Balancing Your Energy as an Empath

Do you walk out of the house and feel everyone’s energy? It’s so exhausting to feel people’s energy when you are an empath. Dr Judith Orloff is a pioneer in the field of empaths; she describes an empath as those who absorb the world's joys and stresses like emotional sponges.

I'm an empath and I have been an empath for a very long time. I mean, probably since the day I was born, most of the gifts come to you throughout your younger years. I remember this was kind of a funny story. When I was about six, we were watching TV and there was this man singing on the TV and I had to get up and leave the room. I was in my own living room watching this man on TV, and yet his energy made me so sick to my stomach. I had to leave the room and I went into the kitchen and I said mommy, I don't like that man, he's making me sick. She said never say that, that's a horrible thing to say about people. That man who was singing on tv turned out to be one of the worst pedophiles and a very awful man in real life, filled with lots of anger and I could feel his energy even at that age, and I swear on a stack of bibles.

When I was about eight, I was walking home from school one day and back then we had safe houses. Some women stayed home all day, and those women who were staying home would put a sign in their window in the neighborhood saying “I'm home” and they would be called safe houses. So if you were in any kind of trouble you could run to that house, which is really a wonderful community working together, which I loved and it actually saved me.

I was walking home, my mom was not home, and there was a car parked on the side of the street. As I was walking, a guy was standing outside, a young guy in his late 20s, with his trunk open, and I noticed that on the corner behind me was a safe house. My friend Amy's mom was home, but mine was past the car. I had to walk past that car to get to my house and he said, “Come on over. I've got candy” and I looked at him and immediately, I could feel it. I felt his energy and I said, no, thank you. He responded, “Well, my dog is lost and I need you to help me find it”. And I said, “I can't help you with that. I'm sorry” And he said “well, come here”. As he started walking towards me. So I ran back to that safe house.

The next morning, not even two blocks from me, a little girl was found behind the bleachers of the park, dead. So when we're an empath, when we have a gift, it's a gift. We have these empaths or clairvoyants and it's not woo-woo. It is a gift. We have to learn how to use our wonderful gift, because if we don't learn how to use our wonderful gift, it turns into our greatest fault.

Now my mom, she was extremely talented. She didn't even realize it because it scared her. She was someone who would get signs if someone was going to die. She could see people who had passed on it scared her so much. She wanted to shut it down, shut it down. Shut it down. Well, guess what? She had problems with it her whole life. It haunted her.

I was lucky my dad was a little more open-minded and he called it a really strong intuition. He said that I needed to foster this gift. He asked me, how did you know not to go in that car? And I said, Daddy, I could feel it. He said, okay, you've got a really good intuition. Then he said, how do you feel when you walk into your classroom? I said some days it feels really good, sometimes I can tell if a kid is sick and I can always tell what the teacher's mood is right away. My dad said, I'm going to teach you how to use what you know when you walk into a place and how you can change the energy.

I know people who are older, who won't leave their homes because they can't take the heaviness of other people's energy. And right now, folks, the energy, a lot of people are starting to wake up, that's a very overused word. But they're trying; they're starting to get this new feeling that, hey, I'm going to start taking more power in my life. I'm going to start taking more responsibility for creating the world I want to create. Whenever you hear someone say, they're awakening, that's really what they mean. When you’re an empath, it's a powerful gift, and you have the power to change the energy of the world.

You know, it only takes 13% of the population to change any mass consciousness. That's science. For you to even start to harness that wonderful gift, like my dad taught me, it's been the greatest thing I've ever done. I'm going to give you two ways to start. 

First of all, you have to ground yourself, if you do not ground yourself, how in the heck do you deal with all the surprises of the day? Do you want to bounce around like a ping pong ball or do you want to feel centered? You can get so stuck into your head, you're not living in this world as an empath. Go outside into your yard, right before you leave, just step outside first thing in the morning, plant your feet on the ground, you can wear shoes, it's okay. I want you to close your eyes. I want you to feel your feet going down from your hips, just like the roots of a tree or the base of a mountain going down into the ground, and thank the earth, thank this incredible planet we live on, thank the spirit of the earth. If you're really into spirituality, Gaia, or whatever you want to thank, just thank something and allow the roots of your feet and the energy, that's what you're doing, you're allowing the energy to go down into the earth and then allow the earth to come up and feed you. Put your hands above your head at a point, pointed up into the sky. That's the peak of the mountain; close your eyes and ask for the beautiful universe, God or whatever spirit, to bring that beautiful light down to your hands, down into your body and all the way down to your feet. Bring this beautiful light around yourself and keep it with you throughout your day.

After grounding, if you still feel like that day is just a mass consciousness hitting you, you need to put a beautiful light around yourself. This light does not keep you separate from the world, but it helps to filter that outside energy. If you have worked with guardian angels or guides, I ask for my guide to help me, who I call Joan. I always say to Joan, can I have a beautiful white light that goes all the way around above and below around me. I will put my hand and allow it to go all the way around me and I feel that beautiful white light does help me tremendously because the energy can be overwhelming for me too. I can also soak up the energies, and I'm sure you can too, and then I'm stuck with them and I don't want to be.

So I put a little bit of energy around me and I go throughout my day. Now there's one more thing then, so say you're walking into the room, you've got your protection around you; you can still feel that energy of the room, but now that you have that wonderful little energy around you, now you are in control of changing the energy of that room.

When I used to go to workshops, a friend of mine, Harris used to say that every time I walked into the room, he would always know because I changed the room's energy. That's how you use your powers as an empath. Always for the good.

You've got to keep your own vibration high. You've got to do things for yourself that help your own vibration to rise because if your vibration isn't good and you're putting a shield around you, you're stuck with your energy. So you've got to also make sure your energy is up.