Signs of the Co-dependent Empath pattern:

• Tapping into other people's suffering and feeling responsible for fixing, saving or problem-solving on their behalf, even if they could be empowered to do it for themselves
• Hypervigilance to resolve, pacify or sooth the suffering of others
• Regularly feeling empathic overwhelm in relationships
• Remaining in unhealthy relationships to the detriment of your own integrity and safety
• Compromising your own values, integrity and truth to avoid rocking the boat 
• Excessively putting aside your own interests and needs in order to go along what others want
• Making excuses, minimising, altering or denying how you really feel to maintain the status quo
• Struggling to identify what you genuinely feel in interactions with certain people
• Wearing the mask of 'I'm fine' when you are actually not
• Allowing other people's opinions of you to determine your self-worth
• Repeatedly attracting people who negatively impact you with their issues, addictions, self-focused tendencies or emotional unavailability
• Feeling valued when you fix, help, save or rescue others but frustrated, resentful and angry when it is not reciprocated

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 pattern, 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 pattern perceives as needing our support, that person will meet our Co-dependent Empath, not us. 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 be honest and genuine in relationship with ourselves and others.

In this article I will focus on the identifying characteristics of the Co-dependent Empath and how it can undermine our ability to be all of who we could potentially be. And Part Two of this article (see link below) will set out a loosely-framed reflective process on how to graciously release this pattern from our life.

The Co-dependent Empath

If your gift of attunement was channelled into taking care of, managing and smoothing over what may have seemed painful, scary, dysfunctional, and perhaps even unjust in your childhood, welcome in the Co-dependent Empath pattern, at your service, Maam. Whilst the experience of intense empathy and empathic overwhelm is generally self-explanatory for those who identify as highly attuned or sensitive, co-dependency is a term used to describe an excessive emotional reliance on others for our self-worth and sense of identity. This can cloud our judgments in relationships, particularly around appropriate boundary setting, leaving us feeling depleted and burnt out, more often than not.

As an empathic temperament we feel everyone in our family and the usefulness of this is to anticipate how to behave for them to like and approve of us. Why? Because we need our parents to be level and present to parent us. If there was drama and dysfunction everywhere, we will feel our family member's unintegrated emotional fields and our unconscious will strategically position us in context to this. With the co-dependent posturing of putting others needs before our own, from a place of ‘you matter more than me’, our template of other-determined self-esteem is naturally born. The "I will only survive if I don't have boundaries' erroneous childhood conviction frames how we value ourselves for the rest of your lives unless we become aware and heal ourselves.

So as much as the Co-dependent Empath pattern may have helped us out and perhaps even saved us in our younger years, it's unlikely to help us now as adults, as we look around our life and wonder why we keep attracting people who NEED us to plug the gaps in their lives. For what was initially experienced as an esteem-boosting 'act of service' to others, can eventually leave us feeling drained out, collapsed and perhaps even resentful and angry.

We can be quick to judge ourselves for ongoingly attracting people who are draining, self-focused, in active addiction, or emotionally unavailable. But the truth is, we didn't! This was, instead, a template set up on our behalf by our unconscious in our earlier years. Its sole purpose was to help us manouevre ourselves in a way that we could get our basic needs met such as our safety, belonging and self-worth. If Mum had unpredictable moods or Dad was depressed, by utilising the Co-dependent Empath pattern, our unconscious was working to manage the situation as best it could, putting our inherent abilities of understanding what other's need, attentive listening skills, and helping, fixing and problem-solving to good use.

Think of it this way, the Co-dependent Empath's view on relationships is 'If you are even-keeled, then I am even-keeled, so I will do everything I can to level you out''. This equates to safety. 

And if we take this a step further: the Codependent Empath also assumes that 'If I can fix/help/rescue you, and you value me for this, then I have found my identity, purpose, belonging and sense of self-worth'.

This way of viewing oneself often stems from erroneous beliefs such as 'If somethings not right, it must be my fault or due to my failings'. And because the Co-dependent Empath staunchly believes these untruths, in it's relentless pursuit to prove its worth through fixing everything, it struggles to rest until its entire environment is at peace. Needless to say, the life of a Co-dependent Empath is stressful and taxing, not to mention exhausting and draining. 

