I have Bipolar Disorder. And I'm also a spiritual leader.

“There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.”

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am a woman of fire. I live by passion and the spark is what keeps me going. That fire is what has led me to the wonderful things in my life. It’s led to my path as a spiritual teacher and author. 

But sometimes I burn too hot. And sometimes my fire goes out. Because I also have bipolar disorder. 

The times when I am most creative and most public would be considered my normal to hypomanic phases. These are the times when I am tending my fire with care. I am feeding it and watching it closely so it doesn’t burn out or burn out of control. It keeps me inspired and driven, and in a matter of weeks, I can accomplish the same amount of work that a normal person may take a year to complete. It’s really quite impressive, even to myself. This is what I consider my ideal baseline, because I personally believe the best gifts from bipolar are from this state. But there’s a balance to it, because when I fall into a depressive episode or shoot into a manic episode, I may do nothing “productive” for months. Hypomania is when I appear most inspiring to your eyes because it is when I feel most inspired to share my thoughts while staying grounded.  It’s where I can reach the gods with the tips of my fingers while keeping my toes in the sand. I go to great lengths to achieve or maintain a normal state tinged by hypomania like this - supplements, a careful diet, plenty of movement and sleep, meditation, creative expression. But being as sensitive to the world as I am, sometimes there’s nothing I can do, and the hypomania builds into mania or falls away into depression. 

In mania, my fire burns too hot and too high. 
I am a lightbulb with far too much wattage running through me. I take on wave after wave of information. I wake up in the middle of the night and my feet are on fire. I have to walk on cold tile to cool myself enough to sleep. The messages are coming quicker and quicker and I can no longer accommodate them. There isn’t the time nor the focus to use them creatively anymore. They simply turn into too many voices in my head, all screaming at once, and it all becomes irritability and anxiety. The same energy that gave me brilliant insight into the world, into others, into myself, now threatens to destroy me and take away my safety. That speed of energy coursing through my brain turns into impulsiveness. I want to be reckless, I want to do reckless things, I want to push myself over the edge because self-destruction is imminent anyways. (And boy does it sound fun.) One of the primary ways my spirit tries to deal with mania is the hypersexuality it causes. I fully understand that hypersexuality can be dangerous, and I’ve seen myself get into bad situations or throw around my energy around carelessly, but my spiritual practice has also taught me that sexuality is one of the clearest and most direct ways our body tries to make peace with our psychology. I cannot tell you how much I have learned about myself, about others, about relationships and sex, about trauma, and about God, all because my fire burns hottest in between my legs. (And I’m working on figuring out how to tell you about those things too.) But it is a fine line to walk, and I know this. Because being this close to the fire also makes me feel the chaotic desire to be ravaged entirely by it. I can feel the “other side” so subtly hidden by our world and I want to go there. I want to become the brilliant dying star and explode into the universe. And that desire to be ravaged by spirit threatens to consume me on a regular basis.  

In depression, my fire goes out. 
People with bipolar disorder know that fire isn’t hell. Fire is life. Too much life, too much fire, can certainly mean destruction. Can certainly mean death. But hell is what comes after the fire too…hell is cold. Hell is the lack of fire. My hands and feet go cold. All of the passions that I live by, though I remember their names and their functions better than my own name, seem meaningless. All of the fuel that I require to participate in this weird experience/experiment known as human existence is just…gone. It’s not that I don’t understand what is happening - I do. I understand that I’m now in a depressive episode. I understand that this too shall pass and that eventually I’ll feel the fire again and contribute to the world. But none of that knowledge matters when you’re living, no, surviving, in this space. No amount of mindset work or preventative tools can shake this sense that everything is heavy and there is no purpose to any of it. In these phases, I want my creativity but don’t see the point. I know that I help other people with my work, but I don’t care. Because here I am in the cold and the dark all by myself and my helping those other people did not help me prevent this, nor can it pull me out of it before it’s had its way with me. Those people who said their lives were changed by me cannot change this episode. I would welcome any emotion, even rage, because rage is powerful fire and can launch me into purpose, but even anger alludes me here. There is no fire and there is too much earth and water. The gravity pushes me into the dirt where I will stay. I cry for days, weeks. I light so many candles and stare at the flames, longing to come alive again, and I watch those go out too. They don’t burn long enough or strong enough to bring me back to life. It is here that I have learned the randomness and apathy of the universe, and the smokescreens of society fade away from disinterest as I return to the bare bones of survival. Eat something. Sleep. Drink water. Keep sheltered. Everything always comes back to survival here. There is nothing else. 

Mixed episodes are the most dangerous, because it combines the meaninglessness of a depressive episode with the motivation and self-destruction of mania. With the other episodes, I mostly still have my faculties and my ability to grasp, or at least question, the reality of things. But in mixed episodes, those faculties are hijacked and this is where there is an increased risk for suicide. (60% of those with bipolar disorder attempt to commit suicide and 19% of those succeed, which is a tragically high number.) Mixed episodes are much rarer, but these are the ones where I need intervention from loved ones (or oftentimes, from my ancestors or spirit guides) to keep me grounded until it passes. 

