by Dr. Heléna Kate | Mar 12, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
I was about twenty years old when I first realized that I was empathic. I didn’t know that word at the time, but I recognized the empathic qualities that I possessed.
One day, I walked into a building and was instantaneously hit with this wave of negative feelings. At first, I thought that it was me. At the time, I believed that I had social anxiety and that I was nervous about entering a space where there were lots of other people. But in this moment, I had an insight. I recognized that the feelings I was feeling were not mine; instead, they were the feelings of the people in the space that I was entering. This was a revelation—the type of revelation that empaths have when they realize that they are empaths.
This is the type of experience that empaths have all the time. They’ll be going about their regular everyday life when they are suddenly hit with waves of emotion that are not theirs but someone else’s. They may have these feelings when they are relating to someone close to them or even with random people they encounter. In fact, it does not even always need to be people—it can also be things in their environment.
While this is very useful information—and for people like me, it is incredibly supportive of what I do professionally—it is not always easy to deal with. It can at times pose great challenges. Some people who have such experiences might say, “Well, I didn’t choose this for myself. I wish I was not like this; I wish I could turn it off.”
Most empaths at least wonder, “How do I work with this way of being? How can I make this an easier experience?” To be healthy as an empath requires a lot of self-care and also strengthening yourself energetically so that you can build a beneficial relationship with the things that you come into contact with.
If you identify with this idea of being an empath but you’re struggling with some of aspects of it, the best place to start is with self-care. Being healthy as an empath requires diligent attention to your self-care. You need to learn how to keep yourself clear, know how much downtime you need versus contact with different people or types of energy, and know what you need so far as sleep, food, and healthy environments are concerned. It is essential to take care of these areas of your life if you want to truly feel good in yourself and happy in your life.
The next step is to actually strengthen your own energy so that you are better able to consistently maintain a clear state of being. In part, this requires clearing negative energies and patterns from your life. The more that you clear any kind of negativity or problems that you are personally carrying inside, the easier it becomes to relate to what is going on around you without taking it on.
So working on yourself is of crucial importance. Working on yourself goes hand in hand with understanding how to strengthen yourself energetically, and as you do, it becomes easier and easier to discern what is yours versus what is another’s.
Being empathic is a gift. Although it might be hard to see it like that when you are faced with some of its challenges, as we attend to our self-care, clear our own disturbances, and strengthen ourselves, we begin to experience the benefits more and more.
Join me and a community of emergent healers for my Integrative Healing Apprenticeship, starting this year. If you are coming into your gifts as an empath and healer, let\’s walk together on this one. Read more here: Integrative Healing Apprenticeship
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Mar 6, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
About a year after stepping more intensively into my spiritual journey, a series of events happened that pushed me into an entirely different understanding of what it means to be on a spiritual path. I learned that integrity is the most important companion to have on this journey. I also learned that vulnerability is the foundation on which integrity stands.
To be vulnerable means to offer your unprotected heart and truth to others without expectation that they will offer you the same in return. When we are being vulnerable, we offer forward our flaws and limitations, we are the first to acknowledge our contribution to any disharmony, and we are willing to be wrong. We show ourselves in our imperfection as well as our strength.
Walking this path with our weaknesses front and center, leading by offering our humanity, ensures that we are doing the necessary work to be a worthy vessel for all of the blessings that we receive. It ensures that the power that is put in our hands is put into hands that can truly use it for good.
It opens us to a level of spiritual teaching that is otherwise inaccessible.
It takes an exceptionally strong, psychologically and spiritually mature person to show up vulnerably. When we do, people will sometimes project their ignorance and their own weaknesses on to us. They can blame us for their oversights and expect us to right their wrongs. Sometimes, to the untrained eyes, our vulnerability defines us as less than. To stay the course, we must know ourselves well and our connection to the spirit deeply so that we can allow for this misunderstanding, keep our heart open, and continue to offer ourselves fully
Our expression of vulnerability is an opportunity for others to open up and be vulnerable themselves. When the invitation of vulnerability is received, it is possible for another person to meet us there in that vulnerable space and create a depth of healing that would otherwise be unrealizable. This potentiates the growth of both parties.
As we are entrusted with profound spiritual insights that come from our spiritual seeking, it is exceptionally easy to trick ourselves into believing that our intentions are pure and altruistic when in fact they are actually highly sophisticated expressions of our ego. Vulnerability is the key to unlocking our spiritual development rather than developing a spiritualized ego—where we only see our self in a positive light, identify our self with the spiritual gifts we have received, and place our shadow aspects onto others.
