For the longest time, I’ve been able to intellectually acknowledge that sure, I feel really lonely at times. 

In theory, I am part of the “empath community” – yet in practice, I disagree with what most self-professed empaths preach and practice.

In theory, I am part of the online entrepreneur community, but it’s different when you are not about the usual virtual assistant, tech app, or sales expertise and you’re kind of out on a limb doing what you’re doing.

In theory, I am part of the coaching community. It’s just that, there is a lot of “proving you have a great life worth emulating” and “creating kick-ass goals and results for your clients” and “manifesting wealth” and very little: “I want to do meaningful work and then I want to go to my community garden to see how my mustard greens, herbs and pumpkins are doing.”

In theory I’m part of the energy healer community, but the longer I’ve been in this business, the more convinced I am that the majority of healers make things worse, not better, and they don’t even realise it.

In theory I am part of the Highly Sensitive Community but in practice I cringe at much of the whining that “the world is too insensitive”. As well as the thinly veiled covert narcissism that many people seem to label as High Sensitivity.

Feeling Lonely despite Community

You can feel lonely because you have nobody to talk to. But you can also feel lonely because despite more than sufficient people skills to make the rounds at a party, what you most want to talk about is just too different for most people to relate to. As it turns out, the things I am most passionate about are the things I most shut up about, because I don’t want to turn every conversation into a heated argument (I mean, who does?).

As a result, the things I do genuinely connect with people over are topics further down my priority list.

But that’s not my point.

My point is that for the longest time I have been able to acknowledge that loneliness intellectually. Meaning, in theory.

When you know how you feel, yet it leaves you cold somehow

Yes, if someone said to me “that must be lonely” I wouldn’t disagree. I wouldn’t deny that it was. Yet somehow, that loneliness failed to touch me deeply.

Was it because I was exceptionally strong and able to handle the loneliness? Did I simply not mind being lonely in a way?

You might like to think so when you know something is technically bugging you yet you’re affected very little.

“Oh yes, what a strong and positive person I am for not letting it get to me!

Surely, I must have dealt with it already!

I am just good at putting my focus where I can make a positive difference.

The Zen in me says that things just are the way they are, you know?”

Sure, yes.

Except no.

This is intellectually acknowledging your feelings and it’s very common. It’s easy to think that that’s it.

Yet there is something very interesting and baffling that happens when you “know you feel that way” yet haven’t plunged the emotional depths of it: that feeling gets reflected back to you in how your life takes shape.

Intellectual Acknowledgement is just Step 1

You can look at your life and wonder: “hmm, every sane person would assume that given how my life is right now, I must feel THIS WAY for sure. So how come I don’t really feel like that?”

The way governments around the world have responded to Covid-19 has put many of us in isolation for a long while.

As someone who was already working from home, and who has her house blissfully to herself, I had a habit of socialising outside of work. Yet with lockdowns and social distancing, most of those opportunities dried up.

And still I did not feel the depths of my loneliness, emotionally!

In fact, I think I would have been able to intellectually stick it out, perhaps for ever, except for the fact that I intellectually deduced that I must be hiding my feelings.

The Difference between Intellectually and Emotionally Acknowledging your Feelings

Emotionally acknowledging your feelings is very different from intellectually doing so!

Intellectually you:

• approach your emotions as an idea, a concept
• you can rationally discuss your feelings
• you don’t pretend they don’t exist, but somehow you blissfully skim over the pain all the same!
• notice that your life doesn’t really seem to change despite acknowledging your feelings about it
• feel somewhat secretive about the feeling. o.k. you won’t deny it’s there, but why bring it up unless you really have to?

Emotionally you:

• feel very very vulnerable when the feelings first truly surface, to the point that you worry if you’ll ever be o.k.!
• have to make an effort to stay in this raw feeling place
• feel true relief when you’ve emotionally felt through some of the feeling. yes it hurts, but you also feel lighter.
• feel more open about discussing it
• start taking steps towards what you want
• you notice that parts of your life that were stuck with the parking break on suddenly start to shift for the better and gain new momentum

When you say to yourself that you understand and acknowledge how you feel, check whether you intellectually or also emotionally acknowledge your feelings! There’s a big difference between the two and while intellectual acknowledgement is a good start, in itself, it does very little to truly help you heal.

The Loneliness of Being Yourself

Walking your own path, comes with an inevitable amount of loneliness. If you never want to be or feel lonely, then make sure that everything you are and do is as conventional as possible! That way you will always fit in, never feel left out, and never wonder whether anyone hears you.

Which is just to say, there isn’t always a win-win solution. You can squash your soul to fit in, or listen to your deepest depths and be different.

But if you learn to tolerate the feelings that being you brings up… you gain a big freedom to just be yourself. You stop letting a fear of those feelings control your choices. Because you know, while they are not your favorite feelings, you can handle them. Not by numbing them, but by letting them affect you yet stay standing.

It’s not always clear what our emotional experiences are meant to teach us. Sometimes we just have to trust that they are there for good reason, and we’ll be able to say something wise about it in 20 years or so.

The post Sensitive Loneliness and the Difference between Intellectually vs Emotionally Acknowledging your Feelings appeared first on The Happy Sensitive.

You’ve probably heard of Stockholm Syndrome. It’s the “tend and befriend” stress response in action. You start to care for and protect the same person who is also your biggest threat. It’s one thing to see this play out in a hostage situation movie, but what about the everyday closer-to-home?

We women especially tend to make use of the “tend and befriend” approach in stressful situations. Let’s face it, there are just too many situations where we are the physically weaker one and so, fighting is pointless. Running away may equally be impossible. Freezing doesn’t help anything. Dissociating helps you cope and keep on keeping on, but it doesn’t change anything for the better. So, what is left? Tend and befriend.

It’s like being on a scary skateboard

Tend and befriend is like being on a skateboard, tied behind an out-of-control truck. Take a moment to really visualize this. You have no control. All you can do is try to keep your balance and not fall. The person behind the wheel has all the power.