Every time I survive an episode, whether it’s a manic one or a depressive one or a mixed one, I feel changed. I feel stronger. I feel wiser. I feel more seasoned as a warrior. Almost as if each episode is a spiritual battle that promises to kill me, and if I beat the odds, if I look into the belly of the beast and survive, if I can live in the darkness or chase the fire and fuck the devil, I level up in my own abilities and insight. Finally, I can participate in the world again in the ways that I want. Finally, I can come back to some consistency and stability, and offer up my gifts and my creativity to humanity. But how long will that last? I never know. 

And every time I return, my magnetism increases just a little bit and people respond to me or my work more powerfully because of these initiations. I often create my best work after a very difficult episode. The thing I have always heard from people is that my work makes them feel seen. Here’s the hard truth: the only reason I make people feel like that is because of all the places my mental illness, my sensitivity, and my spirituality have taken me. I have helped others not because I appear healthy and stable and am “controlling” my mental illness - I have helped others because I am constantly on a train ride from heaven to hell and back again. I wouldn’t have those tools to give you if I hadn’t been in the position where I needed to create them to survive. (My book I Don’t Want To Be An Empath Anymore, is filled with tools that I originally created to help myself deal with my deeply empathic nature and my many emotions.) I’ve been thrust into so many energies, so many experiences, so much pain, so much pleasure, that now I can relate to many different people in many different situations. I can pull on the thread of a single emotion and unravel an entire universal energetic pattern in the collective. I can travel to the underworld to retrieve a piece of someone’s soul and succeed only because I know the terrain so well. It’s a second home to me now. My abilities, my creativity, isn’t due to me “overcoming” anything. It’s due to my consistently chaotic existence of ecstasy and madness and tears.

Many times, my episodes start or end at the same time of cosmic events like full moons and eclipses. Some spiritual people would say that that means I’m simply extra sensitive to cosmic energy and it’s not mental illness. Some would say I’m especially mentally ill for even thinking it’s connected to the stars. But the truth is that it’s both - I’m connected to the stars AND I have a mental illness. I don’t feel the need to cast one truth aside to make the other one more digestible for anyone. 

The spiritual community is quick to tell me that mental illness isn’t real, which invalidates my daily lived experience and suffering, while the psychiatric community is quick to tell me my mystical experiences are just psychosis, which invalidates my sacred connection to my life and to God. Well, they’re both wrong. My mental illness is real. And so are my mystical experiences and the art I create from them. In fact, they’re inextricably linked and they inform one another. But there seems to be no space for me to be everything I am, no space for me to hold the tension between these contraries. They want me to choose. I’m either crazy or I’m a shaman, I can’t be both. And then someone else breaks me down even further and tells me that my creativity comes directly from my illness and that it’s my destiny to suffer. And then someone else says that the illness is a lie and everything created from it is harmful and not real creativity. The whole scene is just one big clusterfuck, really. But I choose to hold my ground because they’re all wrong. And they’re all right. Everything is true, and nothing is real. (And everything is real, and nothing is true.)

Because of these polarized versions of what someone with a mental illness looks like or does or acts like or simply is, daily life can become strange. Most of my life it’s been like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. But honestly, my survival skills have always been strong and I play at being a round peg really well. I can use all of my tools and my skills to be a high functioning, even successful, person, both professionally and personally. Sometimes I’ll tell someone I have bipolar disorder, and their response is, “Wow, I had no idea.” As if “Wow, I had no idea.” Is a compliment. They don’t realize it but they’re basically complimenting me on my ability to hide myself and act normal enough to blend in so my psychological extra-ness doesn’t show. They don’t see the hours I’m in bed, in tears and unable to move, or the days my mind is on fire and I’m pacing the room trying to keep it from exploding into recklessness. They see me showing up with work responsibilities and being there for friends and being independent. For the most part, I can maintain a non-mentally ill facade. Short-term memory issues can be a common problem with bipolar disorder though and I do struggle with that at times. I make so much space for my emotions and moods to process in the healthiest way possible that I don’t often have a lot of extra room in my head for logistics, but most of the important people know that I’m a person who needs reminders for that kind of thing. (But once you remind me, I can remember the exact emotion I was feeling in its entirety when you first told me, and even what surrounding things were on my mind.) But for the most part, I get caught in this image of the pulled-together neurotypical person they see me as, and I cling to it. I strive for it. It’s easier to not be bipolar to them. Easier for them and easier for me. But…it’s only easier until it’s suddenly not. And then I realize I have no support to get me through the tough waves, the deep waves. 

