|
Signs of the Co-dependent Empath pattern:
The high-volume empathic system of a highly attuned person is often perceived to be a curse. But in actuality, it is an inherent part of our intuitive guidance system that allows us to read between the lines. It alerts us to where we can support healing and transformation by enabling us to pick up on the unseen, including the emotions and repressed issues of other people. Because other people's emotions register directly through our own emotional and empathic systems, it requires us to consciously differentiate our emotional content from other peoples. But this can be a tricky business if our innate gifts of empathy and attunement were mis-used to manage our safety, belonging and self-worth during our childhood years, through patterns like the Co-dependent Empath. Without awareness of our childhood survival and esteem-based patterns, and the pro-active conscious release of them, they are likely to travel with us into our adult years and undermine many areas of our lives. In the case of the Co-dependent Empath, it will continue to misunderstand the gifts of our empathy and attunement and sabotage our ability to be honest with ourselves and others. When we meet someone who our Co-dependent Empath perceives as needing our support and help, that person is more likely to meet our Co-dependent Empath than our genuine Self. Very sadly this pattern can be so deeply ingrained we wear it like a second skin, thinking it is our true self. But in reality, it is simply a way of manoeuvring in the world that gets in the way of our ability to attract relationships based on love, respect, reciprocity and balance. While Part One of this article, 'Releasing the Co-dependent Empath', helped us to identify the defining characteristics of the Co-dependent Empath pattern (See below for the link to Part 1), Part Two covers a loosely-framed reflective process on how to graciously release this pattern from our life. By giving thanks for how it helped us in the past whilst simultaneously letting it go we can begin to attract in and cultivate more genuine and honest relationships in to our life. The Change Process: From Co-dependent Empath to Empathic Truthtellor Our childhood survival and esteem-based patterns are akin to having entrenched long-term addictions, wired in at an exquisitely deep level. As we know, the ride can be bumpy with addiction recovery so support to create the optimal conditions for a smooth-sailing passage to sobriety is essential. Transitioning out of a psychological pattern is no different. It requires education to help re-wire our brain, ongoing self-reflection, and ultimately at least one trustworthy human to support us into a more genuine way of being in the world. Once we can SEE these patterns with awareness, we no longer have BE these patterns in behaviour, but we don't necessarily get it 'right' at first shot. It therefore requires befriending ourselves through this sometimes bumpy process and cultivating the muscles of diligence and patience as we traverse the bridge from old to new. And is a committed practice of showing up for yourself, gradually growing the 'felt sense' experience of your inherent self-worth, as you begin to say no to the things that hurt you. A complication that can confuse our transition into the new is the Co-dependent Empath's collision with a soul calling many highly attuned people hold dear. This soul calling is our inherent pull to support healing and transformation and is the reason we have such a high-voltage empathic system in the first place. Without awareness of this tripple whammy, from our high-voltage empathic system in partnership with our Co-dependent Empath pattern, compounded by an immature understanding of our soul calling, we can find ourselves being propelled into many unsavoury situations that we may have otherwise sidestepped. As we wisely know, some people are not ready to be helped. And part of our learning, as attuned beings, is discerning who we can effectively assist, and who we can not. So if you are judging yourself for repeatedly drawing misaligned people into your life, it is crucial to understand that you were wired to have this depth of empathy so that you are able to a) be exquisitely aware of both the seen and unseen suffering in the world in order to b) affect positive change where you can. And the great news is, we can learn to pivot out of the Co-dependent Empath pattern, and simultaneously hold our soul calling wisely, whereby we discern where best to use our gifts and where best to not. Differentiation: an essential skill for discerning what's your emotional content and what's mine As highly attuned people we are much like a radio picking up on multiple stations at the same time. We have the ability to receive and experience a number of channels of information simultaneously; emotionally (feelings), somatically (sensations/symptoms) and cognitively (thoughts), from both internal and external sources. To be able to accurately detect the source of this information, we need time to reflect. This will help us to break down firstly, what is our emotional content so that we can, secondly, identify what is likely to be that of the other. Moreover, our multi-sensory system can also receive, what I will refer to here as 'energetic intuitive information', including visual, auditory, knowing