Deep down it’s terrifying. You’re going too fast to be able to safely jump off. You have to stay present and focused or else you’ll fall (so no freezing or dissociating possible). There is nothing to fight.

The only hope you have is that maybe, if you can get through to the the crazy driver, if you yell the right thing, if you do the right thing, then all this madness will stop. He’ll see how recklessly he’s driving and gently slow down to a halt. You can safely get off the skateboard. Maybe you can even go and have lunch at a nice little family diner. All’s well that ends well!

Now imagine you’re on that skateboard, you’re tied to the truck, but the rope is invisible. You’re connected and out of control but nobody else can see that. You can feel that you are being pulled along, you feel that the driver has all the power, but you can’t pinpoint how it’s happening.

It’s terrifying, but you also wonder if maybe you’re just crazy? Maybe your take on things is wrong? So you push away the fear and try to pretend that you can take that skateboard in any direction you choose.

When something in your life feels out of control

I recognize the skateboard metaphor is far from perfect. Yet, I think the terror of being stuck in a situation and in a direction that is not of your choosing… hits a lot closer to home for most of us than being kidnapped.

I mean, kidnapping seems over the top, even as a metaphor, right? That’s something horrible that other people go through. People who end up in the newspaper. People who end up in documentaries. People who talk about that moment when they decided, or realized or stumbled upon the realization that befriending their kidnappers was a smart strategy.

Most of us are never in that situation, thankfully. Yet, how many of us have been in situations where we tend and befriend because deep down we’re terrified? We know something is very very wrong, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. The whole situation feels unsafe.

Empath Energy Ties

For empaths especially, there are many complicated energetic ways that you can be bound to and influenced by unsafe people, without an obvious way to make it stop. Energy is not limited by space or time so if you are stuck in an overwhelming psychic tie-up with someone, physically running away won’t save you.

Without the skills or know-how to identify what is happening, and what you can do about it, the only thing left is to try to help the person who is hurting you so that they’ll hopefully change and let you go.

This is a kind of walking on eggshells, on steroids. Every move you make now is not about where you want to go and what you want to do. Rather, you’re calculating how your actions will affect the person you’re energetically tied to. You avoid making any moves that will upset them, that will make them lash out.

Like a battered wife, you’re doing what you can to avoid making things worse. Meanwhile, you become more and more invested in the fantasy that you can somehow heal the situation and make everything o.k.

The attempt to heal, to “tend and befriend” is both a hopeful and soothing response (it feels better to love than to fear!) as well as – unfortunately – a delusional one.

Is Tend and Befriend completely pointless?

No. In true hostage situations, tend and befriend can save your life. There are even stories from WWII where people were taken to the woods to be shot by people they knew, and in some cases, tend and befriend got through to the shooter.

“Hey, hey Willy, it’s me! Remember how we used to play in the schoolyard together? Remember that one time when Tim jumped out of a tree? Hahaha, that was so crazy! We used to be good friends then, remember? I know you don’t really want to shoot me! You wouldn’t shoot people you cared about, you’re not that kind of person…” Some people saved their lives that way.

However, if you’re not in a hostage sitatuation, but you’re energetically held hostage somehow, tend and befriend works out differently. While it’s intended to help you “get out” of a situation, it can actually end up drawing you in deeper.

How? Because as you try to make the other person change their ways, you take on a whole slew of “empowering beliefs” that deepen your bond and your investment in the other person.

How trying to get out, draws you in deeper

You want them to let you off the hook, so you try to understand them. You try to understand why they won’t do what you need them to do. Then you start to see their pain, their problems. To soothe your own terror, you need to believe that you have influence. These beliefs then slowly get you to believe that you truly can change the other if only you just keep investing time and energy in them and their issues.

You slowly start to believe that you can heal them and you become invested in their healing. In doing so, you lose sight of your own needs and your fears. The reason you got into all this in the first place – to save yourself! – gets buried under layers and layers of “unconditional love” and “forgiveness” and “endless understanding”.

What’s worse, the person you are somehow bound to and stuck with, is learning that their atrocious behavior gets them loving rewards. While you’re trying to heal the monster, you’re actually feeding it and making it get bigger.

The reality of empath energy ties

I’m not writing this to scare you. I’m writing this to give words to a deeply confounding situation where you may rationally know that you need to just “get out of this and set boundaries” but at the same time, you know that doing so will have very scary yet hard to identify repercussions that you fear will just completely overwhelm you.

Something inside of you has learned to be on guard and tread lightly. That same part feels scared and hopeless. You’ve tried to manage this situation for so long, and it’s not getting better. Yet at the same time, you know you can’t just up and leave without some decent preparation. Except, you’re not even sure what you’re meant to prepare for, let alone how!

The need for energy boundaries

Sometimes setting boundaries has to start with learning more about the energetic realities of the situation. How are you tied to this person energetically? What is their hold over you? How can you effectively defend yourself against the ways they will likely lash out?

When you learn energy skills first, you can start disconnecting energetically, before you need to put new boundaries to the test in a more visible and obvious way.

Empaths often have a deep fear of the way some people will psychically lash out. When you don’t know how to handle that energy, and you don’t know that there even are ways to handle that energy, you can end up frozen in place.

You’re not crazy for feeling that way! Some folk truly have some very creepy and very dark skills.

A client of mine even considered packing up and leaving her town, because the psychic energy from her ex (who lived there too) was so difficult to handle. Learning how to identify what was happening, and what she needed to do to psychically separate from his ish, made all the difference though. She no longer felt threatened or anxious driving around town.

The psychically scary people who don’t believe in “psychic stuff”

A shocking number of people are very active on the psychic planes. These are often people who don’t even “believe” in energy and the paranormal. Yet, just as you don’t need to believe in apples, for apple trees to grow, and just as recycling all your paper waste doesn’t cancel out the impact of spraying your lawn with endless chemicals to keep the weeds at bay… things are what they are and they do what they do, regardless of what anyone believes or thinks “should” happen.

