The Empathy Freeze

Feeling with someone is beautiful. It is the foundation of something that can feel like true magic. But if you can't move with them, if you're not also engaging your energetic leadership, you may not be helping. You might actually be deepening the stuckness. This is a big one, but we've got to talk about it. This is the healer's journey. I am your host Inge Broer and today we are talking all about the block of having so much freaking empathy, so much love in your heart that it actually hurts you and might even be hurting those that you are so empathic with.

I know. I'm sorry. That can hurt to hear. But I know you're also brave and you are smart and you are caring in the way that's going to make you very very effective. So the block is one that I hear so often. It is really the most beautiful caring human beings who find their ways to my work and talk about it in some way that leads me to understand that their caring actually freezes them. They care so much that they can't do anything with it. So, um, well, let's talk about a sort of strange counter action to this.

Something that allows for that deep care, that deep longing for your love to come out of you, to actually come out of you. I think that energy healing is an art. But I mean that in a really deep strange way. I mean that that just like picking up a paintbrush and getting something that's like frozen and stuck and or maybe chaotic inside of you allows for you to take it out is really healing for the actual for the artist. And I think at its basis that's why we should be doing art. But it also can really move and shift the people looking at the painting.

And the way that music can do this where we compose or make a certain kind of music that allows something inside of us to move to certain rhythm, move to certain bit. And for that inner turmoil or happiness or joy to come out of us and to beh expressed the tools of energy healing can be like a paintbrush. It can be like a musical instrument and it can allow for your incredible love and caring to be carried into expression outside of you and just like beautiful paint or beautiful music it may just move people outside of you as well.

I think the work of a healer requires both empathy and skill. Now, I don't know if I'm the only one, but when we're I have been on the receiving end of only empathy. It's felt a little bit likew let me explain. So, let's say I'm with somebody very empathic and they're asking me how I am and I actually open up and I tell them a little bit of the complexity inside of me, the hurt, the longing, whatever it is. And I can feel the person having so much empathy for me and really being there for me. And what it feels like is like it's so nice not to be alone.

It's so nice not to be by myself in this. But hold on a minute. Now what? Are we now both flooded with this? Are we now both um feeling the heaviness or confusion in this? And if that's the case, I was maybe better off sharing this, keeping this to myself. Now I feel bad. And now I feel confirmed in I am too much or um see nobody does understand me or nobody can hold me. And so it can have this unwanted runoff effect of making somebody feel more lonely. I know this can be really confronting and weird to hear.

Um, so yeah, I I wanted to bring that to our our our little container here in these episode podcast, these podcast episodes because it's important to talk about to take responsibility for what we're bringing into the field and empathy and it's just like sitting there in the middle and yeah, it can make you feel better, but it all can also feel like you you you dumped on someone. And that's why it feels like a lot of people keep their stuff to themselves because they don't want to burden anyone else.

They might be met with a lot of empathy, but now it feels like a shared burden because the other person might not have the skill to help you move through your own stuff there. Scenario two. I've also been on the receiving end of someone with a lot of skills, but not so much empathy. And that one, I'll have to admit, it feels well, it feels just as bad, but in a different way. It feels like being managed. It feels like, okay, so you've seen this before, and I'm really not special, and my pain doesn't really matter because it's like so basic.

And now you are managing me and you are walking me along a process. And if I don't also feel the empathy, what's not going to happen where I'm like, "Oh, great." Like, "This is common and we're going to have a solution and I'm going to move through my pain." What actually happened is that I dig in. I say, "But don't you see me? Do I not matter? Do you not get me?" So, I go to the same pain point and I shut down. So really what I'm longing for is the empaths, the people who have that natural empathy and the capacity to be with other people in their pain.

I long for them to be able to move to also take leadership and for the clear clinical people to come back to that empathy to to rethrown themselves with that empathy with that human connection because it's not the empathy that makes it feel heavy. Exactly. It's the art not landing, the proposition not really happening, and the proposition being let's get ourselves into the healing mode together. Let's create an environment where healing naturally happens. Raiki is so beautiful for that. We are creating an environment for the Reiki to support both the practitioner and the receiver.

But this can happen across the board. This can happen in any healing modality. So when I've been held like that, what it feels like is like, oh man, it feels so good to sort of be held and be heard and also I know that you're going to guide me through this and I am going to be a different version of myself by the end of our exchange. And I can go even deeper and I can be more myself. And I can let go of my old patterns and I can let go of that anguish so much faster. Empathy by itself is absolutely sacred, but it really is the entry point, not the whole container.

Okay. So one thing that empathy does that's so important is that in our well our nervous systems are social nervous systems. We don't exist in a vacuum. No man is an island like we take our cues from each other so much. And when we are hiding something, when we are bearing our own cross, when we are suffering in silence, the nervous system says I am alone. And when I am alone, I'm not necessarily safe. And when I am not safe, I cannot heal. So the magic of empathy and this nervous system lens and just to be clear I don't this is these are my thoughts this is how I think it works this is what makes sense to me this is how I'm putting puzzle pieces together but I'm not a scientist somebody needs to verify this for me anyways this feels like the most truest thing is that our nervous systems go when it's shared And when somebody receives our thing in empathy, there's this cue of like I'm not alone anymore and now I'm safe and now I can shift.

So empaths or anybody who's ever resonated with that word ever, what if you let yourself be held for once? What if you found somebody who was equally empathic and skilled, who could hold you in your frozen empathy, and your nervous system could thaw, relax into, "Oh my god, I'm not alone." I wonder if it might gear into some kind of a safety mode from where you're no longer frozen. no longer compelled to hold everyone's stuff and you can move. And who knows, possibly this podcast, me naming things that I haven't heard anybody name anywhere else might start that process for you already.