On the other side though, I also know what it is to be seen as the crazy girl with bipolar. I’ve had my emotions dismissed because of my mental illness. I’ve had my anger not taken seriously because sometimes it’s easier for others to incorrectly attribute my behavior to my mental illness rather than take accountability for their actions reflected by my razor-sharp emotional perception and ability to see psychological patterns in others. If you see me as mentally ill, you get a pass on doing some of your own work when I reflect things back to you. I’ve even had someone break up with me because I was “too mentally ill.” As if mental illness cancels out my basic human need to be loved and respected. Honestly though, my biggest fear with being seen on this end of the spectrum is that because I’m also spiritual and a witch, it would be incredibly easy for someone to dismiss my work and my writing as passing madness. I am always slightly terrified that mental illness stigma could bastardize the work that I have paid for dearly with my time and energy and sometimes sanity. 

For a mentally ill person, there aren’t many other ways to be seen besides these two extremes. And it’s not even anyone’s fault. Our society is woefully ill-equipped to see, accept and integrate mentally ill folks into it. “Treatment” methods have always been to pluck the afflicted from mass population and “treat” them in isolation. Not because it’s better for the afflicted and their recovery (it’s not) but because it’s easier for the mass population to remove them from their way of life. (I dare you to google the history of psychiatry and mental illness management…) And because of this, there’s still this modern cultural programming that mental illness does not fit into society and the productivity of society, and whatever doesn’t fit must be plucked and isolated and eliminated. So of course people don’t know how to see and validate those with mental illness. And of course those who suffer from mental illness are still scared to talk about it openly. We don’t want to have to watch your face as you look at us and decide whether we’re normal-passing enough for you to be comfortable with us, or a high risk for insanity so you won’t take us seriously or respect us.

Being spiritual only makes the dynamic more complex, especially in this new-age, life-coaching, positive hustle period. Being normal-passing and working (especially if you own your own businesses) can idealize this idea that a mentally ill person has “overcome” or “healed” their illness, since being able to produce content reliably in capitalist society is what often determines success. But 1.) this only serves to promote the stigma that a mental illness is something you have control over and can snap out of or fix. And 2.) these are standards of success created by the patriarchy and not necessarily the true standards for each individual, so demanding that a sensitive person with mental illness be reliably productive in society is actually repressing that person and forcing them to pretend they’re the round peg when they’re really the square peg. Repressing is not overcoming or healing. And let me be clear here - I don’t think these standards for success and productivity are healthy for anyone in general. But imagine applying these to sensitive or mentally ill people who can’t consistently stay grounded into reality. 

These misaligned pillars of success and isolation create an untenable way of life for those who struggle with mental illness. When I was first diagnosed at 15, no one knew how to handle me. It was way above the comprehension of my friends, and open communication about that kind of thing didn’t exist within my family. No one ever asked me about it or talked about it. It was ignored. And honestly, now that I’m an adult and I can see the bigger picture, I don’t blame my family for not being a support system to me. At the time, not even my psychiatrists or psychologists were advocating education and communication in family systems or communities. Everything was kept hush hush, and I developed this subconscious belief that I was a burden on everyone because of my mental illness. And ironically, most of my independence and strength, and even my limited success so far in life, came from this wounded belief. So I have my gratitude for it. I have seen how strong I can be. I’ve played the capitalist game. I’ve watched myself rise from the ashes time and time again. I’ve constantly undressed myself and redressed myself to figure out how to make this whole thing work. But now, after 17 years of this, I am fucking exhausted. And for the most part, I’m alone. I know that I have a lot of people who love me and respect me, but because of that engrained isolation belief, I don’t let people in all the way, and I also pull away from people when they try to let me in all the way. Because I don’t want to be a burden. Because I have been trained to believe that mental illness, that psychological other-ness, deserves separation and isolation. Even when I fiercely advocate to my clients and readers that support is key, that same advocation tends to bounce off the mirror and miss me. 

Even having this realization has started to open me up to deeper friendships and deeper intimate relationships with others. Talking about my mental illness with the people I care about is already paying off in spades. I currently have a handful of friends who support me and a romantic partner who thrives on holding these contraries with me and loving me more for it. I realize now that the less I talk about it, the more that people try to categorize and label me (for better or worse) for the specific parts of me and not the whole. Which is fair, because I haven’t stepped up to correct them. Some people who have seen my stable creative bursts think they understand me and praise me for it. Some people who have seen my dramatic expressions of negative feelings think they understand me and judge me for it. Bipolar people often feel sliced up by others, fractured, and only loved when certain conditions are met. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that people with bipolar disorder are masters at holding and understanding binaries and contraries in creative ways (it might not surprise you to learn that my spiritual foundation is based on Taoism), and this is something that should be honored and integrated into communities for the betterment of society. There’s a magic to mental illness. Society has often recognized and idealized that magic in the artistry of the isolated and suffering manic depressive, but most of the time this happens posthumously, once people have had the space to selfishly reflect on it, separated from the true source of it. But the true magic will happen when we bring them into the community rather than separate them and only consider accepting their gifts after they die, often from suicide. 

