How Should You Use that Connection?
Let’s imagine for a second that there was such a thing like a lie detector but for emotions. Instead of this machine telling you whether it was true or false, it gave you an indication of how strong and what emotion that was. It allowed somebody that was more in touch with their emotions to feel what the other person is feeling in order to help them understand and move through that emotion in a healthy state. That’s basically what being an empath is, except the empath is the machine just like a lie detector. It requires the connection to that person in order to interpret the information. Now off the top of your head I’m sure using that analogy you could think of many reasons that might come in handy! We’re going to cover a few simple ones, but don’t be shy with your imagination to massage that into different circumstances that you might see as useful, after all it’s your gift to use.
Coaching.
Some of the most valuable tools of being an empath, is when we are coaching or teaching someone the ability to feel if they’re understanding our words and the concepts that we are teaching them or getting that little ping when we know we’ve lost them. It can become an invaluable tool in order to make your teaching abilities reach the next level. Imagine back to grade school for a second and the moment you were lost within a lesson the teacher immediately stopped and helped you get caught up.
Healing.
Healing can be a deep well when we also look at the difference between physical healing, emotional healing, and spiritual healing. Even at its basic level the ability to feel not only the emotions in one’s body but their physical body as well can become an asset for the healer when they’re working with a client. When does the healer know when to stop? When does the healer know that the symptom that the person is complaining about is not the most important problem they should be worrying about? Or perhaps there’s a problem under the surface that the person is not aware of. These are all amazing examples where the gift of empathy plays a big part from the Healer’s role.
A teaching tool for communication.
Now this is a bit of a fun one that not a lot of people associate with empathy, but we often react very quickly to our own emotions or our own symbols within our body. Sometimes your team will use that ability to connect to those negative or positive emotions in order to give you a quick thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on the situation that you’re confronted with. Although this is not technically empathy, the ability to create that emotion within your body is the same, even if you’re just using it for a different purpose. I hear many gifted people talk unaware of the signs of emotions that they receive from their team. They’re using that as a language and for those that work with it often can become very highly productive simply using an emotional language.
Guidance.
Guidance is also often overlooked when it comes to the gift of empathy, I guess technically depending on your definition of coaching we could wrap this section in with the earlier one however, myself personally, I view guidance and coaching as a very different thing. When we are talking about somebody’s path or their potential as they move forward in life, I noticed that I engage my empathic abilities quite often. Mostly when we deal with belief in self or I’m speaking of something to come or something they need to audit within themselves I’m keeping a close eye on not only how they feel of my words but also of how they feel about themselves coming up on those lessons or challenges. Don’t underestimate how interwoven empathy can be with all of your gifts.
To summarize this particular lesson, how you use this gift is entirely up to you and the situation that you’re in. We could spend a lot of time talking about ethics and permissions, but I find that seems to be a bit of a lost leader with most people. I find it’s much more valuable to look at somebody’s moral compass for themself and the values that they hold and understand the context of their decisions will follow that. Overspending time on morality and the complexity of each individual situation or decision means nothing if you don’t have a strong moral compass driving those decisions. Basically speaking, make sure you have yourself in order and you would be surprised on what is actually allowable out there.