-
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Like My Facebook page
-
Recent Posts
-
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. Find out more here: Privacy & Cookie Policy
Category Archives: Drama Triangle
Motivations of the Empath Ebook now Available
Hello Everyone! I am very excited to announce that FINALLY my ebook on the Motivations of the Empath is now available. I have been working on this collection of essays off and on for the past several years. It’s time … Continue reading
Fan-Hero Family System Ebook Now Available
Hello Everyone! I’ve just posted a new ebook on my website in the shop called The Empath and the Hero-Fan Family System. I first published these essays in 2009. These essays have been revised and expanded. If you are an Empath and … Continue reading
The Dangers of the Pedestal
Hi Everyone! This week I’ve had two people ask me questions about relationship issues that all stemmed from a pattern of behavior that I like to call Putting Others on a Pedestal. In one case one person was put on the … Continue reading
The Power of Story and Projection
Hi Everyone,
Fall has finally arrived here in Portland bringing with it an end to 80 degree days and sunshine. I so love this change in season! In the past several weeks I’ve noticed two topics come up with my clients repeatedly–identification with a Story, and Projection of the conclusions of that Story out onto others. So, I thought I would discuss this more in the Empath Telecall; the next one is this Friday at noon pacific time. These two topics of so important because we create our lives through our Stories and our Beliefs, and we have so much external reinforcement of our Stories and Beliefs that they begin to feel like facts rather than something that we have control over and can personally change.
From the shaman’s perspective, once we get to know our Story, we can change it and use a different, more empowering story, which manifests our lives in a better way for us. Some of these disempowering stories become so embedded in our system that we need help digging out those stories and their beliefs. But once we understand our stories and our patterned way of thinking about ourselves, we gain more control of our lives. Empaths in general have a typical group of stories that we like to tell ourselves. We tend to have great imaginations and live in fantasy and romatic story, we tend to need rescuing (which leads to problems with personal responsibility), or we tend to waste time rescuing others (the flip side of the Drama Triangle), we tend to be perfectionists which leads us to be painfully self-conscious, and we tend to have tragic stories that lead us to concentrate on the past sorrowfully instead of move forward into our creativity. As we become healthy, we can change these stories around and gain strength and wisdom from them instead.
Most of us have experienced traumas or unhappy experiences in our past that stuck with us for so long, that they repeat themselves in our current life. We tend to interpret our current experience through these past experiences, and draw similar conclusions. In psychology, this is called projection. From the shaman perspective, however, projection is also a energetic and vibrational experience as well, meaning that we will in the literal plane draw to us the players that we need to play out the roles in our particular story and make it very easy to project. If we have a pattern that plays out repeatedly, the shaman can help dismantle it, and teach the client how to recognize the pattern and the typical projection that comes with it. This is hard hard personal work because when each of us project unconsciously, it seems like the world is the way it is, rather than it originating from us–it is a blind spot for us, although it might be quite obvious what the blindspot is for others looking in! But from the shaman perspective, each of us is the source of our reality, and each of us is responsible for everything that we create.
This is both frightening and empowering, because it means that by changing our internal world, we can change our literal external world for the better. All we need to do is start with ourselves and our own innerworld. This is good news for the Empath who loves looking at the innerworld, but it is also a challenge. Some of our most powerful patterns come from our family system. We take on our role in the family and the belief system, and if we do not become conscious, that belief system can so run our lives that we do not have much choice in how our lives unfold. However, breaking out of a family belief system can be incredibly painful and confusing, depending on how unhealthy the belief system was for us, and how ingrained our family members will still be in holding it together. The pull from these types of patterns can literally feel like they have a life force all their own.
If you’d like to learn more, or share your personal experiences with these topics, please feel free to join me on Friday, or write to me here on my blog. Here’s to doing the personal work in order to live a happy and free life!
much love,
Elaine
Continue reading
The Empath and Archetype
Hi Everyone,
I hope you all are enjoying this beautiful summer! In Portland we’re starting another thankfully short heatwave after a few weeks of cool days in the 70’s. I had an interesting synchronistic experience last week that I wanted to share with you. As most of you know, when synchronicity is in action, Spirit is in action–we’ve stepped out of linear time and into circular time. It’s a cool and magical experience. I had this plus the veil between waking time and dream time lift briefly to give me a glimpse into my own healing process. What magic, but whoa!