Do I have the answers on how to do this? I don’t. I’m over here figuring it all out as I go. I have just as much wounding and conditioning to wade through as anyone else. But now that I know what I know, and I’ve seen what I’ve seen, advocacy for community support and acceptance feels incredibly important. I want to figure out ways to shift the conversation and the way people think about bipolar disorder and mental illness in general. I don’t want to continue playing on either side of the line, never being able to be fully “out” with either my mental illness or my spirituality. I want to figure out how to extend self-care into community care, and how to bridge the gap between spirituality and mental illness, without pushing away or degrading either side. I don’t want to have to hide and isolate this intricate dance I do with my fire on a daily basis. I want the world to recognize my fire as brilliant, as tragic, as beautiful, as unpredictable, as everything. 

I have bipolar disorder. And I’m also a spiritual leader. 

Being An Empath Sucks.

(Make sure to get the book this blog turned into, I Don’t Want To Be An Empath Anymore!)

Did a gift receipt come with this? What’s the return policy?

The next person that tells me how being an empath is such a wonderful gift, gets a slap in the face from me. 

Seriously. A real crisp slap that echoes in the brain. 

It’s not that being an empath isn’t a gift. It is. But that’s not what I want to talk about. Everyone wants to talk about that. “Empath” has started to become another one of those buzzwords. But no, I don’t want to talk about the signs and symptoms of being an empath and what a magnificent being one surely is by being one. We’ve seen plenty of that, haven’t we? 

I want to talk about the unbearable burden of being an empath. Especially after this brutal past week of grief upon grief. I want to talk about the empath’s shadow. I want to talk about the rise and fall of empathy, about the “how much does it hurt?" question we ask ourselves every day. I want to talk about the parts that fucking suck. (Name your pain!) 

Semantics and the loss of us...

We define our empath nature by defining how we experience the emotions of others. How we internalize what is outside of ourselves. And often times, we tout this experience as a noble sacrifice we are giving the world. But even in our very simplistic definitions of empath, we are giving our power away by idealizing it. We are literally defining ourselves through others. I mean, that’s the definition of empathy right? So it makes sense. 

And this is all true. Being an empath means being attuned to the emotional experience of another being, whether it’s another person, animal, or even places and events. But I want to reframe this…because the ones who tend to get lost in this equation are the empaths themselves. And I don’t want to idolize the process of self-abandonment and martyrdom that every empath has undoubtedly gone through at one point or another in their spiritual development. (And probably many times over.)

I want to define my empath nature by more clearly defining how I experience myself. I want to reclaim my selfhood by defining what is true about me as an empath. 

That starts with this very simple, very vulnerable statement:

“I am hurt.” 

I have years of hurt locked inside my bones. My cells remember. I cannot and will not wrap up my hurt, put a pretty self-righteous bow on it, and give it away to the world as “a gift.” I am not a sacrificial lamb. I am not a martyr. And neither are you. 

So let’s shine some light on the shadows of empathy and talk about why being an empath fucking sucks.

(including Pain Alchemy Affirmations to be used in addition to naming the pain. Note that I said “in addition to,” not “instead of.” We do not replace our pain with fake positivity here, we build onto the truth of our pain and alchemize that pain into more truth.) 

8 reasons why being an empath sucks...

1. It all starts with pain. 

Unfortunately, most of us realize we’re empaths by way of experiencing the pain of others. For whatever reason, for many empaths, pain and negative emotions are sensed more strongly and more easily than joy and positive emotions. Not that we don’t sense joy and positive emotions, but joy doesn’t energetically grasp at us in the same way. Joy doesn’t desperately grapple for compassion the way that suffering does. When another being is suffering, it’s like their energy is calling out to the void, reaching out for a hand that could pull them. And empaths feel that call more than anything else. 

When I was in 4th grade, I watched a documentary about the Titanic on the History Channel. It was the first I’d ever heard of it. By the time it was over, I was crying uncontrollably for hours in my mother’s arms because I was so upset over what had happened to those people. I had no idea why I was so upset, but I felt that loss to the core of my soul, even then. Fast forward to now, I am still affected by movies, music, stories, etc. I have no idea what is going to set me off or not. It’s a very unpredictable emotional process, one that is oftentimes very unpleasant. 

Tragic current events are brutal. When I first learned about Orlando, I sat in silence for 10 minutes, staring into space. I got up and started washing the dishes because I didn't know what to do with myself. I cried my eyes out as I washed and scrubbed, desperately trying to feel the loss without feeling like I was destroying myself in the process. And because it affected my own queer community, I felt it through every person I'd ever known. Even mentioning it now brings tears to my eyes. 

