later.
Otherwise, it festers…and festering without opportunities for cleansing and healing…well, you know that is not a good idea!
Learning to put the big stuff away temporarily until you have better conditions to process it builds your capacity to manage this stuff. You will be responsible to the charged material and to your own health.
And that enables you to be of service as an empath and HSP in a bigger way.
* The commercial hot water heater blew on the first overnight of our program, causing a flood in the yoga room and no hot water for two days while TMI waited for the equipment and skill to get it replaced (we are in quite the rural area), and then the ice machine broke. The testing of computer slide shows is fine, but the running of them when we are all in the room…um, not so smooth. All I can say is that we don’t mean to blow things out! I think we have some work to do to have big energy and contain it more responsibly too…smile.
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