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An Excerpt from Becoming an Empowered Empath by Wendy DeRosa

While empathy is a wonderful trait to have, it’s also possible to have too much of a good thing.  Unless they have strong boundaries, extremely empathic individuals, or empaths, often end up feeling overwhelmed, disconnected from self, and overly emotional as a result of taking on the negative energy of others.

In Becoming an Empowered Empath: How to Clear Energy, Set Boundaries & Embody Your Intuition  (New World Library, March 30, 2021), Wendy DeRosa, a preeminent and pioneering expert on this subject, helps readers understand their empathetic nature and offers the practical tools they need to restore their energetic boundaries, honor their intuitive gifts, and fully express their personal power. We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book.

As a Soul, you are light. You go in and out of lifetimes, and in each lifetime you create and absolve karma. You overcome something. You grow and evolve. From a state of expanded consciousness, you were born into the human experience to do this.

The root, or first, chakra is located in the tailbone area of your body. It is the power center that holds the consciousness of our safety, survival, and attachment to our material existence. The root chakra is the doorway to your ability to ground your energy into the earth and represents the earth element in your body. It governs your physical health; physical structures, such as your bones; your central nervous system; and your home life, which includes both your physical home and a sense of belonging or attachment to this world. It also governs innate love, often experienced as fullness and abundance, and attachment to your family of origin or chosen family.

This is the power center that houses deeply subconscious programming and information about your patterns, belief systems, and how you are going to operate in this world. Much of the energy held in the root chakra is part of your hard wiring, formed from the time you’re in utero until the age of seven.

For empaths, it is crucial to understand the consciousness that’s held at the root chakra. It is the foundation for your entire energy system, the patterns you repeat, and what you are holding on a subconscious level. That consciousness affects your ability to be connected to yourself deeply and to have strong, clear boundaries.

We are going to take a journey into the root chakra consciousness to unpack what is held in this region of the body.

Before birth, we incarnate in the womb. Because we are sentient beings who feel energy and operate through feeling, our empathic intuition is the first sense that forms. In the womb, our bodily systems and senses begin developing after the empathic sense is already established. We are not able to see, but we can hear somewhat as the ears form. While we’re in the womb, the instinctual and sentient aspect of life is the primary state of being. With that comes a sensing of emotions as vibrations from our mother, father, family, and their history of beliefs and feelings.

Love and feeling wanted at deep levels are a primary form of bonding for an empathic or sensitive child, even while still in utero. Despite whatever emotions the mother experiences during pregnancy, the deeper bond of love for her child creates an attachment. After being born the empathic intuitive can feel what they have absorbed in the womb. If being unwanted is the deeper feeling here, this energy also forms part of a child’s attachment in the world.

When we are born, we meet our family of origin or our adoptive family. We’re awake in the world. In that experience, the empathic intuitive or sensitive child feels what is going on around them in a newfound, expanded space: being held, loved, fed, cleaned, and so on. Survival programming forms from how well we are attached to our family and feel the bonding. This attachment includes how we receive love, how safe we feel, whether there is peace, et cetera.

As we grow from infant to toddler to adolescent, we orient ourselves in our environment. We become attuned to our familial and cultural beliefs, whether they are spoken or enacted. If I am a sensitive child, I take that information in and bond to my family accordingly. As I internalize these beliefs, they become the beliefs I hold about myself. This is the foundation from which I will begin developing my belief systems.

In this environment, very sensitive beings can feel so much. The consciousness during a particular era influences familial and cultural beliefs. For example, fifty years ago, virtually no one was talking about how to nurture an intuitive child. Instead, parents were typically operating from beliefs and attitudes rooted in survival, social norms, and order, such as:

Children are to be seen, not heard.
We keep quiet in this house.
Don’t make noise.
It’s not okay to have feelings.
Don’t trust anyone.

These beliefs become part of the energy we marinate in as sensitive beings outside the womb. People in the household having beliefs and feelings is not unusual. What affects the sensitive child, though, is when an adult does not provide repair from trauma or upset, permission to be, or the sense of safety that comes from the child understanding that their feelings are warranted and true.

The child begins to lose a sense of belonging with the world — not always in the family, but in themselves. The energetic imprint is that the child, to survive, closes down to themselves in order to feel everyone else’s energy around them. The loss of connection to self and to a sense of belonging is deeply subconscious in the root chakra. It innately forms the beginning of the overly empathic experience that we will be unpacking in this book.

