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What if your sensitivity isn't a weakness, but a superpower waiting to be harnessed? Join me, Shannon, on Starseed Evolution as I unravel the mysteries of being an empath, sharing my own journey from misunderstanding to embracing this unique gift. Through analogies and personal experience, I illuminate the often-overlooked nuances of living with a highly sensitive nervous system. This episode invites you to explore the profound ability empaths have to feel others' emotions, and how it shapes their worlds in ways both challenging and beautiful.
As we navigate through these insights, I lay the groundwork for future explorations into the essential tools that can empower empaths to thrive. By highlighting a key technique that will be detailed in upcoming episodes and offering a glimpse into a 10-day course on Insight Timer, I aim to equip you with the knowledge to manage and harness your sensitivity effectively. Whether you're an empath seeking understanding or someone eager to comprehend the empathic experience, this journey promises to enrich your perspective and encourage self-care and emotional resilience. Thank you for being a part of this transformative conversation on Starseed Evolution.
Thank you for music by: Chris Collins of Indie Music Box and Blue Dot Sessions
Hi, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Shannon, and this is Starseed Evolution, bringing the wisdom and insight of the cosmos to you. I'm grateful that you're listening. You're so sensitive. Just calm down, lighten up.
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These are some of the phrases that I often heard, not only growing up, but even in my adult years. Well, it turns out that, yes, in fact, I am indeed so sensitive, which leads me into talking about what our episode will be about today about being either an empath or a highly sensitive person. This is the absolute definition of being an empath or highly sensitive person. Yes, we are very sensitive, but no, don't need to calm down or lighten up. Yes, we need to understand ourselves better so that we can better navigate our nervous systems, which are heightened almost all the time. So how can we do that? How can we take care of our sensitivity so that it's not so overwhelming? I'd like to spend this episode today talking more about what it means to be an empath or highly sensitive person, and then use it as a foundation so that, in future episodes down the road, I begin to bring different tools or techniques to highly sensitive or empathic people so that they better learn to work with this gift of sensitivity. Instead of being overwhelmed all the time, I to have empathy and how an empath is a step further beyond this definition.
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Having empathy is being able to place yourself in someone else's shoes metaphorically and with compassion, listen and understand what they might be going through, even if you yourself have not experienced these same things that a person might share with you. Having empathy means that you have a good ear for listening to others, as well as having compassion to take in another's story and seeing if there's a way that you can just be present for people where they're at in that moment. Now, being an empath or highly sensitive person takes this a step further, in that that same person who might be sharing their story with you not only do you imagine putting yourself in their shoes, but as an empath, you can actually feel the feelings inside your body of what this person is experiencing. It's not something that you're choosing to do, but as an empath with a very highly sensitive nervous system, you're able to pick up these feelings or emotions that somebody else is experiencing literally as the same feeling inside yourself. This is why it becomes so important to understand how to work with your empathic abilities or gifts.
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Many times, being an empath means this is something that you're born with, that this is hardwired as part of your nervous system. Your body is like an antenna, able to pick up all these signals from the environment and people around you. The reason this can be overwhelming is because maybe, if you don't realize what's happening, it can feel as if the feelings you're experiencing inside yourself either in environments or listening to another story is that it feels like it is your own feeling. That's why, in my professional life, I spend a lot of time both with individual clients as well as online teaching tools of learning to work with your sensitivity as something that is a gift, but something that doesn't always feel like a gift because of those feelings that we carry inside of ourselves. So I'm going to give you a picture about what it's like to have an empathic body versus somebody who does not. The image is this Imagine the person who is not an empath being like a vehicle that is a regular four-door, four-volt, automatic car who goes from place to place and gets their errands done, versus someone who's an empath. Their vehicle or body is like driving a high-powered V12 Ferrari is like driving a high-powered V12 Ferrari. At any minute it could spin out of control if you don't know how to drive it. The difference between the two cars is like that for empaths, who have a very fast and highly sensitive nervous system that literally picks up any little changes all the time from the environment around them. That's why it becomes so important to maintain our bodies as empaths or sensitive people, so we don't break down or lose control or spin out.