If tip-toeing around people, efforting to make things better for them, and continually peace-keeping choppy interactional waters is a skill used, in excess and without awareness, when this dynamic disappears we will feel uncomfortable and out of place. This is why we continue to return to this familiar dynamic, over and over again, until such a time that we become so imbalanced in ourselves that we have no other option but to re-evaluate and start the process of change (See link below for more on the change process in Part 2 of this article). 

A Personal Example of the Co-dependent Empath

As an example of my own experience of the Co-dependent Empath pattern, I recall a long-term relationship with a man who struggled with depression. His emotional suffering elicited a high level of empathy and compassion in me alongside strong urges to help him feel better. In this sense he was a perfect match for my Co-dependent Empath pattern. I felt energised to think I could help him and initially it appeared that I could. Through the delusional eyes of my Co-dependent Empath we made the 'perfect couple'.

This man also carried the 'blaming anger energy' of a Victim pattern that was often unpredictable and scary. With limited awareness at the time, I followed the potent urges of my Co-dependent Empath to do whatever it took to keep him calm. Upon reflection, this was a life or death situation to my nervous system because if I didn't solve his problems, there was potential for him to leave me, as my psyche was seeing him through the lens of my Wounded Abandoned Child. This was another childhood pattern unconsciously set up through my experiences of abandonment in earlier years. In addition, co-dependency was an intergenerational pattern expressed though the female role models in my family growing up. Basing their safety, worth and identity on their ability to nurture and emotionally provide for others, co-dependency was deeply inbred in me from the get-go, and like so many other women, I knew no different. 

Despite the various communication strategies I tried using during this relationship, it was met with defence, blame and accusations. Only able to see reality through the muddied filters of my Co-dependent Empath and Wounded Child, I took his stories of blame and accusation on as my own, allowing myself to be scapegoated for his unresolved pain. This understandably manifested in my body as physical symptoms.

Interestingly, I often recall seeing a visual in my minds eye of a balloon sitting above his head with a pin pointing towards it, as though it was about to pop, whenever he was close to exploding with anger. This was intuitive visual data, appearing out of the blue that I dismissed at the time, putting it down to my own 'craziness'. At midlife, however, I can confidently say, after many years of tracking my interior landscape, I have noticed that the same imagery emerges for me when I interact with people who have similar tendencies. For this reason I now honour this information for what it is - intuitive data - supporting me to make conscious and sensible choices for myself in my life. (More on intuitive data in Part 2 of this article - see link below)

Attracting people who need me to make them feel better or solve their problems has been a lifelong challenge that I have come to realise has been driven by my Co-dependent Empath pattern. If you can relate to this pattern, it is not your fault, and there is zero-shame in admitting that you have unconscious magnetic attractions (friendship, sexual or otherwise) to people who fulfil your Co-dependent's 'need to be needed' to validate your value as a human.

To highlight the potency of unconscious childhood patterns, they are like biological urges, driven by genetically inherited and conditioning/trauma-induced biochemistry, akin to addiction. What have you done to attract this, Kira?' is the shameful message I have received much of my life, and for anyone in this position, I want to empower you to know that a) it is not your fault and b) you can break these patterns by pro-actively working with your empathic system. Through education we come to understand that our empathic system can assist us to identify who and how we can help, love and support effectively, without hurting ourselves in the process. To finally come to learn that my empathic system was not here to disable me but instead to help heal myself and others, has been a game-changer at every level of my life, and I hope this will be the case for you too. 

From Co-dependent Empathic Overwhelm to Inherent Self-worth

Our esteem is NEVER determined by another. As adults we come to understand that we were born into this world with esteem inherently. We have always been deeply loved and always will be. This wise knowing begins to bubble up as a 'felt sense' experience through regular daily healthy/spiritual practices that allow us to reconnect with ourselves and honour our personal truth in any given moment. From a place of esteem, we begin to say no to the things that hurt us, protecting and re-parenting the fearful younger energy still alive and well inside us.

By beginning to take graceful and gentle steps towards honest expression with ourselves and others, we begin to set up a new energetic template that attracts others who aspire for the same. As we transition from a dependency on others' happiness and wellbeing for our self-worth, to a tranquil self-trust based on knowing our inherent value, we naturally discover a strong, direct, loving and honest voice to gracefully share with others. And as the energetic charge on our Co-dependent Empath begins to subside, those who are meant to be in our life naturally become more visible and those who are not gradually fade away.  ​

In summary:

If you relate to the tendencies of the Co-dependent Empath outlined in this article, in Part Two (see below for link) I will outline a reflective process on how to release this unconscious childhood pattern. By releasing the Co-dependent Empath we support a key skill we need to cultivate as highly attuned, empathic people. This is the skill of differentiation. By disentangling ourselves from our own unconscious projections and patterns from our past, we are better able to appraise our 'here and now' relationship dynamics by discerning what is our 'emotional content' and what is 'other person's'. This helps us to turn down the volume of our empathic overwhelm, remain grounded in our present reality, realistically appraise the situation at hand, and support others effectively, if and when needed.