To be an empowered empath, you must reclaim the power that exists in your root chakra. No longer are you a victim to the universe and to energy around you. The protection mechanisms you developed in childhood kept you safe and were appropriate for the time in life when you were vulnerable. Thank those protection mechanisms! Thank the disassociation, thank the fight-or-flight response, thank the pattern of overeating or whatever other repetitive pattern you adopted. These coping mechanisms were helping you during a time when you lacked power and love in your root chakra. As a spiritually progressing Soul in a human body who is on this earth to continuously grow and evolve, you are safe now, and it’s absolutely okay for you to take back your power on behalf of your inner child.

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.

I have seen two psychics, and both thought I was a stripper/dancer. I don't strip and never have. What could this mean?

Jessica

Susyn:

I am assuming that your dress and demeanor do not reflect such an occupation, in which case I suspect that both psychics were picking up on a past life. There could also be some astrological reasons for this false assumption as well; I'll go into that a little later.

I am a big promoter of listening closely when you hear the same thing from two different sources, for that indicates that someone is trying to tell you something. Even though these two psychics assumed this was something you do in your current life, the more likely explanation is that they were picking up on a specific past lifetime when you engaged in this type of activity.

In fact, I am a bit surprised that these psychics didn't investigate this further, especially after it happened a second time. We often carry energy from our past lives that shines through in our current incarnation even though the two experiences seem to be unrelated. Most often, people who carry unfounded fears or have a strong interest in a country or culture they have never experienced are demonstrating signature signs from a previous life.

This must have been quite a shock for you to hear. Since in the past, being a stripper was pretty scandalous, if you were one in a past life, you could be carrying a lot of difficult emotions from that time. It may be that, through having these psychics tell you this, you are being led to some needed healing in terms of your self-image.

As a Pisces, you are a water sign. Water signs are generally known for their heightened sexuality, which could be another explanation for the misinformation these psychics picked up. Depending on the strength of other water signs in your astrological natal chart, for example Scorpio or Cancer energy, you may simply be emanating an aura that suggests a more open view toward sexuality. This could lead a psychic who is trying to make sense of what she is picking up on to assume you would be drawn to this type of career.

If you are interested in learning more about your past lives or the energy you are sending out astrologically, you might seek a reading on one or both of these subjects. This would help you to determine where this information came from, and what - if anything - you may need to do about it.

Discovering the underlying cause of this mistaken identity can lead you to greater understanding of yourself, buried talents, needed healing, and new avenues for personal exploration, so I recommend you explore this further via an astrology or past life reading, or past life regression therapy.

*****

Oceania:

I'm looking at the sequence of numbers in your birth date, and see a series of pairs: 2, 2, 1, 1, 9, 9, followed by 0, symbolic of wholeness. These pairs suggest you have two selves: an outer facade you share with others, and a hidden genuine self who is longing to emerge and become whole.

The fact that psychics see you as a stripper suggests you yearn to STRIP AWAY your outer facade and reveal your inner authenticity, your real thoughts and feelings, values and goals. These psychics seeing you as a dancer points to your yearning to be less rigid and more flowing, creative, expressive and artistic.

This is an ideal time to get to know and love yourself so you feel more confident about letting your inner light shine. You may have grown up with a critical parent who held up a magnifying glass to your minor shortcomings rather than celebrating your positive attributes. Such early-life experiences lead people to wear a mask with others. When we are put down or abused, we come to believe we are unlovable, and that sharing of ourselves will only lead to rejection. We then may try to become what others expect us to be.

Your story reminds me of a tarot card called The Tower, which depicts a building falling down. The card represents the falling away of everything false, the crashing and burning of all aspects of our lives that do not serve us or ring true. The Tower STRIPS AWAY everything but our truth, which emerges radiantly in the next card, The Star.

Write down three or more things you REALLY LOVE, activities that make you feel happy, content and glad to be alive. Write down three words that describe your true inner essence. Create a vision board: a collage of inspiring words and pictures cut out from magazines. You can also include photos of yourself that seem to capture the real you. Put together a list of songs that inspire you, and dance to the music!

You're a young woman in search of her true self, and you can use the numbers in your birth date (2, 1 and 9) to find her! In the tarot, these numbers are The Priestess, The Magician, and The Hermit. The Priestess is particularly intuitive and sensitive. Her watery blue energy will help you feel and sense your way to your essence. The Magician and his fiery red energy will empower you to manifest your dreams. The Hermit and his earthy brown energy will help you walk a path of sturdy integrity, unswayed by the demands of others.

Strip away your false identity and allow your genuine self to dance freely through your life; it's time to play and stretch and grow!

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.