by Ora North
Tara was in an abusive relationship with a man she believed to be very spiritually powerful. His power was what first attracted her to him, as she was interested in spiritual studies but didn’t believe she had her own power. She willingly gave her power to him in the beginning as a show of adoration, but as the relationship progressed, she realized she couldn’t get it back. She was trapped in the pull of him as he continued to be abusive toward her.
As I facilitated a soul retrieval session with her, I discovered that I needed to retrieve that piece of vital energy from her abusive partner, who still held it closely. In what can only be described as a negotiation/battle, I was able to take that energy from him so I could return it to its rightful owner, Tara.
In the moment I returned Tara’s missing energy to her body, she jumped. She could feel that something had returned, and she felt fuller. She felt a sense of power and security she had been lacking, and upon integrating that energy, no longer felt the need to give her power to others.
There are likely relationships in your past that you can already identify as sources of soul loss. You may know exactly when and where that soul loss occurred. Getting back that vital piece of energy is a lot safer and more effective when you see a professional healer.
Should You Stay or Should You Go?
Empaths who venture down this road of self-discovery are often at a crossroads in their life regarding their relationships. They are usually growing apart from their partner as they begin to realize what it means for them to be an empath. Relationships are often our greatest teachers, and many times, those teachers aren’t meant to stick around in our lives forever. Your choice in your mate is one of the most important factors in your life, since this person will share physical and energetic space with you on a regular basis. This person will affect how you work with your boundaries, how you express your feelings, how safe you feel when vulnerable, and how connected you are with your higher self.
Part of doing the intense self-work of the empath is letting go of relationships that cause you to struggle with your boundaries, safety, and vulnerability. Whether it’s a marriage of twenty years that has no room for growth or change, or an intense relationship of two years that has been a catalyst of self-exploration and realization but has brought you to different paths, relationships ebb and flow, and sometimes the tide pulls us away from them for good.
As overwhelmed empaths, we are typically drawn to relationships where we are the primary nurturers and caretakers of the relationship. The emotional labor falls to us to keep the relationship stable, so when an empath comes into their empowerment and independence, their partner may not be so keen to give up the extra emotional space they’ve been able to occupy with them before. Giving up that womb space is scary for them, and they may not support your growth because of that fear. For empaths who no longer want to be overwhelmed, this lack of support is a major cause for relationships ending.
A lot of shame comes with breaking up, especially if it’s a marriage. We tend to label these “failed relationships,” but I don’t believe any relationship that was created out of love can ever be a failure. When a relationship ends, it’s because one or both people grew so much that the relationship was no longer a suitable container for them. In that way, the ending of a relationship is a positive thing, a herald of exciting things to come. If you’re lucky, you may have a partner who’s willing and able to grow and evolve at the same rate that you grow and evolve or, at the very least, support you in your own growth in a way that doesn’t take away from the relationship.
Deciding when to stay and when to go is never easy for the empath with the big heart. Saying goodbye to loved ones is a loss. To become the person you want to become, you will undoubtedly lose things. Whether it’s romantic relationships, places, friends, or jobs, the road to empowered empathy is paved with some grief.
That grief, as painful as it may be, will give you the clarity and wisdom to appreciate your truest self and your truest mission. If you must go, the person on the other side of that loss, the person you want to become, is waiting for you, and they have so many wonderful things they want to show you.
Do the Work
Exploring energetic patterns will help you develop relationships that are healthier for you and the other. Use the exercises here to discover more about the patterns that hold you back.
Energetic Pattern Inventory
Take an inventory of your most important relationships. Start with one relationship, but do this with every key relationship. You can even do this with past relationships to examine the pattern.
Do you become a chameleon in this relationship? Do you change yourself to accommodate the emotional needs of the other person? If so, in what ways?
Do you use the concept of unconditional love to excuse the lack of boundaries in this relationship? If so, what are the circumstances?
Do you have a codependent relationship with this person? Does your happiness rely heavily on what they think of you?
Does the other person emotionally abuse you or gaslight you in any way? Do you feel like they are the ones telling you what your feelings mean?
Do you find that the other person shows signs of narcissism, manipulating your empathy? Do you show signs of narcissism, manipulating their empathy?
Do you feel like this relationship allows you to grow? Does it support the changes you make in your life?
You may notice that the patterns you experience the most are linked to your core wounds. We often find ways to replay our core wounding through our relationships when we haven’t yet faced those core wounds. Once you begin to notice these patterns in your own relationships, it becomes easier and easier to stop them in their tracks and break the cycle.
