Understanding the Struggle: 4 Reasons Clients Push Boundaries with Empathic Guides
As an empath, learning to establish boundaries isn’t just a necessity—it’s a vital act of self-preservation that empowers you to protect your emotional well-being while still honoring your deep sensitivity to others.
If you suspect you're an empath or are in the midst of a spiritual awakening, or an empathic intuitive guide, the need for boundaries is not just imminent, it's urgent. You need to establish them right now!
Empaths, due to their deep sensitivity to others' emotions, often find themselves in a lifelong struggle with boundaries. When you absorb others' emotions as your own, it's easy to understand their experiences and avoid upsetting them by refusing to help or saying no to even the most unreasonable requests. However, setting boundaries is crucial for self-care and staying true to your own desires, rather than being a pushover. Developing strong boundaries is a key tool for empaths to protect their energy and prevent emotional exhaustion.
As an empathic intuitive guide, I've learned that many people expect empaths to be easily taken advantage of due to their deep emotional connection with others, and compassionate nature. This exploitation is prevalent in romantic relationships, but can also occur in friendships, with family, and even in the workplace.
Not to mention, empaths are here on a soul’s mission to rescue other people. And this shows up in many different ways, but ultimately many empaths are here to guide others in spiritual matters. As a guide, you will find the most egregious acts of boundary violations from those that you are trying to guide through emotional roadblocks and to a higher vibrational state.
Here are 4 reasons you will notice why people continue to overstep your boundaries as an intuitive guide:
1. Emotional enmeshment. A healthy client-guide relationship is one that is based on mutual trust and respect. However, in this era of digital platforms and the constant watch over each other’s lives, often client’s that struggle with connections and boundaries become a bit too comfortable with the ability to have constant access to their guide even when the guidelines to contact are very clear. Emotional enmeshment occurs when a client follows all of your social media posts and interactions and uses it as an opportunity to seek additional support, and more interaction with you outside of your designated sessions. It may seem harmless to start, but ultimately this can not only create burnout for the empathic guide as a result of consulting absorbing their emotional need for connection, but it also screams codependency.
2.Over-reliance on guidance. A psychic reader addiction is something that traditional psychic readers deal with constantly. Particularly psychics that work for popular per minute websites, but this can also occur on your personal website or through referral based work. Often clients find a thrill in getting immediate answers to their pressing questions about the future, their relationships, or their careers, and develop a dependency on guidance to make fundamental decisions to the extent that they can no longer trust their own judgment or thrive in life without constant social validation. This thrill seeking is prevalent in clients that are isolated due to lack of healthy social connections, familial connections, and sometimes unregulated mental health conditions. This addiction can also be deemed as an over-reliance on guidance. In my experience this manifests when people are truly unwilling to do their work to heal their negative patterns, and are avoiding the responsibility of making their own choices which can be a detriment to their own growth. Another negative impact of this behavior is that when an empathic guide has not instilled boundaries against this type of behavior, the interaction can begin to feel tainted. The guide will no longer feel like it is guidance but an obligation to service this person and be at their beck and call because you can feel the emotional turmoil that the client is in. Often this results not only in the client feeling disempowered to trust themselves, but the guide feels unable to help because the person often is not listening to the actual guidance and is thrill-seeking and getting a dopamine hit the same way as one does scrolling social media for instant gratification. Not to mention, at this point the client is often working with multiple guides which is part of the reason they are not listening to the guidance you offer.
3. Lack of understanding the guides’ role. Many individuals struggle with the concept of intuitive guidance because they often don’t have a spiritual foundation, which is a set of beliefs and practices that form the basis for their spiritual journey. This lack of a strong spiritual foundation can lead to expecting the guide to provide more than what’s appropriate—such as solving personal problems or making decisions for them—rather than empowering them to find clarity and heal. In today’s digital age driven by the millennial mindset, it is not uncommon for those seeking guidance to seek a deeper connection with a guide and have a different expectation level of comfort that feels more familiar and disarming like a friend and less like a more the kind of professional empathy that typically comes in a western healing setting like therapy. This desire for emotional connection can initiate boundary-blurring and create discomfort for the guide. The guidance sessions should be objective so that the guidance is channeled from the spiritual world, not the guide’s opinion. After all, a client-guide relationship should not feel like a paid friendship.
The coach, the guide, cannot bear the responsibility of friendship and still lead you to clarity.
4. Boundary deficiency. The biggest reason you will find clients, friends, and lovers alike who don't respect your boundaries is because they don't have their boundaries. Those who struggle with a lack of personal boundaries do so because boundaries have not been modeled for them in their childhood. Adults can find it challenging to define healthy boundaries, create them, and overstep others' boundaries without considering the impact on that person. However, it's important to remember that we have the power to change this pattern. By modeling healthy boundaries, we can help those around us learn to respect them.
In some cases, a lack of boundaries can indicate emotional or physical abandonment by a parent. This can lead to codependent behavior, where a person seeks a parent or authority figure in others and expects them to take care of their emotional needs. They may also expect constant access or attention without recognizing the need for personal space. This can occur when a client fails to respect agreed upon communication channels, constantly communicates their stream of consciousness, rather than genuine questions for guidance, and shares details irrelevant to their spiritual journey. This dynamic can create emotional strain and tension in relationships, making it crucial to assert and reinforce boundaries clearly.
The guide-client relationship as an empath is one that many people find odd. It's a situation where you find yourself perfectly familiar with someone you barely know. That's the only way the relationship is genuinely objective. The guidance dynamic is designed to center on the client's circumstances and leave yourself relatively anonymous so that the lines never get blurred. And you know it almost works seemingly, but when it doesn't, it's because the client finds themself with a friend's expectation when it's genuinely a guidance relationship. But consider this, boundaries are what a client may come to you to learn. As an empath, as much as you feel for the person seeking your help, it will never be worth diminishing your personal boundaries to support their unhealthy communication habits and constant need for attention. Remember, as a guide, your commitment is to the client's well-being, and this includes maintaining healthy boundaries.
If you are an empath or an empathic guide struggling with boundaries and need a bit of guidance, schedule a session here. You can also follow along and get my weekly soul lesson in your inbox here.