As all of you know I’ve been working on a series of essays to collect into a book for the past two years based on the healing journey of most Empaths. What I’ve concluded from working with clients and from my own personal healing work is that Archetypal forces shape our lives more than we might think. Our lives feel very personal to us (especially if we have the Archetype of Empath) but in the larger picture, we are living out similar archetypal patterns. So, my book and my Empath Telecall have been centered around these archetypal forces so we can understand what is happening to us and step out of archetypal forces, or at least use the best parts of the archetype for our benefit.
For the past three calls I have been pulling lessons out of my own personal story to illustrate the collective force of the Family, and how that force can be so strong we may not break free of it to lead the lives that we might choose for ourselves. I had been afraid that I might step too strongly into my own personal story when it came to describing the archetype of the Fan, because in my past people with the Fan archetype have irritated and disappointed me greatly. (The Fan is the archetype that is most concerned about the group and maintaining the group or family, even at the expense of the individuals involved.)
The night before I held my telecall I had a dream in which tornados were taking out the buildings of my college campus. I had looked behind me, and two tornados were tearing a building apart. As I turned my head to the right, three more tornados were taking out another building. Now I was terrified and afraid that I was going to be caught in the twisters and killed. I started to run. But, when I looked ahead of me, two more tornados were destroying yet another building. In that moment I understood that I was not going to survive this, and my fear went away. It was OK to let myself die.
I woke up feeling well rested, oddly enough, given the dream! Usually I do not know until the last minute who will be on these telecalls. As it turned out in this call all the participants had Fan mothers (including me.) The lecture that I had prepared was pertinent personally to each of them, and it made such a difference as to how they were viewing their relationships with their Fan mothers. In fact, the call helped me understand my own mother, and the Fans in my husband’s family better as well. Spirit brought the right participants, and my worries about becoming too personal were unfounded; after all, I was talking about the collective’s archetypal patterns.
The next day my husband and I were at the park with our toddler son. We were talking about the insights I had come to from giving my telecall, and how we could let the anger and guilt we still had at leaving his family system die. While we were happy that we had escaped the powerful group think so we could have the lives that we really wanted, there were still parts of us that cycled between guilt and anger at having done so. Of course, the remaining guilt and the anger are residues of the strength of influence the family group think had over us.
As we talked about this, on my right, just out of my arms reach, a dust devil stirred up. It swirled into a mini twister about a dozen feet tall, threw up bark chips in my hair, my husband’s hair, then moved past me to my son and threw chips into his hair, then it chased a toddler across the park before dissipating. We started laughing at this, given my dream of two days before. We were getting cleaned out to the very roots, and not only had I seen it in dream time, I had seen it in waking time, too. Progress in our healing made, with comfirmation from Spirit!
I love working with Spirit! Healing work is usually a mixture of hard work and joy at the freedom coming our way when we really step in to the path of power. But for me, those meetings of Spirit making the huge signs are the most rewarding. I hope this story helps you step in and claim those places where you are still giving your personal power away instead of using it for your own creativity and joy.
much love,
Elaine
Continue reading
Posted in Boundaries, Creativity, Destiny Retrieval, Drama Triangle, Dreams, Empathy, Energetic Contracts, Energy Healing, Generational Imprints, Guidance, Life Transition, Manifestation, Myth and Archetype, Relationships, Removing Obstacles, Soul Path/Purpose, synchronicity, Vibes and Hits
Leave a comment
Shamanic Work and Family System Reinforcement
Hello Everyone,
I just recently returned from working with Marv and Shanon Harwood of Kimmapii Energies up in Alberta, Canada. This was a great opportunity for me to revisit the South work of Shedding what no longer Serves, plus I had the chance to see Marv again. While I am recovering from my experiences of the Spring, I highly recommend Marv if you need energywork done. He certainly did some amazing work on me while I was there! His website is www.kimmapii.com/
Also, I just finished recording the Eighth Empath Telecall. In this call we talked about how our Family System keeps us stuck in old patterns and behaviors that might not be in our best interest, and how painful it can be when we stop colluding with our family of origin. The next call we’ll talk more about how shamanic work can undo family belief systems that began generations ago that still keep us bound in the present. In both calls I use my personal experiences and experiences with clients. If you are interested in listening, go to here
E-Essays now Available
Hi everyone!
Well, at the urging of some of my clients, I’ve made some of my essays that will appear in my book available for purchase ahead of time. I hope to have the book published as a softcover book by the end of the year, but I’ve said that before. So, here’s the first set of 6 essays. Just visit my website here
http://www.clearreflectioncoaching.com/EmpathyandRelationshipsBook.htm
Let me know what you think, and I hope they are helpful!
much love,
Elaine
Posted in Creativity, Drama Triangle, Empathy, Relationships
Leave a comment
Dealing with Attack Energy
Hello everyone!