and sensing data. If we find ourselves experiencing out of the blue, uncharacteristic visual imagery, auditory messages, cognitions, feelings, sensations, it's important to not take these cues personally or project stories on to them. Please note that intuition simply means to know something to be true without logically knowing how we know. There are multiple ways of interpreting where our intuitive data comes from. This interpretation is determined by the individual and could be referred to as anything from divine/spiritual guidance or an inner knowing to psychic or intuitive guidance. For the purposes of catering to as many people's frameworks as possible, I am referring to it generically here as 'energetic intuitive data'. By using the neutral, curious lens of our Tracker (see link below for more information on the Tracker) and noting the data for what it is - that is simply data - we can begin to interpret this information, with growing accuracy, through our reflections. As we track the data we are receiving overtime, we will gradually become more confident in the message it is communicating to us. Please bear in mind a good rule of thumb to come back to as we are learning to differentiate our emotional content from others. If you are in a balanced state but find yourself, for no apparent reason, knocked off-balance in an interaction with another person or in a new environment/situation, the feelings coming up for you are probably 'not yours'. Of course, it is always best to take some time to reflect on the context before jumping to this conclusion but it is equally important to keep in mind that not all emotions that register through your emotional system are necessarily 'yours'. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The following is a step-by-step loosely-framed reflective process to help us identify and release our Co-dependent Empath. Gaining clarity on what is our emotional content though this process will help us to gain clarity on what is the emotional content of others. Let the disentangling process begin! 1) NOTICING, without judgment. Is something happening in your system, akin to the signs and symptoms of the Co-dependent Empath described above? Excellent!!! Data received, thank you :) Pay attention to the 'felt sense' energy of your Co-dependent Empath. What is she feeling, thinking, seeing, hearing, sensing, doing? How is she moving, expressing, speaking? What urges did you notice? These questions help us to identify the habitual energy of our Co-dependent Empath. We can start to build a more nuanced picture of her by collecting this data on her. The more intimately we know how this pattern expresses through us, the easier it is to detect her in the future. With this, a natural detachment will gradually occur, allowing us to pivot into more consciously-chosen ways of being in the world. Please note that the Co-dependent Empath, like all patterns, manifests itself like a biological instinct within nanoseconds when triggered. She can feel easily overwhelmed by the pain and suffering of others, followed by intense urges to fix, save, sooth, repair, rescue, make better. If we can, at the very least IDENTIFY her we have a chance to initially stay with ourselves and sooth our own nervous system. Alongside our Co-dependent Empath, the initial overwhelm may also activate other patterns like our Inner Tormentor/ Critic or Perfectionist. These patterns tend to shame, put down, blame, and may even label us as 'crazy'. Originally the job of these patterns was to whip us into conformity to meet the expectations of our tribes and culture so we weren't cast out, punished, or humiliated. If you notice these patterns also emerging for you, honour them. They may have saved you in your younger years! And then gently return your attention to the energy of the Co-dependent Empath because that's our focus today. 2) GROUNDING If we feel de-centred, flooded, emotionally reactive, overwhelmed or out-of-balance, this is the data that provides our guidance in this moment. It is directing us to calm, sooth and GROUND our physical body before engaging in any further reflection. And re-centering will take as long as it takes, so we need to be patient with ourselves. A dysregulated nervous system is never calmed by urgency. 3) IDENTIFYING, without judgement Pay attention to the context. To start to make connections, go deeper into understanding the context: what was happening at the time? was there a trigger? where were you? who was there? what was happening? what was lead-up to this need to 'help, fix, rescue' energy? Also ask yourself, was your empathic system picking up on anything out of the ordinary?: a thought? a feeling? a sensation? or some other kind of uncharacteristic and out of the blue energetic intuitive data? Reflect on ALL of what you experienced and write down the most important aspects of what you recall so you can see it external to yourself. 4) CURIOUSLY UNPACK THE DATA. Is your Codependent Empath energy connected to... 1) Your wounded child's need for safety, belonging and self-worth? If so, can you remember moments of your Younger Self's needs being bypassed in their pursuit of caretaking other people? If so, hug them in with compassion and meet their unmet needs NOW, giving them the safety and reassurance that they needed back then. Please keep in mind that whatever unmet needs got suppressed and shoved into your unconscious as a child, have the potential to create long-term mental, emotional or physical discomfort. This can make both substance and behavioural-based addictions highly tempting in order to keep this discomfort at bay. Hence, healing the core wound of your Younger Self, by reparenting it, is non-negotiable on any type of wholistic healing journey. 