Self-Care for the Self-Aware: A Guide for Highly Sensitive People, Empaths, Intuitives, and Healers

by Dave Markowitz

After birth, we are still very connected to Source energy. Even though we haven’t yet mastered our visual acuity, our inner awareness now expands to beyond the internal environment of the womb. We believe that the people “over there” are a part of us—mother, father, siblings, aunts and uncles, doctors and nurses. At some level we “know” we can and therefore begin to heal those closest to us in any way we can. We don a “spiritual superhero cape” and get to work. We learn that our joyful actions lighten the room and that our sadness darkens it. So we utter nonsensical sounds, giggle, smile—anything to heal, or raise the vibration of those around us. The grooves of responsibility are formed very early on as we see that anything we do affects those closest to us. At the same time, our small selves are learning how to experience our own emotions. Unfortunately, our cries are sometimes met with even more fear, anger, and grief from those around us. We are often given a pacifier when we cry, which both teaches us that it’s not okay to express grief, and sets up patterns of oral satisfaction that later can become addictions used to temporarily quench fear and grief. Our anger, likewise, is thwarted in various—and ultimately unhealthy—ways.