Hello Beautiful Souls,

Welcome to the relaunch of my blog, where I answer your questions and offer my best insights into healing, self-development and awareness.

Before we begin: fair warning… in my personal and professional work, I dive in, and go deep. I generally believe that the best way to deal with anything is to lean in, to use whatever is here for growth and evolution, be it joy, sorrow or somewhere in between. This isn’t for everyone, and isn’t even for me all the time. I need to be ready to ask myself hard questions – and be honest about the answers.

So, if you’re not of the “I use my challenges to learn from” persuasion or you just don’t have the bandwidth to go deep today, stop now and either find something softer to work with or come back when you’re feeling up for some serious work.

For those ready and willing, welcome.
Let’s get started.

Generally, those of us that feel the emotions of others only really identify as such if it’s a problem. we feel overwhelmed, drained, etc. and we look for the cause and a solution to ease the pain.


First, let’s get clear about the human ability to sense emotions.
What if everyone feels the emotions of others?
What if this is an inherent part of being human?
In my experience we all have this innate ability, but some of us do it more and others less, either by inclination or motivation.

If we look at extremes as examples, on the ‘feeling more’ side, childhood is a classic example where for some of us, we felt it was imperative to track the emotions of our caretakers, or our caretakers modeled emotional awareness so we adopted that.
On the ‘feeling less’ side, others felt it was better to shut it all out, or their caretakers modeled emotional suppression.
This starts to help explain why there is a disparity

If you’re reading this, you’re likely in the ‘feeling too much’ camp, and it makes you uncomfortable.
You absorb so much it’s exhausting.
You identify with being deeply affected by the emotions of others, porous, hypersensitive or empathic,
and your question is, “How can I make it stop?!”

That’s how I felt, and based my personal and professional experience, I’ve realized that the answer depends on why we’re doing it. I’ve noticed in myself and others two distinct ways that we absorb emotional energy from others.
There are undoubtedly others, and two big ones that I see a lot are pulling and focusing.


Take a deep, centering breath.
Get honest with yourself and see what you see of yourself in the following descriptions.
This won’t necessarily be easy.
It will be useful.
The more you know about yourself the more you can transform what isn’t working into what is working.
Bravo. Go you.

2 Ways to Absorb Emotional Energy (How, Why, & How to Stop)

1. Focused, or Scanning (Easiest to deal with)

• Method
  • In this method you’re Hyper-focused on emotion; constantly scanning the emotional environment
• Reason
  • Strong desire to know what the people around you are feeling
  • For me this was because I thought tracking the emotions of others would keep me safe from their anger, like an early warning system = life or death
• Extremes
  • Unhealthy version: overwhelmed by emotion; unable to be around other people because of emotional overload
  • Healthy version: able to sense the whole gamut of emotional energy.
    • Requires the corollary skills of discerning which energies are yours vs others
    • and the ability to let others’ energies flow through your energetic system without holding on to them or triggering your own.
• How to Stop
  • Ok, so, you’re not going to be able to stop sensing emotions, especially now that you’ve developed this capacity. As a human, you’re built to sense them and now you’ve gotten good at it. Congratulations.
  • The first thing to do is deceptively simple… instead of trying to stop being sensitive to painful emotions, let yourself be equally sensitive to pleasurable ones. Widen your sensitivity. Widen your scope to include all emotions. The one downside of this is that we’re in fairly challenging human time-space emotionally. By which I mean, the overall tone of our time line is a mixed bag. I wouldn’t say we’re predominately filled with pleasurable emotions as a whole. Maybe 50/50? On the other hand, 50/50 is a lot better than focusing 100% on ick. For me, this is making an enormous difference in my life, both personally and professionally. I love it!
  • The second, is also somewhat simple, though has taken me a lot of practice to do, which is to turn the volume down. Allow me to explain because this isn’t what it sounds like.
    • Meditation is an amazing practice that allowed me at first to train my focus and then to realize that I am my focus – or that I am the consciousness that is focusing. With this realization, I am able to stop hyper-focusing on any one thing – emotions, sounds, thoughts, etc. and include all things. They’re all still here – I’m just not overwhelmed by any one of them. Thoughts are still here, and they are not loud or all consuming. Emotions are here, and they don’t take over.
    • This larger, more global focus, gives me perspective on the whole, a more complete intake of input, that in effect turns the volume down on any single aspect because the volume is equalized to include everything.
    • This is super hard to explain if you don’t have a sense of what I’m pointing to, and enough of you have meditative practices of your own that you know what I mean. Essentially, here, you’re dialing back the hyper-focus on emotions by stepping into the observer (witness, etc.) which puts it all in perspective – everything is included. Any specific focus joins the general symphony… and then the emotions are not overwhelming. They’re one part of the overall song.