So, if you have a deep scary instinct that you need to get away from someone, but you’re equally terrified that doing so will create more problems… you’re not crazy. This may well be your intuition telling you that there is more at play than you can logically map out.

In all cases though, there is a way out. It may just be that you need to learn some real energy skills first so that you can recognize the fallout for what it is, and so you can deal with it in a way that keeps you feeling clear and moving forward.

If this rings true for you, you can set up a Clarity Call with me here so we can investigate the energy dynamics at play, and the skills you need to be free. I’ve developed a bunch of specialized reading techniques over the years to identify the complicated ins and outs of the energy at work in relationships.

Things are often not what they appear. If other people think “it’s fine” but something feels very off to you, it’s worth investigating so you have clarity and a way forward.

The post Empath Stockholm Syndrome – do you have energy ties with scary people? appeared first on The Happy Sensitive.

I used to think that the biggest risk of having too much on your plate was burning out.

Burning out happened to me and getting out of burn-out was a long and tricky journey spanning many years. I had to learn the ins and outs of what made me stressed. I had to learn how to set better boundaries both practically, psychologically and energetically. And I had to learn a ton about the psychic world, intuition, empaths and the stress load that can pile up when you’re sensitive to energy.

Some of the Burnout Symptoms I lived through

Burning out meant laying awake at night not being able to sleep. It meant crying every single day for hours. It meant only being able to read 350 words of text per day before I got a migraine. It meant that a single 5 minute phone call was a huge task. It meant that getting dressed easily took 2 hours.

Looking back on this now it sounds unbelievable, as if, surely I must be wildly exaggerating to make a point! But this is how it was, literally.

I was able to do some things. Cycling worked, if it wasn’t for too long. Though over time, my ability to ride a bike worsened. For several years, I could do it but I felt nervous throughout, as if I might fall. It took a very long time before riding a bike became no big deal again. Walking around was also o.k. That said, there were days when I could walk around for hours, but also days when my legs felt like they were made of lead and a 10 minute walk was my max.

The Problem of Recognizing Burnout in Time

Since burning out was a traumatic experience for me, I naturally didn’t want any of my clients ending up burned-out! So whenever I saw signs of any of my clients having too much on their plate, I made sure to point it out and warn them about where it could lead. (I still do)

One of the mindset indicators of looming burn-out is when someone keeps pushing and hanging in there for “just a few more weeks”. You know, like we were all encouraged to do during the pandemic…

Of course, if you’ve ever tried to tell anyone something inconvenient, you know that even if you’re right, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be heard!

Part of the problem of burn-out is that it is the outcome of lots of habits that devalue and ignore healthy limits. It’s not that you’re actively trying to sabotage your limits, it’s just that you likely grew up never having a very healthy and supportive sense of boundaries to start with. We learn boundaries from our family. So, when we don’t have very good role models growing up, we muddle through with what we’ve got, the best we can!

Anyway, I suspect that for some of my clients all of this translated as:

Somehow I managed this far… so what’s that concerned lady yapping on about anyway? It’s kind of annoying! I have responsibilities, I can’t just “slow down”! Doesn’t she see that?

So, long story short, there have been times when I ended up watching a client slowly slip into what I assumed would be an inevitable burn-out. Clearly, they weren’t going to heed my warnings, so life would just have to show them what was what. Then maybe we could start building back their energy once they realised how very seriously too much they had allowed their life to become.

Yet, surprise surprise. That inevitable burn-out didn’t always happen.

When Burning Out Mysteriously Doesn’t Happen

I have met a few clients over the years who just kept on going.

Barely had any sleep for over a year? No problem.

No time to even think? No problem.

Serious health issues that brought them to the hospital time and again? Gotta keep up with that 60+ hour workweek!

Every time I thought “yikes, now they’re really going to crash hard!”, they would just keep on keeping on.

Yes, they were miserable and desperate and complaining and yelling at their husband and what have you not, but they didn’t crash.

It really puzzled me. Clearly they were not doing o.k. Yet somehow, they were doing o.k.? What was going on here?

The Burn-out Boundary

What I learned over time is that even burn-out is a boundary. When you burn out, you get sick and have to stop working…

It’s not a fun boundary. It’s clearly not the first boundary you “should” have put in place (in an ideal world) but it’s still an important and healthy boundary. Your body says:

Enough is enough! We (the vital systems of your physical being) are pulling the plug and forcing you to deal with reality. You want to keep going but we won’t let you!

As terrifying as it is to experience burning out like this, it is a good sign. Yes, you were driving way too fast for way too long, but at the top of the cliff, your brakes still work!

So now you’re forced to sit there, at the top of the cliff and deal with the fears you’ve ignored, the sleepless nights you’ve made yourself push through and all the other issues that have been piling up for much too long. It’s not fun. It’s full on terrifying! But it is necessary.

What Happens When the Burnout Boundary is Ignored?

So what happens when someone doesn’t slam the breaks in time and keeps on driving?

My expectation was that they’d crash even worse at the bottom of the cliff.

Yet instead, it appeared they just magically turned their car into a plane… and kept on going!

Maybe this seems unbelievable or as something to envy. Do these people have magical bodies or what? I’m telling you though, it happens and it’s not worth emulating.

There is no such thing as a free lunch and when it comes to your health limits, there is no free lunch either.

Yet what some people have discovered is that when they keep on pushing, their body flips into an emergency state of what I’ve come to call psychic narcissism.

At this point, some folks feel very very off. That’s a good sign! It means that even though the brakes stopped working, the red blinking light is still on! Folks who don’t feel good in this emergency mode are also much more likely to turn around. They feel bad and want to go back to feeling better, not push on more.

Yet there are also people who feel very very good once they cross that line into psychic narcissism. As you might imagine, it’s pretty much impossible to convince someone who feels better than they ever felt before that something is in fact very very wrong.

So, what IS wrong exactly?