And I will hope that you allow it to that you allow that thought to happen that knowing to happen like I actually don't have to hold everything for everyone and holding everything for everyone might not do as much good as I think it does and letting myself be held and letting myself move may be the key. But from there, from that place of okay, we agree on what's happening here. We see the situation. We're together in it. Now together, the spaceholder is not jumping in the story, not jumping in your nervous system state, but staying grounded, staying regulated.

They can guide you into the exploration you need. They can guide you using some tools that might be helpful. They embody a certain calm, poised, competent leadership that allows you to start moving those energies that are stuck inside. I allow you to start shifting the whole carefully constructed energy scaffolding that you have in place. Now change is possible. Now shifts can happen. And that's that skill. So when you have a healer with you who is empathic and really knows the skills of their trade, knows how to engage in energetic leadership, somebody who won't collapse, won't flinch, and won't perform any kind of certainty, it allows for the healing to actually.

This isn't about fixing. It is about entering the field of our shared nervous systems with poise, with grace, with respect and putting ourselves in service of the healing that knows how to happen. our systems know how to heal and being together is one of the ways that it can do that. Being an empathic relationship, it's one of the ways it cues it to safety, allows that to happen. And another way is whatever skills, whatever comes from your healing modality. But what I have found that across modalities in the energy healing traditions, there's a few things that are skills that are really, really, really helpful to build no matter what you do in your healing modality.

One is creating a shared world is learning to lead breath. Not like complicated breath work. Just queuing a little bit with the breath. Cuing um visualizations of visual imagery. Queuing people to safety is entering the world of energy space. entering the inner world of the person you're working with and being there with them as a guide. That is one skill that is very very very very very very helpful. Another skill is deep listening. So this is a way of listening where you are really prioritizing your own nervous system operation.

So being aware which state you're moving into in a healing session, you would expect or you would think that you need to always stay sort of calm and connected, but actually it's the connected piece that matters. Calm isn't always the right thing. When someone's telling you something really, really, really charged, sometimes it's important to match that charge and to help them come to calm as well. That's that empathy piece. This is a bit more advanced, but that deep listening, learning to use what is flowing through your own perceptual system as an aid to the healing that is unfolding in front of you.

This is also all about understanding the interaction between healing and the containers we set for healing. What is possible in a 20 minute session is different than what is possible in a 90 minute session. It's different than what is possible in a threemonth program. It's different etc etc. And so there is a titration that needs to happen, a bit of a management here of like how big can we open, how big can we hold and move back together. And all of that is from a deep listening of your own perceptual system.

That's really really matters. That goes with your intuition and learning to read your intuition. Learning to read all the subterranean subtle cues that are happening in another person's body at all times and your own. It is also tapping into the field beyond the other person's body because yes, there is body language, but there's also something else. Something that I still can't explain to this day, but I know exists. Our personal mythos exists in our energy field somehow and it is possible to tap into it with other people.

The intuition can plug into that and use that to orchestrate healing to to live energetic leadership and bring healing and letting wisdom land in other people. Another skill that I believe really really helps no matter what healing modality you practice is um understanding that there's different parts of ourselves very simply. We have parts and those parts aren't always in alignment, always in congruence. So working with um an awareness of how one aspect of somebody might want to go left and the other aspect might want to go right.

And learning to hold and to respectfully listen to all the different parts and allowing your client to listen with kindness and respect as well. Another skill set that really helps in all healing modalities, I believe, is an understanding and a lived um a lived embodied understanding of energetic boundaries and our relations with other people. So um yeah having a bit of a basic knowledge of uh cord cutting of how information is transmitted between people can be super helpful. And then the last skill here is really the art of guidance.

Again I'm coming back to the art idea. It is an there's an art there is um a relational dance that happens in a healing session that is really a skill that can be learned. Bringing somebody from a point A to a point B. For a long time I loved asking people if you could choose anything like where where what would you like to feel by the time our session is over? And I let that guide the session. And more often than not, we'd absolutely land there because there is a pathway. And truly, this really feels like my art in the world.

And this feels like my paintbrush, my music. I I'm sure I'll pick up a paintbrush again in my life when and and perhaps eventually return to the piano. Um, but it's this relational art that is the dearest to my heart. And so if you are somebody who has so much empathy, but you are frozen in it, my call to you here really is to learn those six skills I just mentioned. Healer embodied is designed exactly for that. The prerequisite is Raiki one, whoever you did it with. um because we are doing Raiki 2 and Raiki 3 and they're an amazing um scaffolding to learn all of these things.

It is six months. It is very very very practical. We are practicing all of these skills. We are learning an action. This is not some kind of a theoretical thing at all. Um, and by the end you can move your empathy and you have the skills to help that what your empathy wants to do to actually happen. And I believe there's nothing that our world needs more than that. So, you know, no pressure. Um, this has been the healer's journey. Thank you so much for joining. Healer embodied starts May 1st. There is still a little bit of time to get in and there will be another round starting in September.

If you wanted to come in, contact me at uh Inge Heels on Instagram, I n a ls or just come follow me there or send me an email ingaiscovery.org. I would love to speak with you. Um conversations are never pressured. Uh the real goal is always just to help you find your next most empowered step. Not going to lie, most of the time that does end up being the program that you are um having a call with me for, but sometimes it's not. And that is okay, too. I'll see you in the next episode.