Hello,
And welcome to this talk on empaths and emotional awareness.
My name is Ana Kondrueva.
I am a licensed therapist,
A meditation teacher,
And an empath.
Empaths are people who have a heightened ability to sense and feel the emotions,
Energies,
And even physical sensations of those around them.
They don't just observe someone else's feelings,
They actually feel them as if they were their own.
This quality of empaths is both their strength and their challenge.
In this talk,
I will explore emotional awareness as the first building block of being a skilled,
Conscious empath.
Overall,
When it comes to self-awareness,
There are seven general categories of things we could be aware of about ourselves.
The first one is our mind.
This means the simple thoughts and the sense of having a consciousness.
The second one is our body,
The sensations in the body,
Where they are,
And what they remind us of.
The third is our spirit,
The connection to a higher power or our higher self,
Something outside of us that can guide and inspire us.
The fourth is our intellect.
This is different from our mind as it involves more complex thoughts,
Mental analysis,
Decision-making,
And problem-solving.
The fifth is our soul.
The soul is what makes you,
You.
It's where you feel that sense of fulfillment after having a good meal or listening to music you like.
The sixth is our emotions,
And this is the category I will focus on in this talk.
And the seventh one is our environment or our social self,
Meaning the social role we play due to our environment.
For empaths,
It's important to develop self-awareness in all of these categories,
Because as long as we are focusing on ourselves,
We are not absorbing other people's emotions and energies.
If you are focusing on what's happening for you rather than for another person,
You are temporarily turning your empath gift off.
I want to specifically talk about emotions because that's where a lot of empaths actually feel their gift coming through,
By feeling other people's emotions.
As an empath,
It's vital that you learn how to hold space for your emotions,
Even the most painful ones.
Developing self-awareness will help you distinguish between what feelings are your own and what feelings belong to others.
The empath that learns to witness their feelings instead of absorbing the feelings of others and reacting from their scared inner child is the healthy empath.
Culturally speaking,
In the Western world,
We don't value emotions.
We value rationality.
This has resulted in an entire society being unaware of our feelings because we were taught to ignore our bodies and stifle our emotional reactions.
The very first step to increasing emotional self-awareness is to ask,
What am I feeling right now?
The only way to know the answer is to ask consistently and wait for the body or your intuition to answer.
The second thing you need to learn to ask yourself is,
Why am I feeling this way?
If you know the why,
You can learn to avoid certain people or situations that consistently upset or trigger you.
You can also spend more time with people or situations that bring you peace and joy.
Knowing the cause of your emotion helps you to heal,
Especially if you have a trauma history.
You can integrate your traumatic experiences over time so they will no longer cause big challenging emotions.
Learning what you are feeling and why you are feeling it is so important for empaths because that's the best way to start distinguishing whether you've absorbed someone else's emotions.
You simply cannot separate yourself from someone else's emotions and energy if you aren't even aware that you've merged with them.
So the third step for empaths is to ask,
Is this emotion or energy mine?
Non-empaths don't have to ask themselves this,
But they can still benefit from the first two steps of self-awareness,
The what and the why.
But as an empath,
Asking this third question,
Does this belong to me,
Is quite important.
Because if you determine that this emotion or energy is not yours,
You can then try to cleanse it from your field and respond in a calm manner to whatever is triggering you.
If you determine that the emotion is yours,
Then I would encourage you to sit with it and feel it because emotions often come with an opportunity to release something and to learn how to nurture your inner child.
And you might ask,
Well,
Isn't that last step only important if I'm in the presence of other people?
You might be surprised to learn that no,
Empaths can generally pick up other people's energies and emotions even when they are not physically present.
Sometimes just thinking about a person rubs their emotions off on us.
Or we can also tune into the collective emotional field of our neighborhood,
Our country,
Etc.
So the more self-aware an empath becomes,
The easier it is for them to avoid taking on the emotional states of other people.
This in turn allows the empath to notice triggers and respond to situations instead of reacting to them.
As an empath,
You need to regularly take mindful breaks to notice and name what you are feeling.
To do this,
You simply need to close your eyes,
Turn inwards,
And pay attention to your feelings and sensations.
Then use your own knowledge or an external tool to name the emotion.
There are apps you can use to help you name your emotions,
Or you can simply search online for a feelings wheel.
The wheel will contain many words for emotions,
And you simply look around for a word that describes your emotion in the moment.
Another tool that really helps empaths is journaling about emotions.
Writing down your thoughts and feelings will allow you to gain insight into yourself and explore potential causes behind your reactions and behavior patterns more deeply than you would otherwise be able just through observation alone.
Journaling can help you become more aware of your inner world and better understand your own emotional needs so that you may begin taking steps towards addressing them.
If you develop a habit of journaling about your emotional state for even five minutes a day,
You will be on your way to becoming a more skilled empath.
Some possible journaling prompts for you are How do my emotions feel in my body right now?
What emotions have I absorbed from others today and which emotions truly belong to me?
When was the last time I felt deeply at peace,
And what contributed to that feeling?
Finally,
Empaths need to develop some kind of regular mindfulness practice.
Mindfulness teaches you how to become an outside observer to your emotions.
In a way,
It teaches you to step out of your own energy field and distinguish what's present there and what belongs to you and what doesn't.
Mindfulness meditation and body scans are a great way to get started with basic mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a muscle,
And just like any muscle,
It needs regular practice to become strong.
And I want to address one misconception about mindfulness.
Being mindful does not mean that you are having no thoughts whatsoever in your head.
Quite the opposite,
You might encounter a lot of thoughts as you try to do mindfulness meditation or a body scan.
The key is to notice when you start drifting into your thoughts and then gently and non-judgmentally return yourself to a mindful state.
Every time you notice that your attention drifted and returned is like doing a rep for your mindfulness muscle.
In summary,
Emotional awareness is a very important skill for empaths to develop,
And they can work on it by noticing their emotions,
Naming them,
And understanding where those emotions are coming from.
They can do so by using a feelings app or a feelings wheel,
Journaling,
And engaging in mindful activities.
Thank you for listening and for honoring the beautiful,
Sensitive soul that you are.
Remember,
Your empathy is a gift to the world,
And caring for yourself ensures you can continue to share it from a place of strength and wholeness.
May you continue to shine your radiant light on everyone around you.
Namaste.