2. Pulling (more challenging to look at & work with)

• Method (How)
  • In this method, you’re asking for the attention of others (usually unconsciously). You’re doing your best to direct attention towards you. (Note that as emotional beings, attention and emotion are inextricably linked.)
    • You can do this by asking in a pleasurable way, like showing someone your newest creation (“Look at my new website!”), or helping someone (“Let me do that for you.”) or assuring someone (“I love your ideas!”),
    • Or you can do it in a painful way, like taking an inordinate amount of time to show your creation (“…and the site map is really special…”), demanding appreciation (‘You should be thankful I did that for you.”) or degrading (“You don’t think like I do, so I’m canceling you!”),
    • and probably you use a combination of both depending on the situation.
• Reasons
  • Needy, filling an internal void, wanting the emotional energy of others because you aren’t fulfilled with your own in some way
  • One very common example of this is having no boundaries: you trained yourself to put other people’s needs before your own; taking on familial, cultural ideals of being self-sacrificing vs self-serving, self-less vs self-centered (see how the words for serving and centering on your own needs are considered ‘bad’? Hello self-sacrificing culture!)
  • Personal example: For me, I was unconsciously trying to fill a black hole of lack of self love. It was un-fillable by others so it was like trying to fill a bottomless pit – other people’s attention was never, ever, ever enough, so I always needed more: more attention, more approval, more assurance, more friends, more colleagues, more parties, more, more, more.
  • This can be a ruthless cycle and can lead to all kinds of addictions to try to either fill the void or ease the pain of it (or both) like drugs, sex, scrolling, buying, over eating, over working (burnout), etc..
  • The pain of the lack, and the desperation one can feel over time as nothing seems to ease it, can also fuel desperate things like predatory business practices (getting more at any cost), domination tactics, manipulation, deception, etc.. (Yellow brick road to narcissism anyone?)
  • Living in cultures that promote looking outside of ourselves for fulfillment means many of us don’t even realize that what we’re missing is actually inside… already here, just atrophied from lack of use.
• Taken to extremes:
  • One unhealthy extreme: Taken to it’s extreme, it is vampire like and drains anyone (and everything) willing to pour energy into you. It can also be an aspect of narcissism.
  • Another unhealthy extreme: Never saying no to anyone. Helping others to the point of death or near death. (I’ve seen this one. It’s not pretty.) Can be joyful, energetic & bubbly on the outside, and dying on the inside.
• How to Stop
  • For me, this was the absolute hardest of the two to stop, because not only did it involve becoming conscious of something that I was unconscious of, i.e. that I was doing this in the first place; it also took quite a while to understand what the roots of it were for me = what I was missing: self-love.
  • For you, first please notice your immediate emotional response to this question: How predatory are you? If your immediate response is any kind of defense (numbness, distraction, you’re mildly indignant up to a heated “Not at all!”, etc.), then this is a good road to go down. We get a lot of help culturally to be this way, so know that most of us have this on some level.
  • Next, two things:
    • First, start noticing how this manifests in your life. When do you secretly feel needy? One simple way to notice this is to ask yourself who do you regularly hang out with or interact with that you don’t actually like… and start asking yourself what are you getting out of it? Notice what kinds of questions you ask them, what kinds of information you like to share with them, what you like to do for them, what kinds of assurances you like to receive, etc..
    • Another one is to notice what relationships you feel like you’re owed something. (Do you have sex with your partner because you want to go to your favorite restaurant? Do you take your kids to the extra sports practice because you want the other parents to see you as a good parent? Are you giving to your clients because you want money from them?)
    • Second, once you’ve identified at least one potential source of unhealthy energy intake, see what comes up for you if you start reducing your interactions with that person or situation… What parts of you get upset or start screaming? Pay attention to those!
  • Finally, and here’s the crux of the matter: find ways to support those parts differently, slowly learning to nourish them in healthy ways. Are you lacking self-love, self-confidence, a sense of success, belonging…? You don’t need to overthink it, just run with what comes up first, nourish that and see what happens.
  • How to nourish yourself? How to fill in the bottomless pit?
    • One way is to think about where you feel fulfilled already in your life. Does that feel healthy? How do you do it? Can you map some of that fulfillment to this lack? If you already feel fulfilled with your sport, and your bottomless pit is a lack of self-love, can you love yourself as an athlete? Can you pull in that love of you as sporty into love of you as a person?
    • Another option would be to get help with it… If you lack self-confidence, find a book or online course that resonates and see how that feels. Find a healer or practitioner you like or enlist a wise friend for advice and support.
    • Another would be to dive into your best spiritual practice and really work with this part of you. Sit with it, listen to it, support it in all of the ways that your practice can.
  • The point of all of this is to identify what’s missing, what you’re trying to get from others, and figure out how to give it to yourself. That’s a great way to fill the hole – to realize that it’s not bottomless, it just needs you, your energy, to fill it.

Notice there that not once did I talk about protection, creating a bubble around you or a golden egg, etc.. Those things probably work for some people, so test them out if you feel it. For me, at best I find them difficult to maintain, and at worst useless, because they don’t seem to actually stop anything coming in. Maybe I’m doing them wrong.

Over the years I’ve found that emotional overwhelm fits best into the same bucket as most everything else in my spiritual life: lean in. Learn from it. Transform it into something useful.

The things that are here are here because they are a part of me.
If I don’t like them, then how can I use them differently so that I do?
How can I be them differently?

And what do they tell me about myself?
What can I learn and evolve into as I understand and dissolve this pain, shifting into a more comfortable way of being?

Being sensitive to emotional energy gives me all kinds of amazing information about my environment and the beings in it. I use it as a superpower for navigating my life. Maybe you can, too.

This is where the gold is.
This is the alchemy that makes being human, hopeful.
It makes my life hopeful knowing that the pains can be helpful instead of just horrible burdens. That I can actually do something about them and that they can facilitate openings to wonders I never imagined.
Who knows how beautiful this symphony really is?
Who knows how beautiful you really are?

I hope you enjoy finding out.


Feel free to reply and let me know your reactions to any and all of this. Many of you will have developed different ideas about this, and I’d love to hear if you care to share them.


Warmly,
Eléna