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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.

Every night, my dreams involve a friend from when I was younger. We always hung around together, but as time went on, we grew apart. Now he is always in my dreams. He isn't doing anything special or unusual, he just always seems to be in every dream situation. I have no idea why this would be, for I haven't spoken to him in more than five years. If we see each other, we say hello and move on. It's just so strange because he is not someone I even think about during the day, and now he is in my dreams every night for the past three weeks. There is nothing sexual about this; he is just always there like we are close friends even though we're not. Help me, please.

Anonymous

Susyn:

As we travel from one lifetime to another, we tend to move in groups. Our parents, siblings and friends show up over and over in these incarnations, for we have important lessons to learn from all of them.

Often we cross paths with people during our formative years who played an important role in a past life. Even though you and your friend have not remained close over the years, your spirits remain in touch. There is a good chance that you have known this friend before, and that this is what cemented the fast friendship you formed in adolescence. Given this deep soul connection, you are sure to be close to him again in the future.

Dreams carry powerful messages that we need to pay close attention to. There may be an important reason why you are dreaming of him so often, so you may want to consider getting in touch with him to see how he is doing. Even if he is perfectly fine, talking to him could reveal why you are having these frequent dreams about him. You may even discover that he has been thinking and dreaming about you as well.

Astrologically, Mars recently turned retrograde. This only happens once every two years. Depending on where it lands in your natal chart, this could be contributing to this phenomenon. For example, if it is traveling through your third or eleventh house of friendships, Mars could be moving you to go back in time to reconnect with this friend.

As a Libra, friendships and partnerships are very important to you. They are crucial to your well-being and peace of mind. Whether or not this friend returns to your life, the dreams may be pointing out an area of your life where you need to put more focus.

We never know when someone will enter or reenter our lives, but the messages in your dreams are clear: A part of you is longing to reconnect and re-establish this friendship that was so important to you in your early years. With the dawning of Facebook, more and more of us are running across people we haven't thought of or heard from in years. More often than not, there is a subconscious or spiritual reason they are drawn to reach out to us, or us to them.

Even if your friend isn't interested in resuming this friendship, there is still a higher purpose behind your dreams. To discover their messsage, write them down in detail. Perhaps they are urging you to revisit a time in your life when things were simple and lighthearted. If you meditate on the thoughts and ideals you carry about that time, you could discover that these dreams are urging you to reclaim the joyful innocence of your youth.

*****

Oceania:

It's not so much your friend you're dreaming about, but rather whatever it is he represents!

Since a recurring dream character can reflect an aspect of ourselves, you might make a list of qualities that come to mind when you think of this friend and whether they might be qualities within yourself that you would like to embrace, explore or expand at this time. If I think of my best childhood friend, Nancy, I think of someone bold and fearless who would never back down from doing the right thing. If I found myself dreaming of her, I would ponder whether those are the qualities I need to develop in order to best cope with current challenges.

Another possibility is that your mind is drawing your attention to the time in your life when you were close to your friend. Jot down your impressions of that period in your life. What stands out? What were your hardships, triumphs, discoveries and transformations? If I think back on the years Nancy and I were close, I remember it as a time when I was first allowed to attend Girl Scout summer camp and ride the bus to downtown Minneapolis without an adult. Since those experiences represented separation from my family and a growing sense of freedom, if I were dreaming of Nancy, it might mean I needed to amp up my sense of autonomy and act with greater independence in my present life.

A third possibility is that you need to examine the quality of the relationship you shared with your friend. Write down impressions of the friendship itself when it was in full bloom. What did you like best about it? What needs did it fulfill? This KIND of relationship may be something you yearn for in the present.

My friendship with Nancy was characterized by true companionship. We would sleep in a tent in the backyard on the weekend, play tetherball, sit in my treehouse and add to our gum wrapper chain, follow the local creek on bikes until it joined the Mississippi River. If I were dreaming of Nancy, it could mean that I was yearning to share activities and adventures with someone.

You don't say whether or not you're in a romantic relationship. If you ARE, perhaps something is missing, and these dreams are a wake-up call to try to cultivate more of the qualities that flourished in this old friendship. If you're single, your dream may be pushing you to seek companionship, friendship or romantic partnership.

Explore whether any of these explanations fit for you, and then get busy. The recurring dreams of your friend will subside as soon as you pinpoint and address the issue he represents.

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.