Anxiety and Empaths...

Most Empaths I know struggle with a degree of anxiety.

Being an Empath is a territory I know VERY well! (Disclaimer: I am an Empath, I am raising two Empaths, and I have the privilege of working with SO many more).?

If you have no idea whether you’re an Empath, here are a few major signs:?

• You’re a great listener and people tend to head to you for “downloads”
• You may be referred to as an “old soul” (no matter how young you are!)
• You absorb the emotional space of those around you and feel it in your body?
• At times you can even feel emotions through seeing visual images
• As a result, you may avoid media centred around violence and pain
• You treat your pets like humans
• You sometimes miss people you haven’t seen in years?
• You don’t love easily but when you do, you love deeply
• You prefer a few deep and meaningful relationships?
• You energise and replenish in nature
• You avoid big crowds and your soul is fed in the quiet

And the one that always makes me giggle because it’s just SO true...

• You take your own car EVERYWHERE because when you want to leave, you want to leave NOW!

If this is you, keep reading...

Here are some reasons why being an Empath so often goes hand-in-hand with anxiety:

• You were born predisposed with heightened sensitivity to your environment. Literally- your brain is wired differently and your mirror neurons are more sensitive.?
• Another reason this awareness “on steroids” may have developed is if you experienced early childhood trauma and you were raised in a home in which your nervous system continually felt unsafe. In this case, that “super aware” wiring developed because your psychological and even physical survival depended on it.
• You had to be incredibly aware of every mood, every facial expression, and every energy in your home to avoid the potential consequences of a raging parent, an abusive parent, a narcissistic parent or a highly manipulative one. (Really - any home in which the “young you” felt unsafe)

This meant, your brain became wired for survival - it became wired in fear and learnt to be hypervigilant AT ALL TIMES - Perfect wiring for anxiety but completely exhausting too!

Whether you are wired genetically or moulded into one, your Empath self is a lot more sensitive than others and therefore becomes a whole lot more anxious about a whole lot more things happening around you.

Here’s another reason: I like to think of Empaths as sponges - we have a LARGE absorption capacity. Our brains are wired to absorb the energy of everyone around us - in our families, in our homes, in school classrooms, in work environments- literally just by entering a room.

The problem is that although our absorption systems work super well, our filtration ones don’t naturally differentiate our emotional space and that of others, and they don’t easily release ALL the absorbed emotions that actually belong to our fellow human beings- anxiety included.

Being an Empath who is sensitive to the emotional space of others is a gift, and many Empaths are healers as a result, BUT on the shadow side, it means we naturally just ARE more prone towards states like depression, anxiety, and stress.?

Part of the journey of being an Empath and learning how NOT to get overwhelmed and burnt out, how to boundary ourselves from the flooding emotions of others and to find calm and balance.

To manage our anxiety, it’s essential to recognize which emotions are our own and which belong to others.

Understanding what’s happening in our nervous systems during times of anxiety, and being able to implement strategies to rewire the brain to calm, is EXACTLY what I teach in my upcoming four-week online course on Understanding Anxiety in Kids and Teens.

We start NEXT WEEK, 10th May @ 8:30pm SAST (recordings will be available for lifetime access).

This is the last intake for the course for 2023. Feedback from around one has just been phenomenal!

Book your seat here for only $127 or R2250 . I cannot wait to begin this empowering journey with you.

With love,

Naomi ??