Category Archives: Empathy

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

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