The Victim and Villain in Your Relationships
Pick an important relationship in your life right now. In your journal, make a list of the last three fights the two of you had. Describe the circumstances that led up to the fight, what you both said, how you felt. Think back to your descriptions of your victim and your villain. Can you see either of them in your fight? Can you see your victim shutting down and blaming the other person? Can you see your villain manipulating the other person, or saying cruel things? Where do you see your victim or villain acting out in this fight? Do this for each fight, and see if you can notice a pattern. Your victim and your villain, as well as the victim and villain of your loved one, are pretty predictable. They most reliably come out when they’ve been triggered in an argument. By shedding light on the behaviors of your victim and villain, you’re also shedding light on the common energetic patterns you run as a default when you’re feeling threatened or scared. When you see the patterns and get to know them, you can more easily change them.
Chapter 8:
Working Through Trauma
As I walked the shoreline in Aberdeen, Scotland, my eyes alternated between getting lost in the vast misty horizon of the North Sea and searching the pebbles beneath my feet as the waves rushed in to meet them. I was looking for sea glass. Glancing forward, glints of blue and green would catch my eye, shining from a fresh wave. I collected the pieces of softened glass like they were pieces of lost treasure. I washed them with the utmost of care, appreciating each one, wondering what they had been before, and how long they had been in the sea.
My love of sea glass extended far past a physical appreciation. To me, sea glass is the most beautiful example of the resiliency of brokenness. What starts as a million tiny particles of sand being formed into a cohesive shape by extreme heat, is then eventually shattered again, losing its form. It is tossed in all directions, worn by years of constant waves, softened, and made into something completely different but still beautiful. At any point, it could be shattered again or formed into something else entirely. And no matter its current state, it will never erase the glory of former incarnations, and it will never erase the trauma of being shattered. No matter its curre
nt state, it’s both completely broken and completely whole all at once.
One of the hardest aspects of being an empath is working with all of the pain that comes with it—the brokenness of living a human life, the trauma from past experiences, the things that get in our way when we’re feeling it all. The best way to work with it is to lean into it rather than away from it. To do this, you embrace your brokenness, communicate with your trauma, and discover ways to work through your obstacles.
We Are Both Broken and Whole
I am broken.
I know that saying this is a spiritual no-no.
But there it is: I am broken.
You’re broken, too, though.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the affirmation I am whole used by spiritual mentors and gurus, or how many times I’ve spoken about my brokenness to be met with something like “No, you’ve never been broken. You are whole and perfect just the way you are.”
It’s a nice thing to think, that someone is whole and perfect just the way they are. Though the intention is good and the goal is to move toward positive thinking, this affirmation is another one of those new age distortions.
Have you ever told someone who is deeply suffering that they are whole and perfect just the way they are? Imagine telling a rape survivor that they are whole, and that their rape did not break them, that their rape is part of what makes them perfect. Imagine telling a mother grieving the loss of her child that she is not broken, and that her grief is part of what makes her perfect and whole. By telling anyone, whether you know their personal pain or not, that they are whole and perfect, you are unconsciously telling them that they deserve their pain and their trauma. You are telling them that the horrific injustices of the world are part of a perfect reality, their perfect reality. You are invalidating their life experience.
One night, I was sitting on my bed with my five-year-old rescue dog, Nimue. I adopted her when she was almost one, and she had come from a mysterious abusive situation where she was kept locked in a garage and starved. I noticed a fly in the room with us and stood up, grabbing a roll of paper towels to smack it. As I raised my arm above my head, Nimue put her ears back and jumped off the bed, cowering from me. I had accidentally triggered her abuse by raising my arm near her. I immediately dropped my arm and called her back onto the bed, hugging her and kissing her and whispering calming things in her ear.
“I love you,” I cooed to her as I petted her head, “I would never hurt you.”
Even though she hadn’t been harmed in the four years I’d had her, even though she received an abundance of love, snuggles, treats, and play, the first year of her life was so painful that it still affected her. It was so painful that it would probably affect her for the rest of her life, regardless of the love she received. In that moment, holding her in my arms and crying a few silent tears for her, I realized that she was broken in the same way I was broken—in the same way many of us are broken, and always will be.
Living in a world where terrible things can and do happen undeniably breaks us. Living in a world where we experience soul-shattering pain and loss undeniably breaks us. Living in a world where the ones we trust hurt and abuse us undeniably breaks us. Let’s stop pretending we’re not broken. Just like you wouldn’t pick up a piece of sea glass and think, Look! I found a whole bottle that has never been broken before, you wouldn’t pick up the painful experience of a person and insist that they are whole.
This isn’t to say we can’t also be whole, but as human beings living human lives, we cannot be whole without also being broken. In the empath’s quest for personal power and validation, the definition of wholeness must be changed from something that is perfect and good to something that is merely complete. True wholeness includes the entire spectrum of experience, from the positive and uplifting to the damning and heartbreaking. And if your life experience has some pain mixed in (which it undoubtedly does if you’re really a human), your own wholeness must include the acceptance of your brokenness.
What Is Trauma?