2) Or is it your conditioning that has shaped your Co-dependent Empath pattern? Did you observe the female role models in your childhood taking on the traditional responsibilities of providing unconditional support and nurturance to others, hence naturally adopting this intergenerational culturally-conditioned pattern as your own? 3) Unresolved issues, trauma? Unresolved grief, for example, experienced in another person can hit your empathic system much more intensely if you have not fully processed your own. By identifying this, you can make an assessment of how much is your grief and how much is theirs, on a scale of 1 to 10? If your own grief has been triggered, continue your own grief work by staying with your own pain, feeling it to the edges as much as you safely can, and doing whatever is required to keep releasing the layers as they come up. Please note that in the case of losing a loved one, this is lifelong journey. Hence it is likely you will be triggered by those who are having similar experiences to some degree, no matter how long ago it happened and how much grief work you have already done. It's normal and its ok. 4) Is this your innate moral code speaking to you? Does this person, situation, environment trigger your value system? For example, if it violates your moral code to not speak up in the face of bullying, your conscience has the ability to loudly notify you through your empathic and emotional systems to STEP UP in these moments. You will most likely feel empathy for the victim and anger towards the person expressing the 'bully energy'. Articulating a clear boundary, gracefully and in the spirit of love, may be a call to action in that moment, or even after the fact (upon reflection), if safe to do so. This type of reflection will lead us to 1 of 3 outcomes: 1) Clarity - this part is mine (trauma, conditioning, innate moral code) and that part is theirs (genuine pain or repetitive suffering due to their conditioning or trauma-induced patterns. Please note: we need to have a solid handle on our own variety of patterns to be able to detect patterns in others and this skill takes time to master) With clarity we instinctively know if there is an action step we need to take for self and/or on behalf of the other/s involved, bringing an overall sense of peace to our system. 2) I don't know and it feels unresolved - if this is the case, it is helpful to access a neutral trustworthy support person to help unpack and resolve what's jamming up our system. This is a particularly important step to take in the case of things, situations and people that we are closely attached to as our perception in more likely to be skewed the closer we are to something. A safe space with a wise, healing presence, baring witness to our experience, opens doors to insight and clarity. 3) I don't know but it feels resolved for now - Great! Just note the data, without judgement, and trust that life will provide you with more information to broaden your understanding, in due course and if necessary. This can often be the case with energetic intuitive data. It may be building a bigger picture for you over time as it gradually gets fed to you in bite-size puzzle pieces. The trick is to NOT attach your agenda or narrative to this data. Let it be, carry on with your life, and allow the bigger picture to emerge over time! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please keep in mind, that if we are physically, mentally, emotionally or energetically/spiritually out of balance, with our own unresolved issues/stress, we need to attend to these first. When imbalanced ourselves, we are less resilient and more easily triggered, hence the guidance in such situations is to 'ground and recenter'. If no amount of self-care is working to help you ground and access clarity, please reach out to a neutral trustworthy confident who can help you to make sense of your 'next steps' towards balance. In Summary Breaking free from outdated childhood patterns ultimately supports a key skill we need to cultivate as highly attuned, empathic people: the skill of differentiation. By disentangling ourselves from our childhood patterns and unconscious projections, we are better able to appraise our 'here and now' relationship dynamics and discern our 'emotional content' from the 'other person's'. By diligently using a reflective process like the one outlined in this article we support ourselves to master the skill of differentiation by remaining grounded in our present reality, turning down the volume of our empathic overwhelm, voicing our truth, and making healthy decisions around how to support others effectively, if and when needed, without hurting ourselves in the process. This reflective process requires the following steps. These steps can be used with any childhood pattern that may be blocking us from accessing our personal truth and realising our potential.
and finally breaking that data down via....