We can also feel pain pre-cognitively. I remember the day before the big earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011…I was horribly upset and weirded out the entire day. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the wind was warning me of things, and I couldn’t handle the mystery pain I was feeling. To this day, whenever I tell my husband that I feel odd and horrible for some unknown reason, he asks me if there are any natural disasters on the way. 

Pain Alchemy Affirmation:

I am hurt by the pain and suffering of others. I know that this deep empathy gives me a fuller knowing of the spectrum of life on earth, and allows me to be grateful for my own joy and the joy of others, and feel that joy just as deeply.

Young, sensitive little Ora, loving on her helper creature.

2. Our core wounds are usually about feeling unaccepted as sensitive beings. 

When I was very young, I found an injured baby bird in the woods of Northern Minnesota at my grandparents’ cabin. I desperately wanted to nurse it back to health and love the crap out of it. My father wouldn’t let me. He told me that it was the cycle of life and he made me feel stupid for wanting to care for this tiny creature. (Even though he totally supports my love of animals - funny how one bad day can create such an imprint!)

That was the earliest memory I have about feeling unaccepted and isolated. I remember the feeling, I remember the tiny bird. Growing up, I came across many injured animals. Some I was able to help, and some I wasn’t. But the feeling of a dead bird stiffening in my hand is something I can recall on a moment’s notice with an ache in my chest. 

That is one of my core wounds, feeling as though I was “too sensitive” and “too emotional” to adapt to this world. All empaths have been told things like this throughout their lives, and unfortunately for us, they began in childhood.

“Don’t be dramatic.” 

“You’re overreacting.” 

“Stop being so sensitive.”

“You’re fine.”

“You need to toughen up if you want to make it in this world.” 

Even in my recent past, I have heard things like this from people I’ve trusted with my emotions. It’s especially painful to hear from friends and acquaintances in your own spiritual communities: 

“I’m tired of witnessing you creating drama.” 

“You’re really negative.” 

This kind of talk is discouraging and creates an unsafe space for us to be ourselves. This kind of talk tells us that there is something wrong with us, that we are not suited to live here. We cannot help that we are empaths. We did not choose to be an empath because it sounded like the new age soup du jour. This is just us. 

Pain Alchemy Affirmation:

I am hurt by the disapproval of my sensitivity. I know that my sensitivity is beautiful and I do not need to change it. It is a vast network of delicate intuitive synapses that begin and end in my heart.

3. Being truly alone can be terrifying.

When I graduated college, I took a fool's journey out west. I rode the train from Minneapolis to Portland, Oregon, where I met up with a band of lovely people I traveled with for the summer. On the train ride there, however, we got stuck in the middle of the mountains in Montana. We sat on the tracks for hours, miles away from civilization, no cell service, in the midsts of the wilds of Glacier National Park. I sat in the observation car, the mountains looming over me, a taunting cliffside below me. All I could see were trees and rocks, height and depth, in every direction. The sun was shining through the pines, the sky was bluer than blue. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And yet, I panicked. This was the first time I had been so disconnected, so out of reach, from the people and places I’d left behind. Knowing I couldn’t reach anyone I knew, even if I wanted to, amplified my panic. 

Here I was, facing the wild unknown, the overpowering and overwhelming beauty and terror of Nature, and I suddenly felt as though I didn’t exist. How could I exist in mountains? I was small and alone. And I realized that as emotionally isolated I’d felt my entire life, I’d never felt that energetically and physically alone. I’d never felt so free of the cords from others. And it scared me because it was so new, so uncharted, so wild, being empty and nonexistent in the trees. I would soon learn that this was the reason Nature is medicine.

For an empath, Nature strips away all the pretenses, all the energetic cords, all the codependency and the obligation, and allows one to simply be nonexistent. To simply be. Without everything else. But even though it is medicine, it’s still scary. Being truly alone forces the empath to question their entire identity and reason for existing. It challenges the inherent belief that an empath exists for others, and begs the question, “Who are you when everyone else is gone?”

Pain Alchemy Affirmation:

I am hurt and scared by the idea of being completely alone with myself. I know that to face this fear with courage, to sink into the wild isolation of independence, is to know myself better.

4. Our boundaries are pretty shitty. 

When I was growing up, my parents fought all the time, and it often sent my mother into complete emotional breakdowns. Her pain was so vast and so intense, it was all I could feel when I was around her. My heart broke for her every day, and I learned from a very early age that I needed to mother my own mother. My own emotional struggles of growing up as an empath, even my struggles of sexual abuse when I was a bit older, were always put on the back burner so I could be strong for my mom in her pain. I had no boundaries. She was dependent on me, and I felt obligated to her. I made so many life decisions that were influenced by my need to stick around and mother her when they should have been influenced by my own heart’s desires and wanderlusty yearnings. I held so much pain inside of myself that wasn't mine to hold. 

