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The hardest but most essential skill for an empath to master is boundaries on the emotional plane with others.  Empaths, who are highly developed at processing emotional energy, especially for others, naturally take the emotional energy of the people in their environment on themselves.  When we are in relationship with dissociated people, their unwanted emotional energy feels like our own energy, and we must make ourselves feel better by processing it for them.  The empath becomes the advocate or the defender of the dissociated person.

I had the very interesting experience of observing a family in which one of the members was nearly completely cut off from her heart.  (See the essay, Emotional Dissociation---Achievement Oriented for more information on this type of personality)  In this case, the dissociated person's mother had the role of emotional advocate.  The young woman was in a symbiotic relationship with the mother in which she achieved and achieved in an attempt to earn her mother's approval and love.  The mother in return felt pride and some ownership of her daughter's accomplishments.   Although this was an unconscious behavior on both the young woman's part (when asked, she had no idea why she was driven in such a way) and the mother's part (the mother would be horrified at the thought that her daughter had to earn her love), it was obvious that the young woman was unconsciously fulfilling all her mother's expectations of what it meant to be a successful person in life.

Because of the young woman's lack of emotional awareness, she tended to put people off and did not pick up on the cues of others around her who were more emotionally aware.  As a result, her mother either defended her daughter or made excuses for her when anyone mentioned her daughter's behavior.  Also, the daughter brought so many achievements home to her mother that her mother tended to focus on those instead.  Any faults of her daughter were easily explained away as a side-effect of genius.  Since the mother was taking care of the daughter's emotional energy, the mother also did all the worrying about her daughter's behavior.  The boundaries between them were poor---the daughter was not allowed to have anything but a close relationship with her mother or risk her mother's unhappiness.  At one point the daughter began an affair.  Because the daughter feared her mother would not understand her situation, she withdrew, but planned on resuming closeness once her chosen man was separated from his wife.

The mother instinctively knew that her daughter was engaged in an affair, but did not directly confront her.  Instead the mother waited expectantly and then frustratedly for her daughter to confide in her.  They became locked in an unspoken power struggle in which the mother expected the daughter to talk to her. The daughter refused, unconsciously knowing that avoiding her mother's disapproval was the best for her own emotional stability.  However, the mother held to her role of emotional advocate and did all the worrying and processed all the stress that her daughter was going through.  When I spoke to the daughter about her internal state, the daughter was unaware of her stress or her mother's and did not fully understand why she was keeping her mother in the dark.  She could not see that she was hurting her mother by her withdrawal.  The daughter did not have the emotional depth to understand her behavior or its affects on others.  When I sat in a room with the two women, the tension between them was thicker than I could stand, and I had to actually leave the room.  The daughter, however, insisted that all was well between them.  This kind of lack of awareness is very common for emotionally dissociated people. 

What was interesting for me was the pull of the vacuum created when an emotionally dissociated person loses their advocate.  This young woman's mother died about a year after I had met them.  As the strongest empath in their circle, I had the experience of being dragged in as the new emotional advocate.  Even though I understood what was happening, I found that it was very difficult not to process the emotional energy for this young woman.  When she was in situations that others would find stressful (and that I found intolerable) I would literally process her stress right through my body.  I suffered heart palpitations, lost sleep, and worried about her constantly.  Even though I knew I needed to stay away from her, I kept asking her for more inside information on how she was doing.  Being dissociated, this young woman told me horrifying, crazy things about her affair, but was totally unaware of the craziness because she had successfully shifted the awareness of the stress on to me.  My observations on her relationship were either met by a spacey acknowledgment or a denial.   It became so uncomfortable for me that I began to have a stake in how she behaved.  In effect, her emotional state became my emotional state, and her business became my business. 

I knew that I was enmeshed in a very strange way with this person, and that my emotional and physical health were suffering because of it.  The young woman couldn't understand why her affair had anything to do with my psychic health, since by her dissociation she only had access to the literal plane and could not understand the dynamics on the emotional plane.  I had to resort to talking about the behavior of her lover instead of the emotional cost to me in order for her to understand.  Unfortunately, I did not end the relationship until it began to affect me directly on the literal level.  (Her lover began taking an interest in me when he discovered that I was her emotional support and began intercepting my emails.)  If I had been able to erect good boundaries while events were still in just the emotional plane and not yet acted out on the literal, I might have been able to spare myself pain.  Looking back on it I realized that by having her emotional energy processed by someone else her whole life, the young woman was actually being kept in an emotionally fragile state, and I was doing her a disservice by playing into the dynamic that kept her unconscious and undeveloped emotionally.  In fact, by processing her energy I was preventing her from failing, and for emotionally dissociated people who are achievement oriented, failure is the quickest way to self-realization and health.

For the young woman, when it finally registered that I was so horrified by the behavior of her lover that I was going to have nothing to do with him even if he left his wife, she became involved with another man whom she realized that I and the rest of her family would like.   For me, this was probably the most disturbing part of dealing with a dissociated person---this woman had finally looked outside herself to make sure she was being approved of, and when she saw she wasn't, she immediately shifted gears.  Much of the betrayal this young woman felt toward me was that she had made things right by her standards, but I would not forgive her for her "bad breakup".  She was not in a position to see that it was the underlying patterns on the emotional plane that had made me decide to leave the relationship.  She insisted that she would never make that same mistake again, not understanding that with her next crisis, her stress would once again be fed to me.  I knew, even with my awareness, that I would not be able to fend her energy off.  For myself, I could only be glad that I had removed myself from a very weird and draining situation.  Explaining this to others in the family was nearly impossible.  Most of us do not value the emotional plane, and cannot see how we are enmeshed with others.  In this young woman's particular family, the appearance of harmony and togetherness were more important than how the individuals in the family were actually feeling.  This breeds the perfect environment for unhealthy emotional awareness. 

Interestingly enough, after I left the relationship, the aunt of the young woman took on the role of emotional advocate.  Before becoming an advocate this aunt, who was somewhat intimidated by her niece's ability to achieve in life, stated that she didn't understand her niece, didn't know what her niece wanted, and was upset at her niece for withdrawing from her sister who had died. Only a few months before taking on her new role she had told me she knew I would only end a relationship if it was necessary.  Soon after becoming an advocate she was disapproving towards me for leaving the relationship.  Anything remotely negative was interpreted as a condemnation of her niece.  The aunt was even willing to act the hypocrite by ending relationships with others who chose not to associate with her niece for the same reasons I did.  This aunt could no longer keep separate her niece's emotional pain and her own emotional pain.  She took care of her niece's pain by refusing to have relationships with those she thought had wronged her niece.  Her defense of her niece sounded suspiciously like that of her sister, and like me only a few months before.

The key sign that an empath has been roped in as the processor for the dissociated person is when our psychic and emotional health depend on the actions of the dissociated person, and we did not agree to this dependency.  If that happens it's very likely that we've been overwhelmed by the dynamic between dissociated person and empath.  We will tend to not be able to stop ourselves from our involvement with the dissociated person.  We will also make excuses for the dissociated person's behavior, even though under normal circumstances we would not tolerate such behavior.   Unfortunately for the empath, to the outside world she looks like she is not minding her own business, and so few are sympathetic.  On the emotional plane, this unwanted energy is flowing through her.  Taking care of that emotional energy IS her business because it is in her system.  It is the empath's responsibility to take care of herself once she becomes conscious she is stuck in this dynamic.  She can either break the agreement and negotiate a new contract so she isn't made ill by the relationship, or she can consciously process the energy for this person, but by choice.

More coming soon on how to renegotiate these relationships