Empaths, Family Of Origin, Mental Health, Addictions & Food

Our empath abilities usually run in our biological family. If you don't recognize other empaths in your family, you may find that your family struggles with either mental health challenges or chemical addictions. Even healthy empaths may use food to self-medicate in order to suppress the overwhelm that can come from processing other people's emotions.

For all empaths I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the track "Light Projector Exercise for Empaths"
Please join me in our chat group: "Empaths, Intuitives and Sensitives"
Also refer to the playlist "Thriving As An Empath: for HSPs and sensitives also"

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Trevor Lewis,

Author of Thriving as an Empath,

Empowering Your Highly Sensitive Self.

I've been an empath all my life and since 2013 I've been on a mission to help other empaths learn more easily the lessons I have to learn the hard way.

This talk is about empaths,

Our family of origin,

Mental health,

Addictions and food.

I suspect that all of humans are born as empaths,

Although some of us may inherit a much stronger empathic ability through our bloodline than most people.

Most of us have this ability socialized out of us by our parents and a society that just doesn't understand what it means to be an empath.

Most of us that kept our empath abilities needed that skill set to survive our dysfunctional family of origin.

Family of origin is a term that usually includes everybody that had a role to play in our formative child years,

Whether they were blood relatives or non-biological adopted family.

For our purposes here,

I'm including blood relatives,

Especially your biological parents,

Even if you were adopted,

Because there is a much stronger tendency for our empath abilities to be biologically inherited than socially learned.

For more about this,

See my talk,

Factors that Influence Us as Empaths.

Whenever I have a room full of empaths in front of me,

I like to ask,

How many of you know who you inherited your empath abilities from?

Whether it be parents,

Grandparents,

Aunts or uncles,

About a third of the room will put their hand up.

My next question is,

And how many of you have mental health challenges in your family?

Being a misunderstood empath in a family that is trying to conform to the mainstream culture is a huge challenge.

There are plenty of mental health care professionals who are more than happy to provide diagnoses and drugs so that someone who doesn't fit into the mainstream culture has an assigned place.

Of course,

So the same person would be treated as a potential shaman in an indigenous culture.

When I ask this question about mental health,

Another third of the room will put their hand up.

My last question is,

How many of you have chemical addictions,

Drugs or alcohol in your family?

At this point,

I usually have all or nearly all of the remaining hands being raised.

It's hard processing other people's emotions.

One of the attractions of putting chemicals into the body is that it provides a form of escapism.

The physiology is so overloaded processing the chemicals that the emotional input is overwritten.

There is a respite from the emotional overwhelm.

An empath with no other tools can get a sense of peace.

Having mentioned chemical addictions,

It's worth mentioning a less damaging form of self-medication,

Namely food.

Food is a way of overloading the body with mechanics of digestion so that the emotional input is not so overwhelming.

For this reason,

Many empaths end up carrying extra weight.

As you learn to control your abilities,

The need to buffer yourself as a form of protection will fall away and the weight itself can be released.

The point throughout this talk is that struggling empaths need an understanding of their abilities and tools to be able to cope with them in order to become a thriving empath.

I hope you find my other talks here useful in providing more understanding and more tools to help you on your path.

Thank you for listening to this talk.

Thank you for helping yourself learn to become a thriving empath.

Reviews

Thank you!

Really helpful thank you. I can see how this is something I had to embrace to survive but also hid from everyone, myself included

Much Appreciated! Thanks!

Trevor,
I dig the idea of
becoming a TE ~
a thriving empath!
This Summer "24" has been particularly
challenging with a death in my family
and the ensuing energies.
Thank You for giving me
a new tool with which
I can settle down
and begin to
consider thriving!

High Desert Sierra
Christine

Again, thank you Trevor. 🙏🏼 I never thought of it that way, but yes, I can see clearer now what I've used as a buffer for emotional states...
With your talks and live streams, I am learning so much, and the pieces are starting to come together. 🧩

Such an eye opener! Thank you for sharing your wisdom. ✌🏼💕

Interesting point! And it totally makes! Thank you 🙏🏻

This was a fantastic talk. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Namaste, my friend.

Really helpful and I was nodding yes to everything. Except at the end. I wonder how you would view an empath with an inability to eat, that the emotions are so full it’s hard to nourish oneself. I have struggled with this my entire life

Really interesting and informative thank you. I will be looking at your other talks.

More of a teaser than a “talk”, but I got a sense of the speaker and his point of view. I gave it a 5 because it inspired me to check out his other work. I think he is on to something.

Enlightening talk 😃👍🏻
Thank you 🙏 for helping me learn more 💖💖💖💖

Thank you so much! That was an incredibly helpful, insightful talk! 🙏💗🙏

Such an eye opening talk!! I found this very helpful. Thank you🙏

Thank you! This was incredibly helpful and enlightening for me! 🙏

Helpful and practical. Now I’m wondering who my empath ancestor is!

Right on! And at the right time. Thriving empath is my goal.

What Trevor points out makes lots of sense. For me the big about ‘overeating is distracting the brain with digestion’ resonated.

First time listening to
You, and hope to learn more! Fascinating thank you 😊

Interesting, lots of food for thought thank you