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It wasn't until my mid-twenties that I figured out what being an empath meant. So my whole life up until that point, that aha moment of what it meant to be an empath. All that previous time as a sensitive child yes, I was sensitive and everything did feel so overwhelming, but I didn't realize why it was like that. And so I was often called sensitive, but from a more negative or shaming framework, not because friends or family meant to hurt me, only that it was trying to help me to let things go more quickly or get over the emotions that I was having. So when in my 20s, when I figured out what it meant to be an empath, I could kind of go back and look at my childhood and understand like, oh, I wasn't overreacting in that, yes, I was having these experiences, I just didn't know how to work with them. So learning the tools over the last 20 years to help myself regulate my nervous system has become important for me in being able to really take care of myself. In future episodes beyond today's, I'll share many different tools and walk you through how to use those tools so that you can learn to regulate yourself, care for your feelings, learn to tend that emotional framework and learn how to regulate the nervous system of your Ferrari body the nervous system of your Ferrari body.
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Here are some traits of being highly sensitive or empathic, one that you might be sensitive to a lot of noise, sound and bright light. You may be sensitive to the energy of large crowds. You might tend to be more introverted. You can also be extroverted, but extroverted empaths usually are first introverted and need to care for their energy. Another trait is picking up feelings of situations around you. You can also feel the emotions of others, either those who are in the same room with you or, if you're deeply connected to friends or family member, you might experience their emotions from a distance. That's why it's difficult sometimes as an empath, because you can feel what someone's experiencing even if they haven't told you, and that is why, until you know what they're going through, you understand that, oh, this wasn't what I was feeling. This was what the other person was experiencing.
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So why is it important, as an empath or highly sensitive person, to learn to care for ourselves? Here's the thing Just because we're sensitive doesn't mean that the people around us who might not be as sensitive, we can't expect them to be soft and gentle with us all the time. It becomes then important because you're going to find yourselves in many different situations the importance of caring for ourself, setting boundaries and learning other tools of how to navigate our nervous system, so that we know what's best for ourselves. It is my feeling that life works on a scale of balances. Empathic and highly sensitive people are here, living on earth right now to balance the scales of allowing humans to stay human, to be in their feelings, to have open hearts, to have compassion for those who are facing difficult situations, so that we don't turn away being able to have the humanity to be with others, whether it's people, the environment, animals, trees, our water systems. All those things need us to be sensitive. That vulnerability is what our human selves need to stay in an aspect of love, so that we continue to care for one another.
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If you see the name of this podcast as Starseed Evolution, the evolution as an empath one is to begin to see your sensitivity as a gift, even when it's difficult. The evolution of an empath is also to learn to help yourself, not just to cope with what is happening through you, but really care and tend to your body so that you can be part of life and not feel like you have to be separate. Just like I used the example of being a Ferrari, if you had that highly sensitive of a vehicle, you would make sure to get it maintained all the time so it didn't break down. And that same thing is required of us as empathic people. And to evolve as an empath is also to learn to maintain your nervous system, to not let it shut down, to not try and hide it or numb it really to understand it.
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Many spiritual gifts are often a double-edged sword. When we accept this sensitivity, we also accept that it requires a lot of care. The other part of learning to care for yourself is that becoming discerning about your own energy, about who you are, also means some people, when they understand that you are sensitive, highly compassionate. There are some people who may try to take advantage of your empathy to manipulate your feelings. This requires us, in our empathic abilities, to also have the strength to place healthy boundaries in place, to see what is best for us, so that we're not manipulated by others. The appropriate tools of discernment allow you to make the most wise choices for yourself Now.
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Today, we spent more time in talking about what it means to be highly sensitive, what it means to be empathic and the reason for learning how to take care of ourselves.
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This foundation will then be a good start so that in future episodes, when I share tools, you know the place that I came from. In this foundational episode, which leads me to our next episode, we'll be walking through our first tool together. Is this mine? This is one of the most important tools that you'll have in your toolbox of caring for yourself, and if you don't want to wait until the next episode for the next tool, I also have a 10-day course Tools for Empathic and Highly Sensitive People empathic and highly sensitive people and it's available through the platform insight timer, the meditation app. I'll put the link in the show notes so that you can check out that course if you'd like to take it. My hope is this that by sharing the definition, sharing the understanding, sharing that aha moment is that we find the beauty inherent in our own sensitive selves. Thank you so much for being on this journey with me. I'm Shannon, this is Starseed Evolution, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.