Essentially, what happens is that people who keep on going and going and going figure out how to run their system using energy from other people. It’s not magic. It’s more like creating a psychic form of slave labor.

They have figured out how to take the energy they need, from other people: friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues… anyone really.

Imagine how much you can do as just one person. Now imagine how much you could do if you had access to the power, stamina, inspiration, courage, enthusiasm etc of about 100 people. Or how about 1000?

Imagine the goals you could set. The expectations you could meet.

For people who have a lot they believe they need to get done, who feel entitled to have what they want – no matter the cost – and who believe the world owes them somehow… all of this is like Disneyland. Finally, their dreams are coming true! Finally, they have the resources to make things happen!

Plus, this kind of feeding off of other people’s energy tends to come with a massive dose of dissociating: this means no longer feeling the pains and tensions in the body. One person I knew said that finally, she felt the peace she always craved!

It wasn’t peace though, it was numbing out, combined with an influx of massive energy resources from other people.

Think: scam artist high on cocaine, who just convinced 1000 grannies to hand over their life savings.

When do you Hit the Emergency Switch?

Emergency measures are meant for emergencies. They are meant to be temporary.

The body has an inner switch that allows it to survive when technically, it should crash. This emergency switch could save someone’s life. If you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, hurt, and need to drag yourself to the nearest hospital… then the ability to keep on keeping on will save your life.

The question is, when do you hit the emergency switch?

The body was designed to have an emergency switch for life or death situations. It’s not meant to be used to be able to get that promotion, impress your friends, or avoid dealing with uncomfortable realities.

Is stealing some life force for a few hours, while you drag your body to a hospital, a big crime? No, I think that’s what was designed to happen. People who know you and care about you would want you to pull from their resources in those crucial moments.

Yet, is it other people’s job to give you the energy you need to pursue all your interests, and boost your career, and be successful? Is it other people’s job to boost your energy so you don’t need to be sick and uncomfortable? No, not at all.

It’s your job to make do with the energy you have and manage that energy well. There are lots of ways to boost your own energy, and they all require discipline and effort: healthy eating, good sleep, staying grounded, feeling your feelings, not putting your ego in control, listening to your body and your natural limits and respecting those…

Moral Boundaries – or not?

Ultimately, for people who just keep on blasting their way through, the problem is not just a lack of boundaries. It’s a lack of moral boundaries.

When the body goes into crisis mode, switches on psychic narcissism abilities, and feeds off of the energy of others, this is not meant to last long. It’s supposed to be (very, very) temporary.

The only way someone can keep on living like this is when they believe it’s totally fine to take from people who they believe have “more” than them or who don’t “deserve” what they have.

This is why I call this state “psychic narcissism“. People say power corrupts. Well, access to extra energy is a kind of power. It does corrupt many people. They may have been decent before but now that they can smell those mountains of energy, their ego just takes off.

The Narcissism in Psychic Narcissism

Living off of other people’s energy, the way psychic narcissists do ongoingly, is not innocent. It’s not just a cute mistake. It’s an indication that deep down, someone believes it’s perfectly alright to take from someone when they feel they need it.

Of course there is always a reason. That reason may be trauma. It may be over-giving in other ways but ultimately if someone believes it’s perfectly alright to steal what is not theirs to make themselves feel better, they are crossing a moral boundary.

There is no excuse for it. There are plenty of people who are severely traumatised and/or struggling with unfair low energy somehow and yet who don’t do this. Or who – if they do – make all the needed effort to go back to the healthy side of the line asap.

Just like a scam artist is desperate to live above their means, a psychic narcissist who keeps on keeping on, is desperate to live above their means. They are out of touch with reality but because they found a way to make it work they ultimately convince themselves that it is o.k.

This is why, beyond a certain point, you need to give up on people who choose to live this way.

They will keep racking up more “bills”, and if you stay connected to them, they will make you “pay”. Nothing is going to convince them that what they are doing is wrong, because they are on a high: a high of being able to do whatever they please without any consequences.

Is There No Ultimate Boundary?

Energy is like money. It’s only “limitless” when you build some kind of pyramid scheme and put yourself at the top. And eventually, even a very successful pyramid scheme will crash.

I’ve been trying to understand this issue for a while now and what I found is that while people can get away with some of this energy stealing without any seeming consequences, there does come a point when their body crashes. This is when mysterious illnesses without a cure set in. Yet, it can take many many years for this to happen.

Folks who do this do not burn out, they burn through.

They burn through their own resources, then they burn through other people’s resources and eventually, they burn through their own health in very dramatic non-fixable ways. Before it gets that far though, they can do many years worth of damage to many people.

The Moral of the Story?

Not everyone burns out, some people burn through.

If you’re wondering how on earth someone just keeps on going no matter what, be careful. They may be much less healthy than you think, and you may be the on who ends up paying for it.

P.S. If you have an indestructible tank of a person in your life who just keeps on going beyond all human odds, and meanwhile, you feel like your own energy is going down the drain in mysterious ways, I can help. Set up a conversation with me here so I can put my intuition to work and we can figure out what’s going on, and what will fix it.

The post Burning Out versus Burning Through appeared first on The Happy Sensitive.

There are many kinds of spiritual bullshit out there. The tricky thing is: while spiritual bullshit can be huge and obnoxious, like a massive cowpat on a patch of bare dirt… the sneakier versions of it show up as little turds in the middle of beautiful, inspiring gardens of wisdom.

You’re not dealing with a big pile of poop (that would be easy to spot!). Rather, you’re dealing with lots of beautiful, helpful tidbits. The gist of the whole garden may even be incredibly healing. BUT THEN… there is a tiny yet very impactful turd right beneath those beautiful rose bushes. It’s easy to ignore it. After all, the whole garden is so beautiful, so peaceful, so inspiring! Do we really have to inspect the turd? Do we have to pay attention to the stench, and let it ruin our perfect, blissful experience? I believe we do.