Taking baby steps to understand our unconscious childhood patterns and their motives not only supports genuine self-expression but also helps hone the skills of our inherent intuitive abilities. As we stop seeing our external reality through our childhood filters we naturally do the same with our intuitive/divine guidance. With increasing levels of open receptivity, non-judgmental curiosity, and seeing through a neutral, grounded lens we have a much higher chance of both detecting and accurately interpreting our intuitive knowing with more ease. This opens the potential for transformation and healing for ourselves and those around us, in ways we may never have imagined possible. The sky becomes the limit :) 

If this article has been helpful, stay tuned. I will continue to post as many articles and videos 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 Two of this article: https://www.counsellingtauranga.co.nz/blog/releasing-our-co-dependent-empath-part-two

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

The Experience of the Intuitively Perceptive Multi-Sensory Energy Body

If you relate to being multi-sensory, you know that you can intuitively sense, feel and perceive more than your own field and psychology. It's like you are a radio station picking up on a number of channels at the same time. This level of perceiving can include other people's emotions, thoughts, perceptions, patterns, sensations, symptoms and even illnesses. Your perception may also extend into sensing spiritual energies (however you define this) and other dimensions, including plants, animals, group/collective energy, solar system shifts, and perhaps even foreseeing upcoming events and changes. This can feel very overwhelming, exhausting and confusing without the tools to know how to accurately interpret the sensory data you are receiving. This blog is dedicated to sharing a tool to support you to learn how to read your own multi-sensory system so that you can a) take good care of it and b) understand the gift of your own unique intuitive/sensory language.

Before we go any further, let's define intuition. Intuition is our truthteller. And it simply means we know something be true without knowing how we know. And whilst everybody has intuition, it is a predominant faculty of highly attuned people that is too loud to ignore. As a consequence of our intuition being suppressed and illegitimised for centuries in our logic-valued Western culture, it currently requires our courage to resist the collective negative attitudes towards it, in order to rebuild a relationship with it. And as we grow our trust in our intuition, which naturally happens with the continued experience of matching our intuitive nudges with growth and evolution for ourselves and others, we will start to use our intuitive gift as a directional compass for our lives in balance with the logical, rational facts at hand.

Seeing life through the lens of the Tracker - A tool to help interpret your multi-sensory psychology

Imagine if we could see our lives the way fish in a fish tank see the outside world. Its impersonal. Life is coming and going, and changing moment by moment. In a similar way, we can use a technical, impersonal lens to collect data on ourselves and life, as it unfolds around us. Using this technical lens, we can learn to observe our thoughts, sensations, emotions and urges as simply data/energy moving through our physical body. 

An example of this, as an intuitive temperament, could be 1) empathically feeling into the field of someone you care about who you know is suffering whilst simultaneously 2) noticing your urge to find ways to help them and  3) holding the intention to parent your children with love and care in the here and now. Additionally 4) you may also notice anger rising in you when having a seemingly neutral interaction with a friend on the phone, for which 5) your inner critic starts attacking you for. You may also be aware that 6) there is a distinct feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach for which you cannot identify its origin and with this 7) an urge to go source some chocolate asap to curb the discomfort of this uncertainty. As you can see, being multi-sensory can sometimes feel very overwhelming and exhausting, without the tools to help us read the multiple strands of information we are experiencing.

And the above example is a very simple one. Imagine walking into a mall or crowded space as a highly attuned person, especially if the chips are down and resilience low!

To witness, identify and name the different elements of our experience we can use what I will refer to here as your Tracker. Your Tracker simply collects data, in a grounded and technical way, taking note of the sensory information at hand without judgment. By naming what is true for you in any given moment is what we could call tracking the data. If you notice you are flooded with too much data, try taking a moment to write down the different components of your experience. This exercise, in and of itself, can help calm a physical body that has become information-flooded or empathically overwhelmed. And if that doesn't help, the 'instruction' from a body out of balance is always 'to ground and recenter'. Our body needs our help and our job is to assist it. Once it recenters, clarity of perception and directional 'next steps' naturally emerge.

