Your Vision Matters
If you are an empath, chances are that you intuitively know what’s best for you. This ability enables you to know your true path in life. However, maintaining course can be a challenge when you struggle to hold your ground against the emotional needs of others.
Empaths are naturally sensitive to the plights of people around them. This makes them very caring, and at times vulnerable. It’s common for empaths to throw themselves into the needs of other people – caretaking, attending, and giving personal energy to all problems.
Compassion is not a lesson that an empath needs to learn. This is a positive quality, however it can go awry and turn into rescuing, unhealthy mirroring, and self-sacrifice when unbalanced with healthy boundaries.
From Oneness to Wholeness
The transcendent reality of oneness is quite clear to empaths who experience the suffering of all life forms as their own. Until well balanced boundaries are integrated, being an empath can mean sacrificing your needs and dreams for the needs and dreams of other people. This can lead to burn out, suppressed negative emotion, and a feeling of being out of control or lost.
When boundaries are out of balance, the truth of “oneness” can make an empath vulnerable to simple boundary violations at one end, and spiritual abuse at the extreme end of the spectrum because spiritual truths can be used to justify boundary violation.
Navigating the interpersonal and physical planes requires a good boundary toolkit so that you can follow through life’s challenges without throwing your vision off course.
Principles for Balanced Boundaries
Create Your Vision.
Identify your vision and let this be a guiding principle in your life. Prioritise your energy for creating your vision – this vision will contribute to the lives of others while also ensuring your well being. You have a right to be autonomous.
Get in Touch with Your Anger.
This doesn’t mean that you turn into a tyrant. Many empaths have suppressed and repressed their anger. You need to have healthy and integrated anger in order to defend your boundaries without guilt. Anger is an energy that helps you to say “no” when it counts. You may have learned that anger was not ok to have as a child, and if that’s the case your relationship with anger needs to be healed.
Learn the Signs of Narcissism.
Empaths are especially vulnerable to narcissist abuse because they want harmony. Narcissistic abuse is successful when the abused person continues to blame themselves for the disharmony in the relationship. People who have developed unhealthy narcissism due to their childhood wounds, seek unhealthy mirroring (perfect emotional responses at the expense of personal needs) which empaths with poor boundaries attempt to provide. This loop never ends, as the narcissist’s need for external validation can never be satisfied. Learn more about spiritual narcisissm
Heal Your Inner Child.
Boundaries can suffer when we were taught that our needs matter less. This makes empaths vulnerable to co-dependency, narcissistic abuse, and being taken advantage of. Your needs and dreams matter equally to all being. You Matter. To lean more about healing your boundaries and inner child work click here.
Assign Responsibility Where it Belongs.
Understand that every being is on their own path, and that you can not truly do anyone’s inner work for them. Only wounds that have been taken into the hands of the wounded person can be healed. Be careful to avoid rescuing people from their emotional pain.
Study Energy Work.
Boundaries also need to be energetic. If you are sensitive to the emotional energy of others, as an empath you entrain to these energies. If for example you are feeling quite balanced and happy, and walk onto the train only to be bombarded with a sea of anger, fear, resentment, your personal energies may have transformed according to the environment. The ability to maintain the integrity of your energy signature needs to be learned, as well as to differentiate between your emotions and energies, and those that are simply around you.
Your personal energy, needs, and dreams matter in this world. To fulfill the passion that you feel in your heart, it’s important to practice your boundaries so that you can unfold your life according to your soul.
Rachel Anenberg, BA (Psyc), BSW, MSW (Master of Social Work) is a psychotherapist and spiritual coach providing integrative therapy. Her expertise as a psychotherapist come from a combined background and education in psychology, social work, and soul sciences.
Psychotherapy with Rachel can help you to heal depression, treat anxiety, recover from child abuse, adult abuse & narcissistic abuse. Genuine happiness is often out of reach because of unhealed past experiences. Psychotherapy can help you to get in control and feel naturally happy.
4 thoughts on “Are You an Empath? How to Create Healthy Boundaries (for Empaths)”