“Boundaries boundaries boundaries!” is the first thing you’ll hear from any empath giving advice on dealing with it. I learned that in my relationship with my mother. I learned what happens when you have no boundaries. But what hasn’t been talked about, is what happens when you create such strong boundaries in your efforts to protect yourself, that you end up on the opposite end of the spectrum into numbness and complacency.

Years later, after peeling back a few layers of my mother wound, I learned how to put up very strong emotional boundaries so I wouldn’t be so miserable and so consumed by her or anyone else’s pain. But in an effort to hold my boundaries, it also pushed me to the other extreme, of feeling numb. Of feeling like I am locking out the feelings of others to protect myself. It can make me come off as cold and unfeeling, which is the exact opposite of what I really am. And this most often happens with the people who are closest to me, because feeling the pain of the ones I love the most is unbearable.

Spending a significant amount of time in either extreme is unhealthy for an empath. You begin to lose your identity and center. Finding a stable balance in an issue that lives and breathes pure raw emotion is so difficult it's almost ironic. 

Pain Alchemy Affirmation:

I am hurt by the boundaries I’ve abandoned, and the boundaries that others do not respect. I know that my boundaries are the most important thing to my long-term health, and I understand that upholding them means putting myself first, even to the disappointment of others.

I am hurt by the numbness caused by my efforts to protect myself. I know that I can gently hold my boundaries while also opening up the capability to be vulnerable with my loved ones.

5. We tend to slip into abusive relationships. 

This is one that I don’t have to get into very much. This is one that most of us are completely aware of. There have been so many great articles about the toxic connection between the empath and the narcissist. 

One thing that I’ve noticed, however, is that people with the most potential to be abusive to others are incredibly skilled at hiding their emotions and intentions. For a jaded empath, finding someone that can’t be figured out and read right away can be both very exciting and very relaxing. And it’s a very slippery slope from there…

Pain Alchemy Affirmation: 

I am hurt by the pattern of abuse I have found myself in. I know that I am not confined to these patterns, and with honest self-work and self-love, I can break free of these karmic plays.

6. We change our behavior and make ourselves smaller to accommodate others’ unspoken emotional needs. 

I went to the bank a few weeks ago to make some changes on my business account. I sat with a very friendly banker who was eager to help me. He was very chatty and seemed slightly nervous and distracted. As he told me the required documents I would need to make the desired changes, I found myself very confused. I hadn’t even heard of the documents he was requesting, and I knew very well what I actually needed to make the changes. When I questioned him, he reassured me that what he was saying was correct, and I found myself acting as though I suddenly had no idea what I needed for my account. My voice raised in pitch to sound more feminine and helpless, and I said things like “Oh, I had no idea!” and “Wow, that’s good to know!” and I didn’t argue when he said, “Good thing I was here to tell you these things!” 

After I got home, I did some research and found out that the information he had given me was outdated and dead wrong. I had been right all along, and I felt icky about it. I mentally replayed what had happened and realized that I had completely changed my personality and my convictions. I sensed in him a need to be right and automatically responded to it. And without even thinking about it, I made myself smaller to accommodate his unspoken emotional needs. 

A week later, I went to a different branch of the bank and saw a woman I’d worked with before. I brought in the proper documents and just said, “Here ya go.” She made the changes without a fuss and without expecting any sort of response from me. It was beautiful. I realized then why I’d always subconsciously accepted jobs with women bosses, and why I turned down (or quit after a short period) jobs with male bosses. My empath nature has been culturally attuned to men, especially in authoritative roles, and that kind of automatic response is very unsettling. (Not to mention it kills my productivity and creativity.) 

Empaths often automatically change their behaviors for other people when the other person’s emotions are clearly being felt. Their emotional needs are put on the back burner as they tend to them. 

Pain Alchemy Affirmation:

I am hurt by my willingness to make myself smaller to accommodate others’ emotional needs. I know that by doing this, I’m not truly helping them or myself. My relationships will be stronger and more meaningful when I fully show up as myself.

7. We’re the unwilling secret keepers of the world. 

How many times have you known something about someone before they told you? How many times have you watched someone lie to your face? How many times have you kept the secrets of others, without them even knowing it? 

Life is stressful enough with your own secrets and issues, without adding the burdens of everyone you cross paths with. All sorts of complications arise from empath knowing, from knowing who's into who, to the betrayal of friends and family, to feeling completely isolated when no one matches their talk with their energy. One of my least favorite experiences is feeling someone else's difficult emotions deeply, while they talk of shallow things and guard their emotions with smiles, saying that everything is fine. And if you decide to bring up the dissonance, you could be met with bold-faced denial, or outright anger about you being in their business. And if you decide to keep it to yourself, the balance in the relationship may be thrown off and you lose the mutual connection, which slides you further into isolation.