Tracking the data

The accuracy of our intuitive perceptual skills will only ever be as good as the consciousness work we do on ourselves. Our consciousness work helps us to wipe clean our perceptual filters that have been muddied by our past conditioning and unrecovered trauma. We have a tendency, as humans, to project away what we have repressed in our psyches. The unconscious stores and manages what has been repressed and our body keeps the score. For example, if we have been taught by culture to shut ourselves down emotionally, we may struggle to empathise with others' feelings, even as highly attuned people (and especially for males in a culture where masculine strength is expressed through the 'tough guy' persona). So we firstly need to identify, and then 'hug in', what has been banished to the unconscious part of our psyche, from our personal truth and unique gifts to our insecurities, fears, and shame. By locating these repressed parts of ourselves, and their recruited protective patterns and distorted perceptions, we will become better acquainted with what triggers us into reactive patterns and simultaneously liberate our truth and inherent gifts, allowing us to change the trajectory of our life. 

This is an essential part of the 'know thyself' human healing journey and is ultimately a form of esteem work. When we are comfortable in ourselves, with the truth of ALL of who we are - the good, the bad and the ugly - reactivity tends to dissolve, we are more genuinely connected to others, and life simply doesn’t activate us in the same way anymore. This work requires commitment to regular self-reflection and self-connection. While it may feel like a confusing and messy process at first, this is how we begin to see through eyes of neutrality and accuracy. It also helps us to detect and interpret our intuitive sensory data, as it is no longer mixed up with, and skewed by the protective projections and patterns of our past.

In due course, I will be offering some information on some of the common patterns and filters that block our ability to see through a clean lens. But for now, I encourage you to start practicing using the neutral pattern of Tracker to identify your experience in this now moment, without judgment, attachment of stories, or making any part of yourself wrong.

Making sense of your sensory data - starting with the very basics

Towards and Away From Sensory Data: You can start to practice using the Tracker lens right now as you read this information. When I am sharing information, it is simply that; information. Neither good, bad, nor right, wrong, but simply information that your physical body will either resonate with, or not. Knowing what resonates and what doesn't, through your subtle sensory system, is you discerning your personal truth in this moment. For example, notice when your ears prick up, something registers deep inside, you experience the 'full body divine tingles', a sense of 'connecting the dots', or a sentence or word gleaned that peaks your interest. We can pay attention to these signs running through your sensory system to move you towards or away from something, be it information, interactions, situations or environments.

Outdated Conditioning or Unresolved Trauma Sensory Data: Equally, our Tracker can NOTICE when we are triggered by a wounded, unresolved part of ourselves that needs to be 'hugged in' and attended to. The difference here is that it won't be a moving towards or away from feeling, but more of a rattled, discombobulated feeling. You may feel emotional, irritable, unwell, flooded, overwhelmed, exhausted, angry, perhaps even disassociated. A reaction like this is your ally: a signpost to the fact that you are out of balance. If all things considered in your lifestyle, health, relationships and general wellbeing are at a reasonable baseline, it is likely to be a psychological imbalance pointing to old wounds that need healing or conditioning that needs updating. This will require our attention to delve into its origins, process what was not fully processed or considered at the time, and update our distorted filters. Once our psyche becomes a neutralised container we naturally find that we can hold different situations, beliefs, and points of views, with ease. 

Our Moral Compass: Keep in mind, however, there can be another type of triggering which may be entirely appropriate to a situation. We all have a conscience, an innate moral compass of sorts, which is connected to the core of who we are. The closer we are to our integrity and conscience, the more confidence we have to speak assertively into the topics that are truly important to us, but if culture has shamed us for doing so in the past, we may react out of character in the moment or suffer in silence. Because our innate moral code also speaks to us through our multi-sensory system, violation of it will cause an immediate response that could look and feel like a triggered reaction. A good way to check this, if you are rattled by your own reaction post-the-event, is to ask yourself, 'had I not reacted in that way, would I be haunted for not speaking or stepping up in that moment?'  Equally, if we are unable to respond in the moment, we can process our reaction (as I will outline below), allowing us to get to know this core part of who we are, and if necessary follow up with an action for closure. 

