Empathy, Emotional Sensitivity,
and the Flower Essences
©2001 by Kyra Mesich, PsyD
Empathy is the purest form of emotional communication and is
necessary for humans to live together in harmony. We need to be able to
clearly convey emotion, to empathize with each other's emotional
experiences, and understand the emotional reasons behind people's
behavior. Without empathy we are left with only our intellect
to make sense of emotions.
Empathy is a receptive language that is sensed internally. We
receive other's emotional communications whether they intend to send
them or not. We are all born with empathic ability. Because empathic
communication is ignored, disregarded, and repressed in our culture,
one of two things can happen. The empathic ability weakens over time
or it becomes expressed as emotional sensitivity.
Children who are born with strong empathic abilities can easily
sense other's emotions and continue to do so throughout childhood.
But without guidance or information about empathy, they have no way to
categorize or understand the empathic emotions they feel. This leads to
a kid and eventually to an adult who experiences a lot of emotions and
is confused as to why and where they are coming from.
Their empathy does not weaken over time because they are always using it.
They don't know how to turn off, manage, or control empathy, so it
continues without any rest. Over time they continue to receive more and more
emotional input from people around them. With no way to process or release
the emotions they receive, these feelings eventually reach full volume, and
empathy becomes distorted.
Empathy is not meant to be painful or to become confused with our own
emotions. It is intended to be nothing more than a form of emotional
ommunication that we all could use in a safe and protected manner.
Unfortunately, we have lost awareness of our ability for emotional
communication because of our culture's focus on the development
of the intellect. Being overwhelmed by emotion in an intellectual
world is seen as an embarrassment and a liability, which causes empathic
people to identify themselves as weak when they are not.
It takes more than an intellectual understanding of empathy to
heal and release years of accumulated empathic emotion. Having the
knowledge that empathy exists does not automatically enlighten you
as to how to control it in the future.
I have repeatedly found in my
work with sensitive people that the best approach is to start with
flower essences. These remedies have had the most overall profoundly
beneficial impact for such people. Flower essences can rebalance your
empathic ability, release years of painful empathic emotions, and help
you feel more protected and less overwhelmed by your sensitivity.
White Yarrow is the
multipurpose essence for people who are sensitive to their environment
and other people's emotions. It strengthens your energetic boundaries,
leaving you more protected from unwanted emotional energy.
Pink Yarrow is specifically for those sensitive people who realize
they give too much of themselves in relationships. They are
compassionate people who are especially vulnerable to absorbing
negative emotions from romantic partners, friends, and family.
Usually in their effort to help family or friends who are troubled,
they wind up taking the painful emotions onto themselves.
Golden Yarrow is for empathic people who have reacted to their
sensitivity by becoming very shy and avoiding attention or
performance situations. They feel imprisoned by their introversion,
but do not feel safe enough to increase their social involvement.
(Editor's note: for a more detailed discussion of the differences
between the three Yarrows, refer to Joyce Mason's article in the
September, 1999
issue of Vibration.)
There are flower remedies that aid the healing of every conceivable
issue. There are essences that help heal the wounds from abuse and trauma,
depression, anxiety, worry, selfishness, loneliness, impatience,
low self-confidence and on and on. You can use these flower
essences to heal your own psychological issues, as well as helping you
to be less susceptible to similar emtions in others.
There is an important point I want to make in this regard. If you
are to truly gain control of your empathy, it is necessary to be aware of
and work on healing your own psychological issues. If you are depressed,
you will be most affected empathically by other people's depression.
You will sense depression and feel depressed emotions within you more easily than other types of painful emotions.
The same goes for anxiety, anger, and any other emotion--whatever your own
key issue might be, you will quickly soak it up empathically from those
around you. The reason behind this is no more complicated than the
resonance of like energy.
The good news is that you will find it is much easier to finally heal those
emotional problems that have plagued you all your life once you understand
how empathy works. Since empathic people spend much of their lives
feeling other people's emotions, it makes it extremely difficult to
fully heal their own issues.
With an understanding of empathy and the
use of a flower essence like Yarrow, you'll have a much cleaner,
straightforward emotional palette to work with. You'll find it much
easier to heal and release old traumas and pains when empathic emotions
are not constantly intruding.
An important concept to keep in mind is that your empathic ability is an
integral part of who you are, and it always will be. If you are a
sensitive person, that means that you are strongly empathic. Nothing
will change that. Now keep in mind that empathy is not a liability.
It was frustrating, confusing, and sometimes painful when we were
unaware of our empathic ability. But now that you are aware,
the emotional pain can diminish and the frustration and confusion
will begin a metamorphosis into curiosity about this ability you have.
I have repeatedly found that sensitive people benefit tremendously
from flower essences. They clear out and rebalance the distortion and
confusion, so that you can reconnect with your empathy in a much
clearer, more protected manner.
Editor's Note: This article was excerpted from Kyra Mesich's book The
Sensitive Person's Survival Guide and is reprinted here with the
permission of the author. The book can be ordered from www.KyraMesich.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kyra Mesich, PsyD has a doctoral
degree in clinical psychology. Dr. Mesich has employed alternative
healing techniques since early in her career. The first non-traditional
healing modality in which she was trained was
hypnosis. While using hypnosis with psychotherapy clients, Dr. Mesich
observed that the clients treated with hypnosis were able to access
deeper emotions, achieve emotional breakthroughs quicker and easier,
and heal much more effectively overall than
the clients treated with conventional talking therapy alone.
This was the beginning of her career shift to alternative, natural healing.
In the years since, Dr. Mesich has studied extensively in the field of
alternative health, blending herbalism, flower essence therapy, and
energy healing into her current practice. She works and resides
in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Visit her website at www.KyraMesich.com.
CREDITS: The treatment for this article was created by Donna Cunningham of
Word of Mouth Web Design.
The outer background tile is part of a collection at ABC Giant. The secnd
tile is by Millroad Studio.
The center tile is from Rainbow Connection.
The child at prayer comes from Cool Archive.
The white yarrow image came from Art Today.
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