I am an empath. According to the Google Dictionary, I am an individual who feels more empathy than an average human. For me, it means I have a tendency to feel the world with my heart. It’s neither good nor bad. It was a terrible burden for me in the past. It was too much. I didn’t know how to monitor my feelings. I didn’t know how to function very well without taking things personally. It’s so good that I’ve learned not to take things personally, or seriously.

At first, I had to shut down my heart and nurture my so much of anger toward all who had offended me. By the time of my second decade, I had perfected a technique of freezing people out of my life by shutting down tight. By freezing people out of my life, all I was doing was hurting my heart so severely that I was near suicidal.

Then I decided something had to give. It wasn’t going to be me who was going to lose. I didn’t want to end my life meaninglessly. I started to search for the meanings of my life in relationships, sex, and alcohol without finding any answers. Of course not! I was terrible at relationships. Sex was too messy and not sustainable. As an Asian-born, alcohol didn’t agree with me, either, it only made me sick. But I kept searching, knowing that without understanding the meaning of my life, why bother was what I felt. Because without the meaning, life was too painful to be in it.

And then I met a man. You know, a girl met a boy story. But in this story, the heart that’s been closed for so long started to crack open. At first just a pinhole and then a little more. Accept, that in this story, he was an alcoholic. A raving alcoholic he was! It was demeaning but I found my purpose. At least I felt I had. I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame, at the deepest soul-level attraction. But he was killing himself. The pain I was experiencing with him and dealing with the alcoholism was entirely different than the pain I have dealt with any other ordinary person or incident. The level of feelings that I didn’t understand as I was dealing with his drunken state of cruelty and meanness was a whole different kind of suffering. But I needed to save him, that’s all I knew. In desperation, I started attending AA groups. I was not an alcoholic but I felt I needed to understand the alcoholism. He wasn’t going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, at the time. But I was. I didn’t know anyone who was an alcoholic during my upbringing. So I would go to the weekly open meetings to learn how I can help him.

One day I was sitting in the back row of an AA open meeting, thinking about how low I came to in my life. A woman came in sitting next to me with a child in her baby carry-on. I was only half listening to what people were saying about things. And then I found myself looking at the sleeping child. She looked so peaceful. I envied the seeming peacefulness of the child, wishing I was as half as peaceful as her. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me. I had never experienced a similar look that she had for me, never in my 30 years of life! I was frozen in that moment of foreverness. I felt the Source behind that look and then she smiled! I was awakened! I was called! I felt loved! I had never met the child’s mom and never saw her again.

Soon after the incident, the alcoholic boyfriend signed up to be sober in a small county hospital, voluntarily. He has been sobered for the last 40 years and some. Since then, our lives are no longer in the same linear spaces, and live in two different parts of the country. He has participated in creating life-changing tools for the world and continues creating things that can make the world in better place.

Fast forward, I’m still an empath. But over the years I have found ways to not take over other people’s pains and negativities. Because of that, I stopped suffering from other people’s pain and negative energies. I see frequently, many empathic people giving their energies, trying to make other people feel better. But it doesn’t work that way! We just deplete ourselves and suffer because our own energies and their ugly intents don’t mix together. But often, we attract narcissistic people and allow them to take our valuable energies, in exchange for their abusive behaviors and games. I’ve worked with empaths who played the perfect Games of 7 Steps. They will reel you in like a fish in the wild. They will take and take and when you are depleted they will start to bring you down. By then you’ll no longer recognize yourself. You’ll become a pitiful and abused kitten. We must understand that our energies are finite. Unless we learn how to tap into the Universal energies. We can’t afford to donate our own life energies to someone else. But so many empathic people get entangled with takers/narcissists and become weak and barely functioning. They will put up with the games and cutting words and continue power-draining games.

Enough is enough, at this junction of the human cycle, we must fortify ourselves and hold onto a clear image of the future that we want to create. We must stop playing cat-and-mouse games with Takers. we aren’t mice. We are powerful beings of Light. I suggest that you spend time meditating, exercising, talk to like-minded successful people. Take workshops that will inspire you. Find out who you are. Stop waiting for someone to come and rescue you. Stop spending your valuable time with negative people and stop trying to change them. Let us move forward! You are creative. You are strong. If you are stuck, get help with your soul guiding you. Spend time in the natural environments. Spend time among trees.

We empathic people are powerful beings of Light. Moving forward means letting go of your comfort zone. Moving forward means Learning how to stand up for yourself! It may not be easy, but we are strong. Don’t give up and don’t let other people make you think that you are weak! Teach yourself the lessons of discerning!

You are being called! You are loved!

You are valuable! You are worthy!

You are non-stoppable!

You are a bringer of Light!