A personal example of processing using my Tracker

As an example of using my own Tracker to drill down on one aspect of my now moment experience, let me share with you some real-time processing of one of the bouts of reactivity I recently experienced. I felt overwhelming frustration when I was faced with a group of people holding a collective attitude, in what I believed to be lacking nuance and the 'fuller picture' leading to bias and prejudice. Scanning the data I can break it down to:  

1) In the moment of the trigger, I experienced ANGER (violation to my moral code), SELF CRITICISM from my Inner Critic (why can't you just be like everyone else - your life would be so much easier!), BLAME from my Victim  (why have I been given such a high-volume emotional and sensory system that never seems to fit with the greater collective? why can't I have an easier life?) Once I have acknowledged and held space for all the initial screaming in my psyche, it made space for:

2) I am experiencing SADNESS that parts of humanity are still so closed in their perception due to unchecked black and white conditioning, and...

3) the Idealist in me (connected to my value system and conscience) grieves that this hasn't changed yet. Tears are running down my cheeks as I write this as I...

4) release somatically the energy of SADNESS from my physical body, grief that we are not yet where I would prefer us to be as a human collective. Simultaneously, I am becoming aware, as I peel back all these layers is my inherent... 

5) FAITH-BASED BELIEF/INTUITIVE KNOWING that everything is exactly as it is meant to be at this point of time, and that change is not only possible but inevitable. This brings hope, peace and relief to my psyche, as I reconnect with my INTUITIVE TRUTH so that there is now room for me to move more fluidly throughout the rest of my day, without the added layer of stress that repressed grief brings. This unexpressed grief could have otherwise triggered a familiar Defeatist pattern in me creating a low mood, heavy energy, and a narrative that 'there is no hope'. Instead, by using my Tracker, my sensory data naturally led me back to a reconnection with myself and my personal truth, resetting my physical body and allowing me to be present again in the here and the now.

If I went through this reflective process and came to the conclusion I needed to take an action for closure (by speaking to the people who were involved, for example) I could have done that. BUT after peeling back and working through all of the data, including expressing my grief somatically, I have become intuitively aware that this is not necessary. In fact I know it could further entrench their black and white thinking. When we neutralise our psyche in this way, we have better access to our intuitive perception and a greater ability to let go of that which we cannot control. Once I had released my grief I could see clearly that it was not my responsibility to try and change this particular group's attitudes. This has returned me to a feeling of warmth and acceptance towards the WHOLE of who these people are, not just what I perceive to be negative.  

In Summary: 
​
Change is constant and resistance to change causes suffering, as Buddha has wisely taught us. Our physical  body is changing moment by moment, so staying attuned to ourselves and our multiple senses, never making our multi-sensory system wrong and honouring the information it shares with us, we have an opportunity to get to know and heal ourselves at a deeper level. What needs to be cleared from our system, can be cleared. What needs to be taken heed of, can be honoured. What needs to be transmuted for the better, can be healed. What is your's and what is somebody else's emotional content can be identified and released. And as we get more skilled, with the helpful neutrality of our Tracker, our sensory data can be used discerningly and conscientiously to make wise and conscious decisions for the greater good. 

By befriending our many channels of information, we learn how our multiple senses are trying to communicate with us, enabling us to utilise their gift of communication to help ourselves and the greater collective along. Whilst this may seem like a challenge at first, as we learn to track our multi-sensory body for data, impersonally and without judgment, it is not only eye-opening but one of the most loving acts we can give ourselves. Moreover, it is a healing antidote to the shame-based messages we may have received growing up in a 5-sensory culture as multi-sensory beings. Such an act of self-connection enables us to see more clearly, honours our temperament and its gifts, and supports us to tap into experiences of transformation and healing that we may never have believed possible. 

The groundbreaking work of one of our earliest Western psychologists, Karl Jung (1875-1961), was the beginning of a revolutionary shift in our understanding of the human psyche. Thanks to the voluminous and extensive work of Jung and those who followed in his footsteps, it is easy to understand how human beings can become so divorced from their authentic expression. We are instead taken over by our unconsciously-driven archetypal patterns created in response to our childhood environments, born out of our natural instincts to belong, to be safe and to be of value. This could be likened to developing a 'masked' identity that enables us to manoeuvre safely and effectively in our environments, but simultaneously cuts us off from our authentic self and truth-telling abilities. But thankfully, at certain points of our life, we may experience a cracking through of this 'authentic self' in its desire to express itself, creating havoc in the beginning stages, but ultimately leading to self-discovery, self-healing, and transformation. 

