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

by Dave Markowitz

These two steps are the keys to preventing taking on empathic pain and can and should be done by each of us before engaging with others. If your sense of responsibility includes wanting to heal the world, I’d suggest working these steps at least once a day, hourly if need be. The mind will want to know how often and for how long. Give it a hug and invite patience instead. Just begin and let guidance take over. The deeper degree that you achieve this knowing, the easier it will be to heal what ails you and prevent reoccurrence.

while we may enjoy to some degree or even get commended or paid for being an empath, it’s actually the last thing another person’s soul wishes to happen.

Each soul has a mission, and by us taking on the energy of another person, that soul no longer has what it needs; it’s actually incomplete!

For example, if you carry your mother’s sadness (or any physical results that may arise from repressing the sadness; examples may include digestive disorders, skin problems, lung issues, what’s called depression, fatigue, etc.), she no longer has the impetus to go within and see what it’s about. Her grief is a message, a challenge, and an opportunity for her to look at an aspect of her life that has not yet been examined. By you taking that from her, she will likely feel fine and may continue her unhealthy behavior. To use a motor vehicle analogy, she no longer has the dashboard warning light to tell her that something is in need of attention. She will likely feel bette...

I’ve never had any client report that the person to whom they have returned their fear, anger, or grief has had a dramatic worsening of symptoms after the Return to Sender process you’re about to begin.

Let it be like Yoga—ideally—where you accept wherever you are. By accepting where you are, you create room for growth and integration. By creating and then fighting the resistance, you give it more energy, and what you focus on expands, making this entire process much more difficult than it needs to be.

Beyond the mind’s ideas of what to own, what to look like, how to live, how to love, and how to do and be, what we really seek at the deepest level is liberation and freedom from the perceived constraints.