In one of those short-lived jobs with a male boss that I mentioned before, I could very clearly feel my boss's sexual desire for me. I was 19. He never outwardly said anything inappropriate or took any action towards me, but I felt it as if he was screaming it at me, day in, day out. Even though I made great money, I quit after two weeks. I wasn't angry with him. I was exhausted and disappointed, and I know quitting was the right thing for me. 

There are few things so isolating as feeling an entire complex web of emotions between people and not being able to talk about it. 

Pain Alchemy Affirmation:

I am hurt by the disconnection and dissonance that is caused by unintentionally knowing too much about others. I know that the more I trust myself in handling the discomfort the way it feels right to me, the more I will attract people that are honest and caring towards me. And the more I show myself what I am okay with and what I'm not, the easier it will be to handle the situations that I'm not okay with.

8. Chronic health issues? Mystery pain anyone? 

Where do you think all that extra pain and suffering goes? When we don’t have a healthy way to handle our empathy, all those extra emotions from others, including the intense reactionary emotions of ourselves, settle into our bodies. Our cellular memory can be a scary thing. Years and years of being unaccepted as an empath and struggling with many of the issues stemming from empathy, have created a somewhat hostile environment in my own body that I am still working on healing. Autoimmune issues, inflammation, chronic pain, mystery illnesses, weight issues, and more, are all incredibly common with empaths. Digestion is usually a problem, as digestion in the body parallels digesting (processing) emotions.

Pain Alchemy Affirmation:

I am hurt by all the excess emotions causing my body harm. I know that I can heal myself, and I know that when I nurture and love myself first, my body will be able to process the excess energy better.

So what’s the point here?

The point is that you’re a fucking Queen. The point is that you are a beautiful, gifted, flawed human being with incredible abilities. The point is that you’ve probably been told time and time again how you’re “too sensitive” and you’ve undoubtedly shirked off the real root feeling of being an empath: pain. You’ve dressed it up in mala beads and skinny jeans and told everyone it was your special gift to help the world. You’ve dressed it up in a power suit and highlights and never told another soul about it. You’ve dressed it up in a funeral gown and have played it the same sad song over and over again. 

It’s time to undress it. It’s time to be naked with your pain, seeing every dark crevice that steals you away, every curve that catches the light in an interesting way, every story that wants to be told. No more hiding. Tell your stories. Be brutally honest with yourself. Let the truth of your pain heal you. Be angered by it! And temper your holy anger, your sacred rage, your undying pain, with unyielding self-forgiveness and compassion. 

Take this full moon, this solstice, and don't just "let it go." Don't just "release" it. 

Embody it. And offer it to la luna in a pained and desperate whisper. Or a haunting howl that echoes through your bones.

And you will find that the purpose of being an empath is nothing like you thought.

____________________

Make sure to get my book I Don't Want To Be An Empath Anymore, leave me reviews and let me know what you think!

Cry of the Millennial Witch

I feel a divide growing within the spiritual movement. 

It has been growing slowly, almost imperceptibly. Like a frog swimming in a pot of gradually boiling water that hasn't realized the danger he's in.

Here it is, dare I say it: The realm of the mainstream spiritual has become shallow and dogmatic. 

In an effort to reach divinity, enlightenment, and guru-status, we’ve banished and demonized the “negative” and the struggle of the human experience. We’ve lost touch with the glorious bittersweet medicine that our pain and suffering offers when truly acknowledged by the Self and the community, and subsequently integrated with compassion and love. 

I tried. Fuck, I tried. I did the meditations, I did the training, I did the work. I focused on the positive, I focused on the light, I focused on letting go of my darkness. Just release, they said. Don’t even bring attention to what it is, they said, just release it. I advanced in my healing skills, in my awareness, in my intuition. I worked deeply with clients doing soul retrievals, secretly reveling in the shadow of the underworld. I knew that there were those in my spiritual community who did not approve of my work. But I worked anyways, because I saw how deeply I could connect with my clients. I saw and acknowledged their pain. I focused on the integration of their experience, rather than the denial of it. I cried tears of joy when I heard of how much my work was helping them heal themselves. And at the same time, I was jealous. Why wasn’t the work healing ME? Why wasn’t I feeling better? Why wasn’t MY shit releasing? 

That growing awareness backfired. More and more, I felt I was wading in the shallow pond of the world while my spirit was so deeply imbedded in the dark muck of the earth, in a place no one wanted to look. I was not offering the same sense of acknowledgment to myself that I offered my clients. I was still trying to uphold the notion that I was supposed to be a certain way, that I was supposed to be zen and happy all the time if I was going to be a healer. But nothing was in balance. I didn’t feel real. I didn't feel authentic to myself. I was trapped between the the worlds...I was too spiritually minded to be a muggle, but I wasn't the right kind of spiritual for the actual spiritual community.

So I said Fuck it. 

I am part of a generation of witches rising up to say Fuck it. A generation of witches that has been burned too many times, and refuses to silently wither away in the flames again.