Jung defined archetypes as universal patterns or forces in the human psyche, much like instincts. Instincts are like biological urges. When we trigger an instinct, it immediately activates a pattern of behaviour, like running a software program on a computer. Simply put, just like we don’t have to think when we drive a car, because the subconscious automatically does that for us, our various archetypal patterns from childhood run many aspects of our adult life, without any awareness on our part. 
 
Our archetypal patterns are influencing everything we think, do and feel. Each pattern has its own habitual energy, expressions, gestures, urges, thoughts, feelings and vocabulary. When we can observe an archetype operating in us, we have differentiated ourselves from it. This allows us the option to pivot into new consciously-created patterns, better aligned with the truth of who we are. And with this, our life direction has the possibility to move from an unconsciously-driven fate into a consciously-driven destiny in alignment with your life's callings.

There can be a number of archetypal characters driving our adult personality, both helpful and unhelpful. As examples, we may appropriately morph into a Professional archetype when at work, but inappropriately, be unconsciously driven by an Abandoned Child archetype in our most intimate relationships. This 'Abandoned Child' pattern may trigger us to 'act out' in various ways to relieve this historic fear of abandonment even if that fear holds no legitimacy in our present-day context.
 
A universally experienced archetypal pattern by all human beings is the child archetype. The child archetype is where our psychological template was first set up, laying down a foundation for our safety, belonging, and self-worth. But there is a certain limit to our psychology as children, as we are simply not mature enough to understand the complexity of the human psyche at such a young age. With our subconscious mind designed to track any threats to our safety as a child, it was unlikely to perceive our father's anger or mother's depression as having nothing to do with us. Instead, any issue belonging to the adults around us had the potential to be perceived as 'our fault'. If we take on the pattern of a Wounded Child it will usually recruit other patterns to hide its insecurities and find ways to adapt in a 'culturally acceptable' way. This is where the Conformist, Perfectionist, Rescuer, Helper, Achiever, Co-dependent, Inner Critic, Victim, or even the self-focused, self-reliant Shapeshifter/Chameleon/Lone Wolf or Narcissist archetypal patterns may develop, just to name a few. If you can relate to any of these archetypal expressions, we can think of them as seeing, thinking, hearing, perceiving and choosing for us, way beyond our childhood years, leaving us with a skewed perception on reality. Aside from the fact that these patterns block our ability to truly KNOW OURSELVES, they also sabotage our perceptual clarity as mature adults, as we continue to unconsciously project our wounded child's reality onto the people and environments around us. 

This leads me to speak into the highly attuned, empathic child archetype. If you can relate to this temperament you will know you were exquisitely attuned to the expectations of your environment growing up. You perhaps picked up on the repressed emotions and energy of those around you, potentially found yourself sharing wise insight with people (whether they were ready to hear it or not!), or were shamed for having multi-sensory experiences outside of our mainstream 5-sensory cultural perceptual framework. Moreover, being a part of a culture where our qualities were seen as 'less than ideal'; such as feeling our feelings intensely, becoming overwhelmed by too much external stimulation because of our depth of perceptual processing, and/or ongoingly being told we were wrong when we definitively knew we were right, can lead to self-disconnection, self-abandonment and distrust in our natural instinctive knowing.  With little education or support, which simply didn't exist in previous generations, on how to read, manage and use our high attunement in a beneficial way, the potential for feeling 'less than' was very real. The message was clear: DON'T BE YOU and YOU DON'T FIT.  Furthermore, there was simply no education provided to let us know that its ok to be you, and here's how to work effectively with a highly attuned system like yours. 

Given these cultural circumstances it was highly likely for an emotionally abandoned child archetype to develop in many highly attuned children. And to mask their Wounded Child's insecurities they were likely to have recruited a variety of archetypal expressions to compensate for their perceived shortcomings. It makes total sense that they unconsciously utilised their inherent gifts, such as their attuned listening skills and ability to read other peoples needs, to funnel into patterns that helped them feel esteemed, loved and a sense of belonging. They may have taken on the patterns of the Parentified Child (parenting their own caregivers), Adult Child (becoming self-reliant to the extreme, due to  distrust in the adults around them) or Codependent Empath (managing other peoples feelings to manage their own safety and emotional balance), just to name a few. They may have even recruited a hyper-vigilant Risk Assessor and Chameleon to shape-shift around the varying situations in their childhood settings, trusting no one and learning to adapt quickly to the wide range of expectations and needs of those around them.

