Tag: codependents

EMPATHS, EARTHING, AND MEDITATING CODEPENDENTS

Staying grounded as an empath.

So I just received my Amazing Hooga Earthing Mat from the very nice UPS driver and I should be incredibly spiritual after just a few days of using it.  

The basic theory behind them is that our energy systems get in a kerfuffle because we’re exposed to negative people, places, and things and, when we walk barefoot on the Earth, it restores our systems to their natural, harmonious balance.  Earthing Mats simulate that very same energy and get our auras all fluffy and pretty again.

I decided to get one because I’ve recently become aware of the fact that it is of tantamount importance for empaths to stay thoroughly grounded.  If we don’t, we start to dissolve like a piece of salt in the rain.  Earthing is a dandy way to avoid that.

EMPATHS AND EMPATHY

Being an empath is sort of hard to describe to a, “normal,” person.  First of all, of course, being an empath is not equivalent to being empathetic, although most empaths are highly empathetic.  An empathetic person might sympathize with another individual to a point where they can imagine what the other person is feeling and thinking.  Empaths actually experience what the other person is feeling in real time.

Empaths are also not psychics, although most psychics are empaths.  A psychic will focus on another person, “read,” their energy, their emotions and their thoughts, and then weave all of that into a coherent meaning, much like telling a story.  Empaths, on the other hand, are simply bombarded with information about the other person without really knowing what it all means.  We automatically glean far more details about the other person’s energetic and emotional state than what’s on the surface, but we don’t necessarily know how to put it all together.

To make it even more confusing, there isn’t just one type of empath.  There are empaths who actually hear what other people are thinking.  Other empaths feel other people’s emotions as they occur.  Some are telemetric empaths who, “get a reading,” merely by touching a piece of clothing or jewelry that someone else has owned.  A few empaths are highly attuned to the feelings of animals, but won’t pick up anything from other human beings.  Precognitive empaths may get very strong insights about what’s going to happen to a person in the future.

EMPATHS AND EGO STRUCTURE

One thing that all empaths have in common is a relatively weak ego structure.  It makes perfect sense, when we think about it.  Our ego is our sense of who we are, and the first part of knowing who we are is knowing that you’re over there and I’m over here.  Your, “you,” starts with your skin and all of your emotions, energy, and thoughts reside inside of your skin and all of mine reside in mine.  The only way that another human could possibly know what we’re thinking is if we tell them.

Which is very much not true for empaths.  For an empath, what’s going on in the other person’s mind is also going on in our minds, simultaneously with what WE’RE thinking.

All of which can make for a very confusing state of affairs, because we’re never quite sure which part of the conversation is ours and which part is yours.  For an un-grounded empath, there really ARE no significant boundaries or borders.  

There’s an old Spanish expression which goes, “Mi casa, su casa,” or, “My house is your house.”  Now change that to, “My brain is your brain,” and you get an idea of how truly weird it can be for an empath to hold a simple conversation.  Most empaths have to sit quietly after a meaningful exchange and decode exactly what thoughts came from which person.

EMPATHS AND CODEPENDENCY

One of the ways that the weak ego structure of empaths shows up is in codependent behavior.  Codependents tend to revolve around other people, much like the moon revolves around the earth.  Sometimes that’s a result of having been raised in an alcoholic or abusive family.  Sometimes it’s because we have a particular personality type.  And sometimes it’s because we’re empaths who haven’t learned to separate ourselves from other people.  

What happens with empaths is that we become enmeshed in the other person’s energy, in their thoughts, emotions, and their life patterns.  Since empaths already have a weakened sense of boundaries, they can easily dissolve into a more dominant person’s energy system.  In essence, they become overwhelmed and end up as bit players in someone else’s movie, instead of starring in their own.  They not only feel the other person’s emotions, they become the other person’s emotions.

EMPATHS AND MEDITATION

Empaths also need to be very careful about the type of meditation they practice.  

Many types of meditation are geared toward weakening the ego structure.  We’re basically trying to get past that chattering mind stream that prevents us from truly relaxing into deep meditation.  Those techniques involve what’s referred to as a, “bare awareness,” method, where we might focus on our breath or a mantra, or a candle flame, until the chattering mind calms down and recedes into the background.

BUT . . . studies have increasingly shown that meditation is highly correlated with PSI or psychic abilities.  If we tritty trot off to a meditation center for a two week retreat, we’re probably going to be more psychic coming out of it than we were going in.  For a normal person, that involves a significant decrease in ego control and, “becoming one,” with the universe and our fellow humans.

