How To "Protect" Your Energy As An Empath

Have you always thought of yourself as an empath, someone who deeply feels other people’s energy?

I want to share a different perspective with you that may open up an incredible new world of freedom and possibility for you.

I recently had a client ask me how I protect my energy when I’m working with clients so I don’t take on their energy.

I sent her a voice note sharing my perspective and she said it gave her chills and brought tears to her eyes because she’s always thought of herself as an empath and with that came a struggle with boundaries in her different relationships. She was mind-blown by how liberated she felt by what I shared.

Since it resonated so deeply with her, I wanted to share it in case it can open up a new layer of liberation for you too.

The collective narrative about empaths

If you google “protect your energy as an empath”, most of the articles say things like:

• Set boundaries
• Say no more often to people or things that drain your energy
• Avoid energy vampires
• Visualize an energy protecting bubble to keep “bad energy” out

There’s nothing “wrong” with these messages but they might be limiting your freedom because they all center around the belief that other people can drain your energy and therefore you need to protect it.

When did you decide other people are in control of your energy?

Your power and freedom are within you, always. When we choose to believe it’s in other people, we experience limitation, frustration and powerlessness.

How to “protect” your energy as an empath

What most people are doing when they’re “protecting” their energy is just avoiding their emotional wounds.

Of course we want to run from anything that pokes at our wounds. 

It’s not a problem. But it's something we can become aware of so we can choose to engage with our emotional wounds in a way that creates more liberation rather than perpetuating the wounds.

Any energy that arises in you in response to someone else is your own emotions and energy to process.

They didn’t go inside your body and take control of your energy. This all happened inside of YOU. 

Your healing and freedom also happens inside of you, not in having to completely avoid any situations or people that feel “draining”. The situation or person didn’t drain you; it just showed you where you already had an energetic imbalance.

The only reason you’d ever feel “drained” or “vampired” by someone else’s energy is because there’s a stuck energy or emotion in you.

And that is in your power to feel and process within you, regardless of how you choose to engage with the person or situation.

This doesn’t mean you have to stay around someone who’s negative. 

It’s just an opportunity for you to become free of some stuck energy in you and from there, you’ll be able to make choices from freedom, wisdom and clarity rather than from “I can’t be with this person because they control my energy”.

Your freedom is in feeling and releasing the feelings inside of you.

Then you can have compassion instead of empathy and can offer your presence without being drained by theirs.

Compassion is: I’m not feeling what you’re feeling in me but I’ve felt and processed it before so I can have compassion for you.

Empathy is: I feel what you are feeling (or similar) in me because I have unprocessed emotions inside of me.

Nobody can control your energy. It’s inside of you.

When a situation arises where you feel drained by someone else, this doesn’t mean your experience isn’t valid. It is.

How to approach being an empath in a way that creates freedom instead of more limitation

1. Become aware when your energy/emotions shift in response to someone else.

2. Directly feel the energy/emotion inside of you.

Locate where it is in the body and feel the sensations directly. Become aware of and directly feeling the feelings in you (not through thinking about them mentally or staying stuck in the story of “they drained my energy”). This is what allows emotions that were previously trapped in the body to transmute back into free flowing energy. 

3. See what your intuition guides you to from there

You will be able to act from clarity and freedom rather than emotional wounding/reaction.

Through this process, your freedom is no longer dependent on others. Your choices are no longer based on needing to protect (avoid) your emotional wounds. You heal and process your own wounds (or pain-body as Eckhart Tolle would say) which liberates you to be able to respond in wisdom and freedom.

And the more you do this, the steadier your energy will become and the less swayed it will be by others. How amazing would that feel?

You no longer need to carry around the burden of the empath identity. How would it feel to be free of it, to no longer have to worry about protecting your energy? What would shift for you?

If you want support releasing "stuck" emotions and accessing your intuition, you can book an inner voice session here.

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