Shutting down our inherent gifts in this way, by recruiting them instead for the hypervigilant management of our environments, is likely to burn us out or leave us feeling very alone and disconnected from ourselves and others over time. This understandably puts us at risk of recruiting even more sabotaging patterns, like the addict (workaholism included!) or tuned-out 'daydreamer' or 'fantasiser', to provide us with some temporary relief from the discomfort of the long-term self-disconnection we are experiencing. The silencing or cutting ourselves off from our authenticity can also affect our individual biochemistry, impacting our physical and mental health, and making us prone to becoming pathologised in today's culture. And whilst medication may play an important role in helping our biology to heal, we also need to identify the archetypal patterns that maintain this biochemical imbalance.  By identifying where our archetypal patterns originated, we can learn to accept these parts of our selves and 'hug them in' graciously, understanding that they helped to keep us safe in childhood, but utilised in excess NOW, sabotage our precious life force energy, inherent gifts and creative potential. 

To move into new self-chosen archetypal patterns, in alignment with our personal truth and inherent moral code, is more than just having awareness of our childhood patterns, however. It is a process, that will take as long as it takes, to move from your recruited childhood survival team to a new consciously-chosen empowered one. To do this, trauma recovery and a review on your conditioning is required, oftentimes not without some discomfort and grief along the way. I often refer to this as a 'Dark Night' process of 'becoming a nobody to become a somebody again', as we humbly own our own part in some of the choices we have made in our lives as a result of these recruited childhood patterns. Getting both trusted human and faith-based support through this process can help us through this transition as we shift from, what can seem like an initially messy interior landscape to perceptual clarity from a self-aware and mature adult perspective. And it is important to remember throughout this transformative process, that a healthy 'reclamation of one's true self' has the potential to be hampered by our automatic default patterns, such as our 'Inner Critic' or 'Perfectionist', blaming ourselves, or 'Victim', blaming others. Our job instead is to notice these default patterns and pivot towards a more healing orientation, knowing that there is no right nor wrong, just simply DATA to be TRACKED through a NEUTRAL lens, as spoken about in previous articles and videos. 

Using an archetypal framework is a powerful roadmap to understanding the human psyche and helps us to see ourselves more clearly, and therefore others too. As we start to identify the uncomfortable shadow parts of our psyche, we can peel back the layers of the inauthentic 'masks' we have accumulated over time and shed their inaccurate perceptions. This can be confronting, especially if we have recruited self-deprecating, self-sacrificing and even self-focused patterns to cope with life. But as we are released from the grip of these patterns, we have the ability to move through life in an entirely different yet empowering way, aligned with the truth of who we actually are. It also enables us to detect those same shadow expressions in others, and therefore not take others behaviours so personally. For the most part, we come to understand that many people are predominantly being run by childhood programming that has never been identified, let alone addressed, to support their own healing towards authenticity and wholeness.

For many multi-sensory beings, the search for truth and healing through self-reflection is something we feel naturally drawn to, and our own inner transformation opens a pathway for healing to occur in the wider systems around us. With each of us who dare to tread this often invisible and solitary, yet immensely courageous path, we know intuitively that we contribute to the healing and evolution of our family lines and therefore, human consciousness as a whole. To anyone who resonates with this journey, I salute you. I see you, I hear you, I feel you, I honour you, I love you and I thank you :) 

In sincere gratitude to the work of teacher and authors, Robert Ohotto and Caroline Myss, for their extensive and advanced body of work based on Karl Jung's archetypes, both of whose work can be found on the internet.  

Te Whare Tapa Whā - A Maori Model of Health and Wellbeing

Māori health expert, Mason Durie, developed the Te Whare Tapa Whā model of health in 1984. This model encapsulates a Māori view of health that has five dimensions: Whenua (earth/environment), Taha Wairua (spiritual health), Taha Hinengaro (mental health), Taha Tinana (physical health) and Taha Whanau (social health). Different parts of a wharenui (meeting house) represent each of these dimensions. Without these different parts, the wharenui would collapse, exemplifying the interdependence between, and powerful influence each dimension has on the other. 
 