On your journey to wholeness, you have to know the trauma that you’re dealing with. With respect to energetics, trauma is an experience that causes a psychological injury or energetic wound. When you experience trauma, your nervous system and adrenals are lit up in fight, flight, or freeze mode, and that adrenaline and fear is absorbed into the cells in your body, creating an energy signature that lives inside your body and aura. When we work with trauma on an energetic level, keep in mind that the energy is inextricably tied to your body. Your body remembers your trauma even when your conscious mind has forgotten.
Empaths and Their Relationship to Trauma
For an empath, traumatic experiences can be magnified. Because empaths experience pain so much more intensely, trauma can be an incredibly visceral experience. A seemingly small slight can create trauma much bigger than you’d think. Your core wounds are an excellent example of this. Even if your core wound was a relatively benign event (like me with the dead bird), for a highly sensitive person, it can feel impossibly overwhelming and large, which is how it creates that foundation of emotional pain. These trauma events may be so painful and dangerous to the empath that soul loss occurs in order for them to survive. This is when soul retrieval is needed for those split selves.
Not only do empaths absorb their fair share of their own trauma, but they often absorb the trauma of others. Empaths are trauma collectors. Not only do many of us have storied pasts filled with pain and abuse, but we also collect trauma from the stories of others. Trauma seems to cozy itself right into the curves of our bodies and the cracks in our minds. We inherit it from our grandmothers and their grandmothers before them. Our natural openness and compassion, plus the influence of our boundaries (or lack thereof), make us the perfect candidates to be energetic unloading zones.
Scientific studies show how trauma in our family can pass down through generations, affecting younger family members with the same trauma the older members experienced. This phenomenon explains why we often inherit the same problems as our relatives who came before us. The problems may manifest in different ways, but they often have the same theme or root.
This is why daughters are often afflicted with the same abusive relationships their mothers endured, or why sons have the same violent fear of abandonment their fathers do. We can find these themes in our own spiritual and emotional DNA as we do the shadow work of identifying and consciously working with those feelings and tracing them back to their roots. We can’t help but find ourselves in those same patterns as our parents.
We learn how to carry both our own trauma and that of others. We adjust to it. We become trauma-management systems rather than trauma-clearing systems. Usually this way of living is learned very early on. By the time we’re adults, we often don’t realize how much trauma we’re actually carrying until we are so subconsciously loaded that a simple trigger can initiate a domino effect in the psyche, carrying us to an involuntary breaking point.
Time to Face Your Trauma
If you’ve been carrying around your trauma on your own, pushing it down so you can survive, a huge part of your work as an empath will be to identify and start working with it. Maybe you’ve put on a brave face, showing the world how strong you are to be able to handle all of this.
But none of us can be strong all the time. None of us can always have our act together. When you keep pushing past traumatic or stressful events, when you keep telling yourself it will all be fine as long as you keep hustling past it, the trauma slowly builds up in your system. While in that forced-strength mindset, you may find yourself in even more traumatizing or stressful situations. You may say, “Oh, I’m strong. I can handle this. This is fine.”
But it’s not fine. It’s not fine to push yourself past your limits with declarations of your fine-ness. It’s not fine to shove your trauma down, thinking you’ll be able to pull it out in small pieces later, but only w
hen you’re ready. Trauma doesn’t work that way. If you disrespect your trauma, it may very well swallow you whole.
The less we listen to what our trauma needs to heal, the more likely we are to unintentionally retraumatize ourselves, sending ourselves into unhealthy and dangerous cycles of behavior and thought patterns. Our stubbornness to be fierce and powerful all the time can end up hurting us if we don’t take the steps to stop, listen, and heal.
The good news is that your trauma always wants to talk to you and to tell you what it needs. It will tell you when it’s time to bravely come forward, and it will tell you when it’s time to hold back and nurture your raw nerves.
None of us are excluded from dealing with trauma. We all have accumulated trauma throughout our lives, both from our own experiences and the experiences of others. Having trauma doesn’t mean you’re screwed up beyond repair or you’re abnormal in some way. Trauma is a very normal part of life—a part that should be encountered with as much compassion and awareness as possible.
Facing your own trauma affects the trauma of your family lineage as well. When you do this type of transformative emotional work on yourself, your entire ancestral line before you and after you benefits from that work. By healing yourself and sifting through your own trauma and karma, you assist in healing your mother’s karma and your grandmother’s karma and on and on. You also assist in healing your daughter’s karma and your granddaughter’s karma and on and on. Sometimes, when you embark on a healing journey, members of your family want to join in the healing, and that has even more of a ripple effect in your lineage. Other times, your family will want nothing to do with your healing, and that’s okay too. They will still benefit from your own work in some way, even if you don’t have a close relationship. If your relationship with your family is a struggle, and one that’s not likely to change in their lifetimes, you are still providing new patterning for your children and their children. You are still breaking the cycle of trauma.
