KAJAMA.COM NEWSLETTER

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 had the strangest thing happen to me after shopping at a metaphysical store. My intention was to buy stones to strengthen healing for myself and others. I purchased the items, sealed the Zip-loc bag, and then, before I left the store, my bag of stones
disappeared! Before I walked out of the store, my intuition told me to look for my stones. That's when I realized I no longer had them! They could not be located in the store or on my person. Everyone in the small store looked around but could not find my purchase. I retraced my steps over and over. Neither the store clerk nor I could recall where I set the stones. It was like I was overcome with momentary amnesia. I was given permission to pick new stones of the same kind before I left for home. What could this mean? While I was amazed by this experience, I had a sense of calm and peace within as well. My stones were amethyst points, citrine, carnelian, rose quartz, bloodstone, and a hematite ring. I carried a lapis stone in my purse from a previous purchase. For the last couple of weeks, I have been developing my gifts as an intuitive and healer. I am a practicing hypnotist and speech-language pathologist.

- Lakita

Susyn:

When things suddenly go missing, Spirit is trying to get your attention. This event caused you to stop what you were doing and focus on the stones. Even though they did not turn up, your awareness did shift, which was the whole point.

You mentioned that you purchased the stones specifically for healing. My sense is that although you had picked the appropriate type of stones, the Universe wanted you to have different ones. The energy of individual stones varies; I am betting the second set you had to pick out were better suited to you.

This event reminds me of Mercury retrograde, when we tend to misplace things and have to backtrack for all sorts of reasons. Once the event has passed, we may see how we were directed to a better path or had lost items returned to us in the same or better form.

The variety of stones you purchased are ideal for healing most issues. Amethyst points are great for addressing addictions and for rebalancing spiritual maladies, for amethyst is of the same frequency as the crown or spirit chakra.

The citrine you chose is a powerful generator of energy and well-being. It can also be used for mental issues or depression. As a stone that represents the power chakra, citrine can restore your drive and confidence.

Carnelian promotes healing in the chakra that rules the reproductive organs, so it's ideal for anyone with problems in that area. Carnelian also encourages powerful creativity.

Rose quartz represents love and relationships, while bloodstone addresses not only issues of the heart but also of the root chakra. Because this area rules the physical body and connections between the male and female, these stones are ideal for healing and rebalancing our basic survival instincts. A green stone such as jade, peridot or emerald would be helpful when dealing with heart issues whether they're emotional or physical in nature.

Though silver or gray in color, hematite can influence the charka governing the mind and intellect. It can help us to heal such maladies as jealousy, envy or grandiosity, along with mental illness.

Because of your work as a hypnotist and speech pathologist, there are a few other stones you may want to include in your healing collection. A clear quartz crystal is an ideal transmitter for identifying and healing issues of the mind. An aquamarine crystal or blue topaz can enhance the throat chakra and enable people to express themselves more authentically whether under hypnosis or not.

Good luck in your studies. I believe you'll find that these stones add more power and success to all you do.

*****

Oceania:

Strange experiences that capture our attention and evoke feelings of curiosity are great mirrors for what is going on inside of us. Since we don't have the time or energy to focus on everything, our minds fixate on whatever is most relevant to our current struggles. (This is why websites like Yahoo gear their ads towards your interests; they know you will overlook ads that don't apply to you.)

Your experience with the stones made an impact because this was the perfect metaphor for your current transformation. Most likely, your family and society did not notice, welcome or nurture your gifts of healing and intuition. I feel the stones you chose symbolized these very real and important pieces of you! Because these and perhaps other genuine pieces of you were deemed unacceptable, you Zip-locked them away in your psyche and then seemingly lost them.

Just as you were searching for the stones in the store, so are you searching for your misplaced inner gems. You put them in storage long ago, and you are now in the process of recovering them. That you valued and validated your intuition when it told you the stones were missing is a very positive sign.

Because you rejected authentic aspects of yourself for such a long time, you're going to feel ambivalent about embracing them now. You will have moments of clarity in which you boldly stand by your newfound talents, and you'll also have moments of fuzzy thinking when you're not so sure they're part of you.

Whenever we make big changes, a part of us wants to hang on to the familiar past, for it's scary to change course in life. In this instance, a courageous part of you ventured to the metaphysical store to purchase tools for healing yourself and others. This was an affirmative step! Once there, a fearful side of you immediately got rid of the stones. You had amnesia because this self-sabotaging part of you lives outside of your conscious awareness.

I have no doubt that you are meant to add intuitiveness and a capacity for healing to your already-rich repertoire of skills, but it's going to take big self-love and bold confidence to claim these newfound aspects of yourself and wear them proudly. Just as you sought help from the clerk in regard to the misplaced stones, you might speak to a therapist or spiritual advisor should you need support in reclaiming your inner treasures.

You experienced a sense of peace and calm during the hunt because on some level, you have realized that what you are really seeking was never really lost to begin with - it has just been tucked away for safe keeping!

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.