In Māori culture, taha wairua is acknowledged to be an essential requirement for health, but as Durie points out, it is an often misunderstood approach to wellbeing because, although it is universally experienced by humans as a subjective ‘felt sense' experience, it defies translation into words leaving it infrequently spoken about. Taha Wairua includes experiencing times of spiritual connection which could encompass the 'felt sense' of awe, wonder, interconnectedness, faith, hope, insight, meaning and purpose. This could be, for some, felt via the experience of karakia (prayer) or equally, for others, the awe experienced watching the sun go down. Taha wairua also pertains to unseen energies and spiritual awareness. It is believed that without knowledge of the things that uplift the human spirit in a 'felt sense' way, an individual can be considered more prone to ill health and lack wellbeing. 

Taha wairua also includes things that bring meaning and purpose to one's life, encompassing a quest for wholeness and knowing who you are, a search for hope and harmony, belief in a higher being or beings,  one's connection to ancestors, a sense that there is more to life than the practical and material aspects of it, and activities that give value and meaning to people’s lives. In Māori culture specifically, it can include things like whakapapa (genealogy), atua (ancestors), karakia (prayer), sacred whenua (places) like Marae, sacred taonga (objects) like pounamu, spiritual concepts like mana (power, essence, presence) and mauri (life force energy), and tikanga (custom). 

Our current cultural devaluing of Taha Wairua and with that, our 'felt sense' experiences

The Enlightenment period, swiftly followed by the Age of Reason, was a period of history from the 16th to 18th centuries in Europe of cultural and intellectual revolution. At this time, European society underwent a staggering transformation, in part as a reaction to both the superstition and control fostered by the medieval church. This period initiated a profound advancement in the liberation of the intellect, doing society a great favour in overturning the absolute power of state and church, including its scapegoating of witches across America and Europe in the 15 and 16oos, for the many religious, economic, climate, war and conflict misfortunes at that time.

As the West's love affair with logic, intellect and science continued to grow and gain momentum during this period, what was now regarded as unreliable and subjective, including our innate intuitive skills and spiritual beliefs and practices, began to be devalued, initiating a process of gradually writing off the domain of faith, moral instruction, and spiritual direction held dear to humans for millennia. People who were intuitively, spiritually and mystically inclined, found both inside and outside of religious structures in the previous centuries, retreated to positions of lesser social authority and status. Mystics, for example, who were influenced by both their passion for mind and reason as well as God and Soul; and Shamans and Healers, who often worked with plant medicine and different spiritual energies, were much less welcomed as legitimate contributors of value to society at large.

For millennia, up until the Enlightenment and Age of Reason, spiritual belief systems and concepts have acted as a bridge for humans into a direct connection to God/the Divine/the Sacred and were regarded as essential in navigating life’s inevitable uncertainties and challenges. One example of this is the practice of prayer, found across most, if not all, religious and spiritual traditions. Prayer induces a state of FAITH in asking a higher intelligence to show us how to best show up in the world and to illumine the right path and course of action for us in challenging times, as well as to assist us in our personal growth and moral development. It is the ultimate act of asking empowering questions, in a 'felt sense' field of grace and trust, where we can expect to receive the guidance and strength we are seeking. There is no greater placebo effect than this (in rational scientific terms) when faced with the unavoidable challenges of the irrational, unpredictable and uncertain aspects of the natural universe of which we are a part. 

In Gratitude to Taha Wairua: a bridge to reclaiming our Spiritual Senses and Multi-Sensory Temperaments

In a culture in which there is currently a spiritual void for many, and in the face of dealing with challenging situations that require us to go beyond the rational mind in our approach, taha wairua is a doorway to restoring balance between our rational, logic mind, and the cosmic human heart. As we enter an age where more and more people are seeking a spiritual pilgrimage into the depths of what it means to be a whole person living a meaningful life, taha wairua offers a legitimate pathway back to a spiritual foundation which ultimately supports the overcoming of adversities, understanding our own unique callings and life path, and the ethical and personal development of our character. As a therapist, I have come to understand that solely bandaging the practical issues arising in one’s life in a rational step-by-step way, to be inadequate for a human soul starving for spiritual replenishment in a mainstream culture devoid of such conversations, let alone practices. It is to taha wairua, I personally hold the deepest gratitude for its support in opening these much-needed conversations in the current emerging era of increasing openness and receptivity than in the centuries prior. 


​