Life of an Empath

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How Ego Prevents Healing and Emotional Clarity

You know how there are things in life that we simply can’t grasp? For me, that’s anything that has to do with why people resist emotional clarity. I don’t understand why we deny our emotions as if that will get us anywhere in the healing process?


There comes a time in intuitive coaching where I find myself questioning client commitment. I have found myself thinking, “why are you here?”


Today, someone used my coaching for an individual emotional clarity challenge. I love the emotional clarity challenge because you can always get to a place of ease and healing if you are honest with yourself and trust the process no matter what problem you bring to it.


The whole concept of emotional clarity is to bring a problem and process it through a single emotion per day and process it through the lens of spiritual guidance. 


This morning my client and I landed on the emotion of guilt. And to be frank, this hasn’t been the easiest challenge because although this person is in a considerable amount of pain, their level of denial is blocking the possibility of clarity. 


To be honest, this is a common problem in intuitive coaching —denying the truth.  There are multiple reasons why denial doesn’t work for this type of healing:


1. I’m an empath, so I literally feel energy.

2. This process is designed to help you articulate your emotions in a way that is difficult to do in everyday conversation and in your head.

3. You can only heal if you are honest with yourself.


It’s really disappointing how often I have to remind people to relax and be honest. For instance, It’s typical for many people from different circumstances to defend those they love, even when they have hurt them. This faux sense of protection doesn’t help them understand their emotions or get clear on moving forward.


There’s an air of defensiveness that sometimes finds its way into the healing process that creates a place that becomes sterile at best and combative at worst. This resistance becomes counterintuitive to clarity and disrupts the sacred spiritual space, which I cultivate for healing.


I have learned that most people that I work with don’t honor the energy of a spiritual space. Mostly because they have grown accustomed to disrespecting themselves and subconsciously negatively impacting others with their energy, too many people are unclear about their relationship with the Divine Spirit.


Spirituality, spiritual coaching, intuitive coaching, or empathy have become adjectives to describe a place where one can show up as they are with the expectation of not being judged.


One of my journal prompts for last month was “what is your relationship to the Divine Spirit?”


Truly, I wasn’t surprised that the answers were so hard to come by.  Spirituality has become less about the sacred and more about freedom from the perceived confines of religion. 


Unsurprisingly, no one has ever asked me about my spiritual beliefs, and last week there was an implied assumption that I’m Buddhist. I couldn’t even bother myself to be shocked.  As a practice, I don’t discuss religion in coaching. Consequently, the assumption that spirituality and religion can’t coexist is a testament to how resistant and ego dependent we culturally are.


We have so many assumptions that make up our everyday existence that we don’t even know what we believe.  We don’t know how to feel. Our connection is fleeting.


This plays out in scenarios where we simply assume we know before we introspect. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that when I asked my client about guilt, she said, “I don’t think I have any guilt in this area.” I said, well how do you know before you have given yourself a chance to write?”


We have a desperate need to control the narrative in our assumptions, which always provides a roadblock. Blocking our pathway to healing keeps us dependent on the ego aspect of ourselves.  Our dependency on the ego forces disconnection with our soul. 


As I continue to unpack the concept of unlearning, I realize that most of us are more comfortable with our learned behaviors even if they walk us right off of a proverbial cliff and likely an actual one.   The ego creates an expert even in a concept completely foreign because it has learned to survive by applying the experience of what has been rather than being open to what is to come.


If we are to rise to the changes necessary to navigate a year with an energetic state of change, what will our legacy be if we are confined solely by what we assume?


If you have an issue in which you are seeking clarity and you are ready for to understand with openness, schedule time with me here.

And check out these episodes of the podcast:

Surrendering to the Intuitive Possibilities

Radical Self-Care in the Year of Alignment

Navigating Evolving Relationships Pt. 1