As we start to practice this, we grow our capacity to perceive, with growing accuracy, crunchy and triggering situations as they come up, so we CAN actually do what we were effectively placed on Planet Earth to do - to support the healing and transformation of what is ready to be healed and transformed, starting with ourselves :) If this article has been helpful, stay tuned. I will continue to post as many articles and presentations to support you to better understand your multi-sensory system and cultivate its inherent gifts. Thank you for taking the time for reading this and engaging with me on this greatly important topic: the gift that is your high attuned, empathic, multi-sensory system :) Link to Part One of this article: https://www.counsellingtauranga.co.nz/blog/releasing-the-co-dependent-empath-pattern-part-one For more information on the Tracker (as mentioned above): https://www.counsellingtauranga.co.nz/blog/the-intuitively-perceptive-multi-sensory-body For more information on childhood survival and esteem-based patterns: https://www.counsellingtauranga.co.nz/blog/from-fate-to-destiny-using-archetypal-awareness For more information on Intuitive Guidance: https://www.counsellingtauranga.co.nz/blog/the-mystical-aspect-of-healing
0 Comments
A beautiful person once shared with me that life is like a tapestry that requires us to discover the right threads to complete it. A tapestry unable to be wholly appreciated until we stand back to see it in its totality. This resonated with me. Life strikes me as an active creative process as we weave the different strands of our tapestry together, in alignment with what we know to be true for us at the time. These threads may even call for blind acts of faith as we follow the instruction of an inner knowing, sometimes leading us in surprising and unexpected directions. This type of divinely or intuitively-led journey (however we, as individuals, choose to define it) tends to be a non-negotiable component of the life path of those who identify as being highly attuned, sensitive and empathic. After many years of working in the field of psychology, it would be remiss of me to not speak into what I see as the spiritual and mystical aspects of the human healing journey. This is not to exclude or minimize the importance of medical and specialist expertise, both allopathic and complementary, nor the wide-ranging holistic health practices on offer when faced with mental/emotional or physical health challenges, but more to highlight that we cannot dismiss the contribution of our intuitive and/or spiritual guidance. If we are open to this inherent aspect of ourselves, it has the potential to not only be a legitimate pathway for our healing but, for some, a key player in their recovery process. Defining Spirituality and Mysticism Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. It is a universal human 'felt sense' experience that defies translation into words, encompassing peaceful feelings of interconnectedness, faith, hope, meaning and purpose. It generally includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, activities that lift our spirit, and a search for meaning and purpose in our life. Mysticism, on the other hand, takes us a step further. We find mysticism baked into most religious and spiritual traditions, all of which subscribe to the common belief that we need to intimately know and disentangle ourselves from our unconscious motives and programming in order to accurately perceive our reality. As humans, we accumulate layers of protective, yet limiting filters and behavioural patterns from our childhood conditioning and challenging life experiences. These projections from our past often lead to day-to-day choices that sabotage our ability to tell the truth. It requires our awareness and reflection, followed by behavioural change, to break out of their trance. This is a type of depth work that could be described as a 'know thyself' journey, whereby intuitive sensory information received beyond our 5 senses, starts to show up in various different and unexpected ways. Dropping in like puzzle pieces, this information grows and supports our understanding, healing and transformation. The more we build confidence in what is being intuitively shown to us, the more we trust the invaluable contribution of our intuitive guidance. Intuitive Guidance Intuition means that we know something to be true without knowing how we know. Depending on an individual's belief system it can be interpreted as emerging from inside of us, such as our 'inner knowing', or from outside of us, connected to spiritual, religious, philosophical or wisdom tradition frameworks. Put simply, intuitive guidance is our personal truthtellor, supporting us to see things in more nuanced and contextual ways and/or pointing us in particular directions, even if it doesn’t make logical sense at the time. It cuts through our well-reasoned, rational mind, and is a 'felt sense’ experience of truth and clarity, expressing itself through individuals in uniquely different ways. It usually comes to us, unexpectedly and out of the blue, and is neutral and unbiased. As a deeply touching experience in the moment, it can automatically or later reveal itself as symbolically meaningful and/or directional. Without knowing our unconscious programming, however, we run the risk of accidentally running it through our unconscious filters, either dismissing it away as 'nothing important' or