An empath, though, is already wide open and our challenge lies in shutting down some of that in-flow of information.  Deep meditation can destroy whatever barriers we’ve managed to erect and leave us completely adrift in other people’s energies.

Mindfulness meditation seems to be the, “go to,” method for empaths.  It’s a constant reminder to stay in our own bodies in the present moment and to separate from all of the drama out there.

THE EIGHT OF WANDS

Being an empath can feel very much like the Eight of Wands looks.  Wands represent ideas and this card shows inspired ideas raining down from heaven.  For an empath, though, the ideas may be far from inspired and not at all our own.  

If everyone we met was in a perfect, loving place, being an empath could be pure heaven.  We’d just walk around grinning while all of those good vibes poured straight into us. Unfortunately, that’s far from the current state of affairs and a tremendous amount of what we absorb is toxic.

The answers for empaths seem to be strengthening ego structure, not weakening it.  Building boundaries and borders, not letting them down.  And, above all, staying grounded.  Which we can begin to do by planting our tootsies firmly on the Amazing Hooga Earthing Mat.

The High Priestess, Affirmations, and Writing Your Own Story

“I realized many years ago that I was an absolute genius at manifestation . . . with one big problem.  My problem was that my genius was hitched to my unconscious programming instead of what I consciously wanted to create.”  Gay Hendricks, “Attracting Genuine Abundance,”  DailyOm

I grew up in one of those families from hell.  Alcoholic, abusive father, detached, depressive mother, a military family so we were constantly moving and never growing roots.  

And, as Melody Beattie said in, “Codependent No More,” one of the real curses of that is that you accept the insanity you’re living in as, “normal.”  Being beaten, screaming fights, drunks passed out on the floor – it’s all perfectly normal in YOUR household.  Doesn’t everyone live like that? Hell, you’re just a kid, how are you supposed to know the difference?

Someone once said that your parents always know how to push your buttons because they installed the control panel.  There’s a lot of truth in that – on a primal, cellular level no one knows you better than your parents. And, in addition to installing the control panel, they also installed the programming.

If you were raised in a less than benign household that programming can be pretty awful.  You probably grew up hearing things like:

“You’re a very, very bad girl.”

OR

“Why did you do something so stupid?”

OR

“I don’t like hitting you but you don’t leave me any choice.”

And your poor little subconscious, your subconscious that was too young and too trusting and too inexperienced to know any better just soaked that shit up and believed it, the same way that you believed that drunken, crazy parents were normal.  And – voila! – you end up as an adult who believes that he’s very, very bad, stupid, and deserves to be abused. After all, your parents told you so, didn’t they?

I was talking with a therapist about all of that subconscious, self-defeating programming and I asked if affirmations and visualizations were a way to sort of short circuit it.  She looked very thoughtful for a minute and said, “No, I think of them more as a way of writing your own story. Who do YOU want to be in your story? How do YOU want to live and feel in your story?”

That’s a wonderful distinction that we miss too often.  Affirmations and visualizations aren’t just ways of overcoming negative beliefs that we absorbed in the past.  They’re also ways of consciously creating what we want our futures to look and feel like.

A great deal of The High Priestess is about the deep mind, the subconscious and unconscious part of our minds that holds both our creativity and our self-defeating beliefs.  Too often it’s like a one way door. Magic, symbols, dreams emerge from the Right, feminine, side of the brain, but we don’t consciously interact with it, we don’t, “input,” data, we just passively receive content.

When we dream or meditate that realm of magic that resides in the Right Brain flows into our lives.  When we visualize or do affirmations, we’re talking directly to the Right Brain. We’re dropping what we want our lives to be, what we want our stories to be, into our subconscious and then it performs the magic and makes it real.

In my original definition of The High Priestess, I wrote this about what happens when the card is reversed, when we’re ignoring that interactive process with our subconscious:

The creative, intuitive, feminine right side of the brain is being overpowered and held hostage by the logical, sequential, male left side of the brain.  Intuition and creativity are being ignored in favor of so-called rational thinking. There is a need here to reconnect with your primal self. Take the time for meditating, long hot baths, dancing, art.  Get back in touch with your creative energy.

We need to take the time to visualize, to affirm what we want in our lives, to have a nice, quiet talk with the High Priestess.   We need to take the time to write our own story or someone else will write it for us.

“Just the Tarot,” by Dan Adair, a book of basic Tarot definitions available on Amazon.com.