Below are 7 pieces of spiritual bullshit, closely examined. I share the gist of each, as well as a video for each that goes into much more detail.

Spiritual Bullshit Principle #1: To be a good person, you must never ever allow yourself to feel or acknowledge any hatred! Detach from it right away to find peace!

Why is this so wrong? Because hatred is just one of the very many, very normal emotions that all people have. If you become judgy or afraid of acknowledging hatred, you’ll end up suppressing it. This just leads to chronic hatred. It’s much better to acknowledge and work through any hatred that comes up – it will make you a much nicer person overall!

More details in the video below + I have detailed resources inside the Happy Sensitive Library to help you with step-by-step guidance and understanding for dealing with difficult emotions – including hatred.

Spiritual Bullshit Principle #2: It’s good and healthy to feed off of other people’s energy! This is what advanced spiritual beings do!

Ehm, nope. It’s healthy and good to manage your own energy well and let that be enough. It’s not good and healthy, not “spiritually advanced” to steal from others what you cannot properly manage for yourself! Energy vampirisim / psychic vampirism / or as I prefer to call it: psychic narcissism, is in no way a healthy, advanced or elevated way to be!

Some people seem to think that just mentioning the word energy makes a message spiritual. Just throw that word in and you’ve got “high vibes”! But subtle energy is REAL and how you deal with it matters.

Spiritual Bullshit Principle #3 – Feeling Good is Good! Feeling Bad is Bad!

O.k., so I oversimplified this one a bit. Overall, I agree with aiming to feel good. Yet, we do need to be careful about what meaning we assign to “feeling bad”. Life has natural ups and downs. Shitty days happen. Yet when we assign extra meaning to those days: “oh no, I am in resistance to my true self! Oh no, I am not in alignment with spirit. Oh no, I am low vibe!” we just make things more complicated.

More importantly, being judgy or afraid of inevitable “bad days” can lead to dissociating and disconnecting from our true feelings, which is a recipe for disaster.

Spiritual Bullshit Principle #4 – Make your energy field (aura) as big as possible! The bigger the better!

Trouble is near when anyone wants to supersize things, without highlighting the maximum healthy size! I’ve met plenty of spiritual teachers over the years who teach expanding the energy field, without teaching anything about the healthy – limited and balanced – size to strive for!

Just like healthy weight, there is a balance. Some people need to lose weight, some actually need to gain some. It’s the same for your energy field.

No idea what an aura / energy field is? No worries, I explain the basics in the video below.

Spiritual Bullshit Principle #5: You are a Master, yes you are!

It’s nice to be acknowledged, isn’t it? Personally, I am a master at… ehm… well, actually I am still learning. And that is precisely the issue. We’re all learning. Even if you’re really good at something, you’re still learning.

So, what is the point of addressing random readers / listeners on the internet as masters? Me thinks it is to stroke the ego and sneak some unhealthy perfectionism and narcissism into the spiritual mix.

Spiritual Bullshit Principle #6: Use this special technique to make healing super quick and easy!

Ah, if only! Yet, there are so many people out there who promise exciting and super quick results. They may even convince you that if you’re slowly plodding along, that you’re doing something wrong!

While it’s possible to resolve very specific, limited issues quickly, healing overall just takes time and grit. You can’t just magically whoosh away all your problems. If it seems you can, you’re probably just dissociating. Worse, someone may be preying on you, like a scam artist telling you that Johnny Depp wants to marry you, if only you can just send him $1000 to help him with some car trouble…

In the energy world, there are people and beings who want access to you, the same way that a scammer wants access to your computer and bank account. So, they send you a “wonderful” free download, that in reality contains a virus. I tested one of those free spiritual downloads, and tell you about what happened in the video below (at approx 3 mins in).

Spiritual Bullshit Principle #7: Just drop your resistance and join the 5th dimension!

Ah, the 5th dimension! Or are we supposed to be at the 8th, 9th, or 10th right now? I lose track sometimes. Anyway, “resistance” sounds bad, right? Tense and unpleasant. Not peaceful at all. Pretty good idea to drop it. Except when it’s the resistance to a dictatorship of course. During WWII there were many underground resistance movements which were a very important part of freeing Europe! So hmm, maybe we need resistance at times…

And wait, what about bullies and toxic relationships? Should we just drop our resistance? Is that our ticket to joining the next “higher” dimension? (Like a video game where all we try to do is reach the next “level”?)

Ultimately, having resistance is a part of having healthy boundaries. Dropping all resistance in the name of spirituality can easily feed into unhealthy people pleasing “just to get along”. This is how Gurus rule their cults: be sweet and drop your (pesky) resistance!

Spiritual Bullshit Principle #8: Heavy Emotions will lower your vibe and make you drown in the river of life!

There is a lot of talk of heavy versus light in spiritual messages. To some extent these are useful indicators, Yes, it makes sense to choose the path that feels lighter. Yes, it makes sense to practice gratitude. However (and I discuss this in detail in the video) too many spiritual messages associate heaviness exclusively with negativity, death, drowning and losing the battle.

In actuality, being alive, being in a body means having some weight! You are not a feather that is meant to blow away in the wind. Too much lightness will make you unrealistically airy faery. “Heavy” emotions can be the exact weight you need to stay balanced and grounded!

The post 8 Kinds of Spiritual Bullshit – don’t let these fool you! appeared first on The Happy Sensitive.

Thinking the right way can help a lot. Yet, thinking on its own doesn’t do much. I sometimes meet clients who are good at declaring very loudly what they will or won’t ever do, and what they will and won’t let happen… but those words on their own are meaningless.

To illustrate, consider the following metaphor if you will:

Sandra says she will never let herself gain more than 50 pounds. Meanwhile, she downs packets of cookies daily, doesn’t believe in healthy eating, refuses to exercise and has some health issues she is choosing to ignore.

