I used to see people all wrong.
I used to see people as broken, sick, and anxious.
I saw people as flawed by their sinful and erroneous thinking.
I used to see all the spiritual and mental entities that afflicted them.
I saw their burdens. And, their burdens burdened me.
As an empath, I attuned to and felt their pain, their physical hurt, and mental suffering. I could hear the screams from their private hells.
It was a draining work.
It scared me. I was worried. I felt their powerlessness and confused it as my own powerlessness.
It was so bad that I could hardly breath. It made me want to self-isolate just so that I could hear my own thoughts and feel my own energy.
I spent my energy trying to get rid of their blocks.
I spent much of my career and my energy pushing to make their mental and spiritual world a better place so that I could feel comfortable in it.
Empaths experience this particular problem. Children who have incredible love for their parents or guardians take on their parent's afflictions. Just the other day, for example, I heard a friend say his mother died of Parkinson's disease after his father died of Parkinson's. We take on each other's pain, suffering, disease, and powerlessness with our awareness.
We see it, feel it, hear it and believe it. We live it. We take on their interior reality and feel it as our own.
I also made another mistake.
I saw people for their unloving behavior and for their words. I associated such behaviors as their character. But even then, character is shaped by what we assume, not who we truly are.
I judged them. I labeled them. I avoided them as sources of pain and suffering: people to be avoided at all costs. I labeled people as unclean and felt unloving attitudes and feelings. Most likely, their own.
The mere sight of the person agitated me because I referred to the memory of what they've done. I let that determine how I felt about that person.
I generated from within me bad feelings, physical discomfort, and tension.
When I was a girl, just being around my dad caused panic attacks. I avoided going home and stayed quiet in a fear that I would cause him to fly into a rage.
Energy work is there to help us heal adverse reactions to people and events. It helps us to disconnect the mental, auditory, and sensory connection to them so that we don't feel bad anymore.
I said to my children the other day, "When I see you hurt each other, it hurts me."
Why do I give that power? I realized I needed to feel differently.
I allowed what I saw, felt, heard, and physically sensed to invoke fear, panic, worry, and anxiety in me. I summoned all of my creative power to fix what I saw so that I could feel better now. What I learned the other day, after my mom and friend Beth brought to my attention, is that it burns me out.
What, though, was the source of the problem?
I was unable to see people for who they really are.
Somewhere along the line I internalized my exterior experiences and even those psychic ones where I can empathize with other's feelings, thoughts, and emotions. I felt their pain, suffering, and sadness. There was a secondary benefit to that, of course. I was able to help people help themselves and change their lives in every way for the better.
The urge to help and heal others was because I felt their discomfort and pain. What I saw caused me pain, suffering, and overwhelmed me. I spun around in the machinations of their own mind. I used all of my mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical resources to make their world better so that my world would literally feel better. I worried that if they're not in a good mental or emotional place, then they'll cause me to be in a bad mental or emotional place. I gave them that power over me with my awareness alone.
I realize now that this was the error of my ways. And, it caused me suffering and cost me precious moments with my children and home life.
If you are a parent or a partner to someone, you may worry like I did about my kids or husband. Because their mental states were unstable, you felt your life was unstable. That is just simply is not the case. You may have put your life on hold or allowed parts of your life to get bad because you were busy putting out their fires. I have also done this for clients and people I called friends. It's not a healthy place to be. It's not a healthy way to love others.
Say this prayer with me,
"Dear God in Me, I realize that I failed to see people for who they truly are. Allow me to see others as whole, healthy, well, and joyful. Allow me to be aware of the resources available to them that are inherently in them. Allow me to be aware from this moment on and until my last breath of the wholeness in others and in myself. Amen."
So, what will I do from now on? That gives me hope.
I know that I am free from any urge to heal or help "broken people". I know that their stories are simply stories and they don't have any emotive, energetic, or mental power over me. I no longer believe their stories, but I believe in them - them as incredible life force in charge of their own spiritual growth.
I know that I'm going to focus on the good and to create more good in my life with my life force. I promise myself that I will not give any more of my life force to pain, suffering, and worry. I will use my faculties to simply be an example of health, wealth, and happiness rather than a source.
I won't be doing healing work any more. There is nothing to heal, only to affirm. I'm curious to see what I create next and how I express that.
I am becoming more and more aware of the wholeness in everyone and maintain visions of the very best version in them.
I promise I will discipline my mind to attune to the wealth of resources available in me and to turn my mind away from lack, disease, and suffering. Because, I know, in doing so the light that comes from doing that dispels the darkness.
I was acutely aware of suffering, harm, hurt, and pain so that I could pinpoint it and heal it. But, I don't need to do that anymore to achieve the desired result. What I can do is see the good and dwell in that and allow the affirmation of that goodness to heal the discord in others.
I don't have any more time, money, energy, and focus for pain, suffering, hurt, harm, and worry. I only have resources for health, wealth, happiness, joy, and peace.
I'm going to do me but I'm going to do me differently.
Have you experience the same? Let me know in the comments.