I had a question arrive in my email box about dealing with the unspoken messages from someone else. In this case, my client is receiving “attack” vibes. What do we do when those are unspoken vibes and not acted upon by the other person? This is an important question for Empaths because we tend to respond to the unspoken and the hidden rather than what is actually going on literally. Here is her question:
“I get a weird vibe from one of the girls at our annual gathering. It’s like she wants to attack me or I annoy her or it’s like she jealous and I get this feeling of her wanting to put me in my place. Anytime I’m being funny or entertaining I can feel her energy. At times like these it would be nice to be normal and just not notice it and go on with my life like the others around me! I was super aware of her energy and not sure how to handle it. My usual method would be to shrink back and shut down or to try to please her which feels awful and weak. So as I was trying to figure out how to handle this these options came to mind. Do I…
a. understand that she is just injured somewhere in this area and is acting out of pain and needs healing and understanding. Try to send her love, make her feel more comfortable and try to help her. (feel like I’ve been burned by this approach in the past) b. Put up the strongest boundaries I can muster and try my best to go on with my life ignoring her. (this doesn’t really work for me) c. Think “oh this is interesting Sally is having these feelings hmm. I wonder what is going on with her?” and then let the energy go through me so to speak understanding that this is her stuff I DON’T have to own it and it doesn’t have to have power over me. Just let it be and bring the focus back on myself my body, what I’m seeing around me, what I’m feeling sensing etc. (This seemed to work pretty good!)
I do know the more I was afraid of her reaction the worse things seemed to get. The fear fueled it so to speak. Honestly acknowledging to myself, however, what I was sensing from her and then not taking responsibility for it and not giving these feelings power over me seemed to work well.”
OK, to answer this question, it’s helpful to look at it from the Drama Triangle perspective. Option a. operates from the Role of Rescuer. This person’s anger and annoyance isn’t really any of our business to fix. As Empaths we tend to try to fix things to make ourselves feel better. It can backfire, especially since the other person could easily fall into the Bully role if we step into the Rescuer role. Sure, she may be wounded or whatever, but it is not our business.
Option b. is somewhat doable and in other ways not doable. As Empaths we cannot ignore this extra information, especially when it is attack being directed at us. Trying to resist it in this way can be exhausting. At the same time, it is important to realize that hanging out in this type of vibration is also exhausting, and that there will be a cost later. This person is sending out psychic attack, and that does have an effect on our system.
Option c is great! It acknowledges what is going on. The attack vibes are real. It puts the responsibility on the attacker, and it also keeps us out of both the Victim and the Rescuer roles. (and bully role, too!) This identifying the problem, seeing who is responsible, and then moving out of the way of the vibration is the “aikido” of energetic protection. At the same time, the vibration in the room is still not good for us, and we should understand that our limits with such a person are going to be lower than other non-Empaths.
The description of coming back into the body and noticing what is literally going on is what is called moving into the perceptual state of the literal (serpent in shamanic terms) Doing so shuts off momentarily the perceptions of the hidden (jaguar) from which most Empaths live. But it is approaching the whole issue with non-personal awareness (the perceptual state of the soul) that allows us to be in such situations without having to engage them or get caught in someone elses drama.
The last bit of observation–that the fear tends to exacerbate the psychic attack–is my client moving into the Victim mode, which invites more attack from the Bully, even though no conscious drama is going on!!! This is the power of the drama triangle! The best protection from these situations is to not get caught in the other person’s Drama–don’t pick up whatever role they want you to play. And move out of the way. Sometimes we DO need to move physically out of the way as well, but do so without a big story of Drama around it.
With just an annual gathering of a few days, I bet my client can handle it and still enjoying the rest of the people there. If this was a daily occurance, then something would need to change for my client’s emotional health.
Let me know if you have more questions!!
much love,
Elaine
Posted in Boundaries, Drama Triangle, Emotions, Empathy, Energetic Contracts, Relationships
4 Comments
Support for the Empath
Hi Everyone!
I am happy to annouce that I have been able to record the Empath Telecall for those of you who are looking for support and insight into your intuitive gifts. Right now there are two calls available for download, and the live calls are scheduled for the 1st and 3rd Fridays of the month. Our next call is this Friday. Please let me know if you’d like to join us. Right now we’ve discussed how the Empath deals with input from others, basic protections, and we’ve just begun talking about the Drama Triangle and the Empath. If you’d like to learn more, just go to my website and click workshops. It’s the first workshop listed.
Here’s to enjoying our Empathy and our intuitive gifts!
Elaine