Mary says she will never let herself gain more than 50 pounds. She has some weight ups and downs but when she gains 10 pounds she adjusts her workout schedule and gets stricter about what’s she’s eating. When she has a health issue or any other problem she doesn’t know how to fix, she finds competent help to get her to where she needs to be.

If you had to bet on one of these women, who would you bet on?

Oh wait, I forgot an important detail. Sandra makes elaborate visionboards and practices saying uplifting things to herself. Mary does not.

Now who would you bet on?

If your answer stays the same, I’m with you.

All the positive beliefs and visualizations in the world, mean absolutely nothing if they are not backed up by realistic actions.

Hopefully, this is obvious when it comes to weight. Yet, what about more nebulous topics like energy healing or getting overwhelmed or burned out?

Well, surprise surprise, it’s the same thing. The exact same thing. Just because something is “mental health” doesn’t mean you can just talk yourself out of any problems. Just because something is an energy issue doesn’t mean you can just wish it into non-existence.

Drawing a line in the sand is great, but what you’re doing to actually hold that line in practice is what really matters.

P.S. Do you have a line in the sand that needs some proven strategies to keep it in place? Set up a time to chat with me about it here.

The post The Power of Thought? appeared first on The Happy Sensitive.

The year before I developed severe adrenal fatigue, I had an extremely high academic workload. Not only was I an assistant professor, I also worked on my PHD “on the side”. This meant many, many (way too many!) hours of extreme intellectual focus.

The Risks of Over-Focusing Intellectually

My focus is one of my superpowers, don’t get me wrong. Yet it’s no coincidence that when I developed adrenal fatigue the very first symptom was debilitating migraines (I could no longer focus) and later on, a hazy feeling in my head whenever I tried to read anything, no matter how short a text. There was a period when I could read about 350 words tops, PER DAY. If I tried more, the migraine would take over.

Do you think my body was trying to tell me that I’d overused my focus abilities?

Looking back, I think so.

Moreover, the year I became ill had been a very emotional year. Lots of painful things happened. How did I deal with this? Oh sure, I did some crying etc. but overall, I just doubled-down focusing on my work.

It didn’t help that my solution to feeling fearful, was to try my best to keep up at work, by doing my all to focus focus focus. The more out of control my life felt, the more I focused on focusing. Looking back it’s all very “no duh”!

The Risks of Over-Focusing Spiritually

After several (!) years of adrenal fatigue I did not go back to academia. I did however set out on an intuitive/spiritual path. And guess what, this path has it’s own place for focus! Not intellectual focus, but focus of the third eye seeing and “intuitively figuring things out”.

Again, one of my superpowers is to focus intuitively, and figure things out quickly. Over the years, I’ve become more and more aware though of the toll this can take on the body. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s intense.

Having a focus superpower means I need to balance focus with mucking around, pure feeling and doing simple physical chores. If I use my intuitive focus to the max, I could completely burn myself out, just like I did in academia back in 2009.

My body has been very clear about this focus – exhaustion connection. Yet, it took me a very long time to see it clearly. There were too many “what’s wrong with me” and “I should work harder” voices from childhood in the way.

Is Losing Focus Allowed?

I have a mother who pretty much panicked whenever anyone lazed about doing nothing. My dad was glued to his screen all day. That plus a high intellectual workload starting in high school (I was enrolled in extra programs that looking back, weren’t the best for my general life balance) meant that I’ve been used to pushing myself in the focus department.

Once you take on too much responsibilities that require your focus, it’s hard to give your focus a break. Finding a better balance then requires a serious life overhaul and while I have the guts to do that now, I didn’t have the guts nor insight to do that way back when.

All of this to say: if you have a strong focus, if you’re the kind of person who can study in the park and not get distracted, be kind to your superpower. Know that it needs a break. It’s o.k. to balance it out by doing “dumb stuff” and outdoorsy stuff and letting your mind wander.

When you have a strong focus, it can be like having yourself on a superpower leash. It can end up strangling you. You need to let yourself off the leash everyday and just aimlessly wander. This will keep your superpower strong.

Balance Your Focus Superpower

What helped me most the first months of adrenal fatigue was wandering aimlessly through the city, window shopping. It seemed so odd to me then and makes so much sense now.

I would look at shapes, textures, colors, patterns. I was around people without having to do anything. I was walking without going too fast. I was distracted by things I saw and I didn’t have to focus on anything.

This kind of aimless walking helped with the anxiety I then felt and it also helped balance out the overfocus.

If you have a “strange” way to pass the time, and you have a focus superpower, perhaps your strange hobby makes sense as a focus-counterbalance. Just a perspective to consider!

Do you have a sensitive, intuitive, third eye, exhaustion focus struggle of some sort that you’d like an other set of (third) eyes on to get a new perspective? Set up a Clarity Call with me here.

The post The Connection Between Overfocusing, Adrenal Fatigue and The Third Eye appeared first on The Happy Sensitive.

When an emotional experience surfaces you have to decide: does this go in the healing box, or the truth box?

What are the Healing Box and Truth Box?

The healing box is the category for pains and issues that perhaps reflect an old experience, an old “truth” but that is not about your life right now.

Perhaps you were terrified at 4 years old. You hid this terror deeply. Then one day, as you have grown in your healing journey, that terror surfaces at full force. In that moment you need to figure out: is this terror trying to tell me about a huge threat to my existence now? (=Truth Box) Or is this something old or some kind of misalignment that needs working through? (= Healing Box)

Whether you put something into your healing box or your truth box matters a lot. We’ve all seen what happens when big groups of people put fear into their “this is the truth about reality” box. Most of the time, it brings out the worst in people.

Collective panic – when there is no massive threat, but people’s own deeper fears are being stirred up and mistaken for “this is about what’s happening right now” – leads to all kinds of extreme survival reactions.

In our own life, we constantly need to decide: is this thing I’m feeling telling me something about my current truth? Or is it something requiring healing?