overthinking and distorting its message. As intuition works to support our higher growth it often takes us out of our current way of seeing the world. Through this experience, we come to understand that even if we feel like we have taken the 'wrong' path at certain times of our life, there is actually no 'right' nor 'wrong' path to take, only learning, growth and evolution. We all have multiple senses through which guidance is constantly coming to and through us. At a base level, our emotions are our guidance. Working with our emotional guidance system helps to keep our psyche clear and attuned to 'next steps'. If we are sad, for example, we need to process our loss in a way that best fits our unique individual needs as we come to terms with our new reality. At a more symbolic level, guidance pertaining to our broader life journey may appear as internal 'felt sense' nudges, auditory messages, visual data, or a sense of simply knowing or feeling something to be true from deep within us. We may synchronistically receive information from a person, a book, or online that deeply resonates or piques our interest. Some of us may also experience symbolic or prophetic messages through dreams and/or visions. These different types of guidance are registered as truth in the moment. They feel right, they are clear clear, and they come from a place of neutrality rather than from a scattered place of fear or anxiety. Of course, we may initially experience an emotional response to our guidance, especially if it is something that surprises us, but its lucid message will always be undeniably strong, direct and deliberate. The 'Dark Night' In Western culture where the logic mind has been pedestaled and intuitive knowing, devalued, we may only start to pay attention to our divine/intuitive guidance when we are faced with what I will refer to as a 'Dark Night'. This is a time when we find ourselves pummelled into uncertainty as life as we know it begins to dismantle right in front of our eyes. It is a time of great loss, re-evaluation and rebuilding, with every stage requiring more than just a logic appraisal of one's life. We come to realise very quickly that if we distract ourselves from the experience, and don't listen to our intuitive nudges, we run the risk of staying stuck in repetitive suffering. Life after a 'Dark Night' is usually unrecognisable to the life we had prior. We discover that we, in many ways, are no longer who we thought we were. It is a highly uncomfortable process, as we patiently, diligently and proactively work with the puzzle pieces given to us, one piece at a time. We are, in essence, forced to take the path of a Mystic, often coming face to face with the sabotaging and unconscious drivers in our life. This experience is akin to a dying process as we release the many unhealthy aspects of our ego identity, realigning it with a more honest representation of the truth of who we actually are. Although this process usually involves multiple painful encounters with the disingenuous ways we have been running our lives, these are followed by the grace of epiphanies that have the potential to change our beliefs, open our mind and heart, and set us on a more genuine and liberating life path. We get to consciously choose how we continue to create our own life tapestry in a way that is better aligned with the truth of who we are. In Summary This is the mystical and beyond-the-mind aspect of the human healing journey. With the intention to clear the debris of unhealthy patterns of our unconscious programming, our intuitively and divinely-led guidance drip feeds information to see a fuller, more nuanced picture. And this allows us to courageously make conscious, healthy choices for ourselves so we can pioneer a more integrous way forward. This appears, from my clinical observations, to be a compulsory mission for many who identify as being 'highly attuned and sensitive'. With our natural inclination to resolve our unfinished business, we grow our ability to see our reality through clearer eyes as we strip away the muddied filters of our past and intergenerational trauma. And this is how we reclaim and grow mastery over one of our most important inherent gifts: our intuitive/divine guidance system. This is, as I see it, invisible and oftentimes solitary, yet vitally important work to be undertaken by a courageous minority. To those people, I salute you. I see you. I hear you. I feel you. I honour you. I love you and I Thank YOU :) If you resonate with this blog, I hope the material I offer in both my FB page and website help enlighten, give meaning, and provide encouragement on what may feel like the more tolling aspects of your highly attuned nature. Your need and search for truth and to do the right thing, no matter the circumstances, may not necessarily be welcomed, nor understood by your surrounding culture or tribe/s, but by creating a supportive, respectful, inter-faith based community with those who are on a similar journey, I hope we are all encouraged to keep moving towards an integrity-based and love-led united human collective and global community.  |
AuthorKira Follas is a qualified counsellor and works as Wellness Practitioner and Group Facilitator in New Zealand. She is also a survivor and thriver of multiple physical and mental-emotional adversities and is a Mum to two awesome teenage lads :) Archives
April 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed