A Conversation with author Wendy De Rosa about Becoming an Empowered Empath
We hope you’ll enjoy this Q and A with Wendy about her new book.
The title of your book is Becoming an Empowered Empath. What is an empath and how can someone tell if they are one?
An energetic empath is someone who feels the energy of others, the energy in their environment, and energy in the collective. Empaths will often unknowingly take this energy on or absorb it into their own energy field and body. As a result, they experience physical symptoms, illness, fatigue, emotional overwhelm, and more. Learning how to clear other people’s energy from their body and strengthen the energetic center helps energetic empaths hold emotional and energetic boundaries and evolve from being overly empathic to an empowered empath.
Here are some ways you can tell if you are an empath: You sense other people’s emotions or feel you have absorbed other people’s energy when you enter a room. You pick up on the energy around you, how people are feeling, or what might be happening around you. In a conversation with someone they over share and walk away feeling great, while you end up feeling like you took on their issues. You get tired easily being around people. You may be vulnerable to illness. feel nauseated, or get headaches and other physical symptoms when around other people’s energy. You need introverted time to replenish. You keep the peace in a dynamic by taking on the emotions of others so they don’t have to feel or express their feelings. The list can go on, but essentially, you know you are an empath when you feel the energy of others around you.
Tell us more about the chakras and what do they have to do with being an empath?
Chakras are wheels of energy in the body. They relate to personal and spiritual power held in the energetic body that is infused with our human experience. When they are vibrant, clear, and balanced, they radiate the power of that specific chakra’s essence. When the chakras are blocked, too open, or “leaking,” we operate from wounded consciousness in that area of the body and become disempowered. The first three chakras in the body relate to empathic intuition. The first, second, and third chakras are our primary power centers for attachment, grounding, and relationships in the world. If we are holding wound patterns tied to our relationships, our existence, belonging, security in ourselves, safety, trust, feminine power, sexuality, and confidence, we lose the ability to hold our vital life force energy in these areas. This leads to weakened energetic and emotional boundaries and making us vulnerable to becoming overly empathic. Being an empowered empath is the process of having strong lower chakra health and wellness.
You say in the book that empaths experience their world through their intuition. Please tell us more about what this looks like on a daily basis.
Empaths experience the world through their “felt” sense. They feel when something isn’t right. They feel the emotions of other people, or the energy in a space. From an intuitive perspective, this means that they often know what another person needs and can offer acts of kindness, empathy, or connection to help the person rise up. Empathic intuition is the power of trusting your gut instinct and what’s felt beneath the surface. When empaths learn to trust their gut instincts, they make effective and trustworthy leaders because they can identify the shadow and clear the air when something does not feel right.
What is grounding and why is it important for supporting healthy intuition?
Grounding is the primordial connection between our physical bodies and the energy of the earth. We ground through the soles of our feet into the earth and receive the earth’s biocurrents to settle the nervous system. We also energetically ground from the pelvis through an a grounding cord connecting the body to to the center of the earth. If you use imagery, you might see this grounding “cord” as a tree trunk or a beam of light that runs from the pelvic bowl and extends down through the legs and feet into the center of the earth. Healthy intuition means that we are grounded, embodied (in our bodies) and accessing the full intuitive powers through all the chakras. Typically, if there are unprocessed wounds in the lower half of the body, our soul will move up higher in the energetic system and in turn, the upper chakras will be more evolved. This can result in strong clairvoyant intuition, clairaudient intuition, and higher guidance and insights. If we are out of balance, physical symptoms can develop in the lower body to try and get our attention. Healthy intuition means that we are tending to the health and wellbeing of our intuitive centers in both the upper and lower chakras. It is more natural for the soul to gravitate upward and as a result, can become ungrounded. No matter what aspects of intuition are stronger for you, grounding is always going to be vital for embodiment, healthy intuition — and mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.
What is the most important thing someone who wants to stop taking on other people’s energy needs to know?
I think it’s so important to know that if you are living a pattern of taking on the energy of others, then you most likely have a gift underneath that needs to be seen, needs to be validated, needs to be reparented, and it’s probably been nudging you for a long time. The triggers that happen when you take on the energy of others are also a gift because they are pointing you in the direction of going deeper within you. That journey involves inner healing, understanding the energy you’ve been carrying, healing your past traumas, and living your God-given gifts in this life. My guess is that they’ve been squashed, and the body is acting out by having big reactions to other people's energy. Becoming an Empowered Empath will help you get underneath the layers, clear your energy, and allow more of your gifts to emerge.
Wendy De Rosa is the author of Becoming an Empowered Empath. The founder of The School of Intuitive Studies, she has been helping people develop intuition and experience personal transformation for over two decades. Visit her online at SchoolOfIntuitiveStudies.com.
Excerpted from the book from Becoming an Empowered Empath. Copyright ©2021 by Wendy De Rosa. Printed with permission from New World Library.