Don’t bring your attention to the fire, they said. Just release it and let it go, they said. 

But not this time. This time, we are taking those flames inside of us, acknowledging them and respecting them and feeling their searing pain, and letting them transform in our bellies so we may breathe out the fire of an awakened dragon. As awakened dragons, as millennial witches, as priestesses of the moon, as unpredictable beautiful bitches, as wild wolf women, we have a list of demands and decrees: 

-Our sexuality will be honored as spiritual, sacred, divine, and primal. It is communication with the divine, it is a link between heaven and earth, it is pleasure for pleasure’s sake, it is the human experience. It is a force all its own and won’t be controlled or belittled. 

-And yet, our spirituality will not be sexualized, fetishized, or infantilized. The Priestess is not a fetish.  The days of gurus sexually manipulating and abusing the Goddess are SO over. We’re not buying what you’re selling. No one gets to tell us how pure or impure we are, and what makes us that way, and whether we need to change that or not.

-We don’t want our spirituality to taste like candy. We don’t want rainbows and unicorns and sugary sweet confections of relentless positivity and the law of attraction. We want our spirituality to taste like dark chocolate; deep, rich, a little bitter, a little sweet, sensual and complex. We want it real, we want it deep. We won’t accept anything less. 

-Many of us swear. Like, we really swear. We fucking swear a fucking lot. Deal with it. What’s a witch who doesn’t curse? (Not to mention it’s good for your brain—google that shit.)

-We will not be shamed. For our sexuality, for our lifestyles, for our choices, for the shortage of fucks that we give. Our lives, our power, our choice. Get on board or get out.

-You will not tell us to simply “let go”, “clear”, or “release” our feelings and issues by way of ignoring them. We don’t just release; we integrate. We take our darkness and stew in it, letting our unique human experiences mingle with our divinity, creating a powerful form of alchemy that’s whole and complete. We know the light is only half of what makes us powerful. Once integration is complete, what is no longer needed naturally releases as a byproduct of the process.

-We do not live in binaries, so don’t categorize us in them. Don’t tell us what’s “good” and what’s “bad” because we know better than that. Don’t tell us to live in the light to banish our shadows. In fact, don't tell us what we are or what we should do at all. We are fluid and becoming more so. Gender fluid, sexually fluid, socially fluid, spiritually fluid. 

-We hold a deep respect for social and cultural issues. We won’t use “Namaste” as a substitute for “goodbye” just because it sounds spiritual. We won’t wear a bindi on our foreheads just because it’s cute. We won't discount another's experience and point of view just because it's not ours. We realize that our individual path is not more important than an entire marginalized culture’s. We listen. 

-“Omg I can’t say anything without someone getting offended and everything has to be sooooooo PC nowadays.” <—Nah. We don't see it like this. We see a generation coming into their own, attempting to own their view of the world and how they’d like it to be. Clearly, there’s a growing outcry for more sensitivity and change. You could stubbornly fight it or try to understand why it’s happening. Change won’t happen without conversation, so be open to the conversation, even if you don’t see it the same way.  

-Be aware when you respond to our feelings. There's a tendency, when someone admits they are feeling something other than complete joy or satisfaction, to apologize and suggest ways to be rid of that feeling. F that noise. The only cure for feelings is to feel them. Completely. Sink into them and allow their wisdom to wash over you. We don't wallow, but we do feel. Everything. We refuse to repress or push our feelings aside just because they make us (or you) uncomfortable. (P.S. We hardly think "You should meditate on it." or "Have you tried going gluten free?" are appropriate responses to anything. And this is coming from someone who both meditates and is gluten free.)

-The second you use any of the new age buzzwords— manifesting abundance, the law of attraction, meditation, energy healing, authentic, etc etc— our discernment kicks the fuck in. It’s not that we don’t believe in manifestation and meditation and energy healing, we definitely do. Manifesting is our middle name. But without the realness of our human and divine darkness acknowledged by our teachers, coaches and mentors, the spiritual movement becomes oppressive and dogmatic dressed as light and love. And not to mention, manipulated for profit when the actual authenticity is not behind it, considering the growing trend. We will search you, hard, before we will work with you.

-Maybe the most important of all, we know that Truth is found in paradox. If it’s not a contradiction in itself, we are wary. If we are not contradictions in ourselves, we are not real. 

We will not accept less than what we are. We will not be only partially ourselves because it's prettier or happier. We will be gritty and raw and beautiful and whole. We love fiercely. Love is at the core of our beings, but we know that sometimes love is the awakened dragon burning down the bridges that no longer serve us.

Sincerely,

the witches you love and fear

**As nothing is just black or white, I acknowledge and appreciate the spiritual teachers and mentors in my life that have never oppressed me and have always wanted me to be myself. You know who you are and I thank you from the bottom of my fiery heart. 

Check out my book, I Don't Want To Be An Empath Anymore, now available on Amazon!