The Impact of Mislabeling

In toxic relationships, it’s easy to label things the wrong way. Every time you feel panicky and unsafe, you might decide that has to go in the healing box. As in: “oh, that’s just me overreacting. I need to work on myself and get more even keeled!” When in fact, your panic is warning you that you’re constantly being used and that your partner does not have your best interests at heart, at all.

It’s not always easy – at all – to correctly assign things to the right box. Yet, which box you put things in matters a lot.

If you put old things that require healing into your truth box, then you will expect doom and gloom in your life everywhere. Whereas, if you intuit that these are old issues surfacing, you will be able to set aside the time needed to heal, but you won’t confuse those awful feelings with reality. This means that you can work through deep, dark feelings while still spending much of your time being focused on everything you love about your life right now.

When you get that balance right, the joy of your current life, will help you work through issues of your past, without making those issues your new reality.

This is how you can stay focused on the good things in your life, without ignoring issues coming up for healing.

Many people don’t know how to do this, so they desperately cling to all “positivity” in an attempt to try and drown out and ignore old hurts. All this does is make the hurts grow bigger in the dark.

When “You” Get Shoved into the Wrong Box

There are also people out there who when they get triggered, confuse the past with the present. They lash out at you because what you said or did or reminded them of something awful in their past. You didn’t do anything awful, but the awful thing came up for healing for them. However, since they put everything in their truth box, they assume that all their triggered pain is about the here and now, about you.

Lastly, plenty of folks will oversimplify things based on their own fantasies. They decide: “If I like an experience, then that goes in my truth box! And if I don’t like an experience, it goes into my healing box…” Then they usually shove their healing box into a deep dark cellar and talk “over” it with positive affirmations. They end up dissociating from part of their truth in an attempt to avoid all pain. This creates a narcissistic fantasy life where real issues don’t get addressed.

Making sense of what is what on the inside is a big and important deal. You can’t move forward if you’re constantly misassigning issues or don’t know what to do with any of it.

This is why an effective healing practice is not just about healing tools, but also about ways to figure out what needs to go in the truth box and what in the healing box.

Not sure whether what you’re dealing with belongs in your truth box, or healing box? Let me help you figure it out in a Clarity Call.

The post The Healing Box and the Truth Box appeared first on The Happy Sensitive.

When it comes to intuition and the paranormal, there is a kind of “frightful saying” that once you go down that terrible terrible road, you can’t go back:

“once you open the door [to all kinds of spiritual gifts and phenomena] you can no longer close it!”

or

“once you open that door, you can no longer go back!”

OOOOOOHHHHHH

AAAAAAHHHHHHH

via GIPHY

OH NO!

Except, is it true?

Can the paranormal door – once opened – no longer be closed?

First off, the people who like to share this kind of “wisdom” are themselves usually neck deep in all kinds of psychic issues already. And the people they like to say these kinds of things to are usually already knee deep in all kinds of psychic issues too.

So, even if it were true, it’s all a little late to say the least.

If there is something as concrete as a door that can be opened, at all, then let’s just say most people tend to open it without knowing it’s a door, or what it’s for or what it’s about.

Then once they’ve opened the door and stepped through it, there are all kinds of shady figures trying to look semi-wise by saying: “oooohh, aaaaah, once you open THAT door, you can’t close it again!”

As if you have any kind of choice to “unopen” the door at that point.

So my point is, most people trying to scare you about doors that should be left unopened have already opened the door themselves. Then, I highly suspect they made a mess of their own path and thus try to pretend it was “inevitable”.

You opened the intuitive door – now what?

Look, again let’s pretend there is an actual door. On one side of the door you have ZERO spiritual, intuitive, psychic, paranormal abilities. But on the other side of the door, oh my! It’s lions and tigers and bears!

And yet, Dorothy had a choice about where to go exactly, didn’t she? She could have walked any road she wanted. Sure, she was sucked up by a storm into some kind of other worldly portal… but once she landed, she wasn’t forced to go anywhere in particular.

So again, IF there is a magical ‘dangerous’ door, then on the other side of it, you still get to chose where you go from there.

Usually, the problem isn’t the door, the problem is the path people take once they walk through the door. Then, when they make really bad choices and go straight to the wicked witch in the middle of the creepy forest for life advice… they turn around and blame it on the door: “well, once you open that door, you can’t go back!”.

As if it’s all inevitably downhill from there. As if the door itself is cursed (it’s not). As if the only path is the one leading to the wicked witch. As if – standing outside her creepy feeling house – you couldn’t possibly turn around and run away… (no, because that would be rude?)

The “spiritual world” is much like the physical world. You can make good choices and you can make bad choices. You can join a healthy organization or you can join the mob. You can act stupid and lazy and get scammed looking for free money, or you can put in the work.

Can you get in way over your head?

Of course!

I recently read something in the newspaper about two travelers who got stuck on a freezing mountain in sweats and sneakers. They were purposely “hiking”.

Then they needed to be rescued by helicopter. There was a lot of commentary from readers along the lines of: “darn, that was stupid! I hope they’re made to pay for the rescue costs because this is just crazy!”

Exactly. It was foolish. Most people would not expect something like this to go well in the first place.

It’s exactly the same in the world of energy and paranormal phenomena. Just because you can sense it’s there, doesn’t mean you should randomly start exploring it on sneakers!

Also, in what world is there a guy standing at the bottom of the mountain saying in an ominous voice: “once you go up the snowy path, you can no longer go back!”???

(Spoiler alert: that guy doesn’t exist. Not at the bottom of the mountain, and also not at the top of the mountain. A guy at the bottom making scary claims would be bad enough but now imagine he’s at the top of the mountain telling you: “well, now that you made it all the way up here, you can’t go back down! Those are just the rules of the universe!” )

Chances are, those hikers had lots and lots of opportunities to turn around and go back down. There might have been some Hiker Ego getting in the way though: “we’ve come this far in our sneakers, we can’t go back now!”

The reality is that many people who walk through the “spiritual door” need to come back. They get way too excited about “special abilities” that they’re not equipped to handle.

Equipped: like having proper shoes to hike up a snowy mountain.

The Equipment you need, when you go through the psychic door

In the world of energy and paranormal phenomena your equipment is:

• honesty and humility (no amount of high-tech gear can save anyone if they have a massive ego and are semi-delusional about life)
• an understanding of basic energy principles
• tools to discern what is what and what belongs to whom (“Is that you grandma?” “Yes, sweetie” the wolf said…)
• being clear and practical about why you’re there. (no trekking around mountains in sneakers just because you were bored please)
• knowing when to ask for help (cue helicopter)

So, is there a paranormal door or not?

The idea that there is a doorway you should be avoiding is much too simplistic.

Are there areas in the spiritual world that you should avoid? Yes. In shamanism, this is the “middle world”. When you go on a shamanic journey, you go to the upper world or the lower world, never the middle world (unless you are highly trained and need to go there for a very specific reason, like soul retrieval)

However, many energetic and spiritual phenomena are simply here. If you have the senses to notice it, you don’t need to step through any specific door at all.

It’s like the clouds, or the rain.

People who don’t see the clouds might imagine that they are behind a special door but the reality is: the clouds are already here, even if not everyone can see them.

So, sure, there are scenarios in which you need to be told: don’t go there, it’s dangerous. However, this doesn’t apply to spirituality and the paranormal as a whole.

Most people struggling with something paranormal did not mess around with an ouija board. They’re not trying to find ghosts to talk to. The ghosts are just there, and they can sense them. Then they want to know what to do now. And then some person comes along whining about doors that can’t be unopened. None of that is helpful.

The reality is, much of our world already is paranormal. The paranormal is everywhere. It’s just that most people don’t notice it. Either their body may notice something, and their mind will dismiss it. Or, they don’t notice it at all because it’s too subtle and they’re not wired that way.

This means that for many sensitive people, no doors need to be opened at all for them to be able to notice something unusual.

Lastly, on closing psychic doors

Some years ago, there were many people coming my way who wanted to know more about “opening” their spiritual gifts. In true seeker fashion, they were seeking for the sake of seeking. If I asked them why they wanted to open up their spiritual abilities, they had no answer other than that they just wanted to or it seemed cool or something.

Most interestingly, they seemed surprised that I asked for a reason at all.

Surely, we’re all supposed to open as many of our spiritual gifts as possible, right? Isn’t that called purpose? Or Xmas?

Telling them that I specialize in helping people “close” their spiritual abilities was often not received too well. As if I was making it my job to make people “uncool”.

Yet the reality of spiritual gifts is that many are an energy extension of co-dependence tendencies.

Many people with “open” abilities are overwhelmed because they receive far too much information about things that are none of their business and that they can do nothing about anyway.

Imagine receiving 20 newspapers on your porch everyday and believing that you need to read all of them!

That’s the level of overwhelm I’m talking about.

Now imagine that you need to track down all the families from the obituaries to go and “help” them. Or that you need to solve all the problems mentioned in the paper.

Are you getting the picture?

This is what “opening gifts” often turns into. Why? Because opening your spiritual gifts in and of itself is not useful. It’s like subscribing to 200 newsletters (I know some of you do) and then feeling overwhelmed trying to keep up with your inbox.

It’s much better to have a clear sense of what you are interested in and why you truly need that information, and then see if you have any spiritual gifts that you can finetune to help with that.

If you want to help the police find missing children, then yes, any and all spiritual gifts that might help do that are useful. But that also means that you can tune out all the info that isn’t about those kids. You have a focus. You’re not opening your gifts for the heck of it, just to overwhelm yourself with random spiritual information.

Knowing for the sake of knowing is just overwhelming

In my own life, I actively ignore intuitive info about others, unless:

• I am being called to help animals, plants/trees, geographical areas or babies with a paranormal issue (this doesn’t happen that often, so it’s doable)
• I am picking up on something about a friend or acquaintance and this is a warning about where my relationship with them can or can’t go (I don’t go and tell them about it, I just use this to make my own decisions)
• I get information for or about a client (usually about something they need to address, the root of an issue they are struggling with or something that would be helpful for them)
• I am getting information that is relevant to my own safety or direction in life.

In all other cases, I butt out. It’s none of my business and I don’t need to know.

Knowing things for the sake of knowing them is just overwhelming. This is why, when clients come to me telling me about intuitive input that they don’t know what to do with, I assess with them:

• when and how often do you get this kind of information?
• is the information practically useful?
• do you feel this info is in line with the kinds of things you want to do in life? (aka is it joyful? Or a burden?)

If it’s a lot, it’s not practically useful, and it’s not about something a client even wants to be in the know about, then I help them “turn off” that sensitivity to that particular information stream.

In other words: we close that door.

Because yes, doors can be opened, but they can also be closed.

Closing doors in a healthy way takes some work, but it can be done, often quite quickly too. In the end, intuitive information and contact with the paranormal is – in most cases – not inevitable and not an obligation.

The False Obligation of Spiritual Gifts

We all have abilities we choose not to use. If you were good at art and math and singing and looking after children and gardening and making clothes and being a leader and organizing trips… would you feel obligated to make all of these things into a purposeful job? Or would you decide which to focus on and which to leave by the wayside?

Spiritual abilities often come with a lot of “purpose” baggage for people. That just because it’s something paranormal, you have an obligation to “make the most of your gift”.

And yet, do we feel that way about accountancy, horse rearing or people who are good at designing stamps? Is it their obligation to society to develop those abilities (even if it overwhelms them?)?

Or could they perhaps make choices – like everyone else – about what they’d like to do as a career and how they’d like to spend their free time?

I believe in the latter.

Open some doors, close others.

Are you overwhelmed by spiritual gifts or “you’re not sure what it is but other people don’t seem to notice it” things? Set up a time to talk with me here and get some clarity.

The post Should (and can) You Avoid Opening the Paranormal Door? appeared first on The Happy Sensitive.