Being vulnerable ensures that we look at ourselves first before offering corrections, feedback, and opinions to others. It asks us to own our mistakes and approach with an attitude of learning. And, when we forget to do this, it reminds us to make amends as soon as possible. This prevents us from becoming righteous and, because of this, doing more harm than good.
For me, the most profound teacher of vulnerability, both its challenges and its power, is Jesus. Jesus said, “Let he among you who is innocent cast the first stone.” He said this to a group of people who had come to believe that they were morally superior and so their cruelty was justified. The teaching from this story is that when we lose sight of our own limitations, even if we are acting based on supposed spiritual principles, we are misguided in our actions.
Each day, we are presented with many opportunities where we can either be vulnerable or cast the first stone. Our choices release us from our burdens or add to them. The more weight we let go of, the more light we can let in.
I know that, at my current level of development, it often takes me time to remember to put my vulnerability forward immediately and without qualification. It is so much easier to make myself vulnerable after I have created security through being validated or a establishing a feeling of control. Slowly, I am learning to trust the spirit more and surrender more quickly without needing these compensations. As I do, my burdens become lighter and my spiritual insights more profound.
In the end, all we have is the truth of our heart. It will not matter how many times we were right, if we were truly understood, or whether we had the respect and acknowledgement of those around us. It will matter that we have made amends where we have hurt others, owned our limitations, and—as much as possible—done no harm. To do this, we need to learn the lessons of vulnerability.
Join me for my Integrative Healing Apprenticeship to step deeper into your vulnerability and find the spiritual gold within it.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 26, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
When someone close to us is acting in a way that is difficult for us, our response is often defensive—we react to their behavior. We feel like we need to do something about it—for example, we might believe we need to draw a line to make it clear that other person has done wrong in some way, or make a correction to their behavior.
This comes in part from our need to protect ourselves or from our desire to make sure that whatever we don’t like doesn’t keep happening. While putting boundaries in place and communicating with other people in this way is an important skill—particularly when dealing with certain people—there’s also another way of approaching disagreements that can be very helpful.
This other way is to ask the person to join into the experience that you want to have with them. This requires us to be aware of what we would like to have happen in the moment when it is not happening as well as to be emotionally clear enough to act on this knowledge.
There is often an assumption that, when someone does something that we don’t like, they did it intentionally, they were not able to see something, or they just disregarded our needs. But most often, other people are simply not aware of what it is that we want or need. And many people have not become skilled at saying what it is that they do want and need.
When you are in a situation where someone in your life is not acting the way you would like, try inviting this person into the type of experience that you want rather than challenging, defending, or putting a boundary in place, and just see how it goes.
If, for example, I want to work on communication with someone and they’re not giving me the type of communication I want, I could respond by saying something such as, “Well, you’re not communicating with me, and that is a problem for me.” It is clear in my response that I do not like the behavior and also that I am feeling defensive. Because of my response, the other person might become a bit defensive themselves, and we will likely bounce our hurt and defenses off of each other.
Or, I can come into the situation and say something like, “What would really feel good to me is more communication, and this is what it would look like to have that.” With this example, I have gotten rid of the layers of defensiveness and simply invited the person into the way of being in our relationship that I would like most.
While not everyone will be able to rise to the occasion, when it does work, you will see just how powerful this method can be. It might actually become an essential new aspect of your repertoire—a new way of relating to others, a tool that helps you get back on track and create more of what you want in your life.
For more tips and tricks on how to create your life in an empowered way, check out my youtube videos here.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 19, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
It’s a part of our human experience to have defenses—though quite frequently, these defenses create problems for us. They change what we are able to get out of our relationships or what we are able to receive and develop in our lives, leaving us to wonder how we can work with them to be most productive in the way that is best for us.
Being defensive is a totally normal human response. However, often, if someone says you’re being defensive, the immediate reaction is to feel like you have done something wrong and should not be acting that way. In truth, that response is often the other person’s defense. If they call you out, then they have the upper hand.
The first step is just accepting the fact that it’s OK to be defensive. When you are, it is an opportunity to learn. Our defenses show us how we have been hurt or what needs of ours have not been met in the past, usually in our childhood and then even more throughout our lives afterward.
How and when we get defensive shows us how and why our defenses developed. They show us what it is that we need in order to better care for ourselves: underneath every defense is a lot of information about how we can actually grow and develop.
If you find yourself getting defensive in a situation, you can ask yourself, “What is it that I am afraid of?” (The “Biggest Fear” quiz on my website can help you get clarity about your greatest fears. See the end of this article for the link) In truth, we have an assortment of fears that lead to our being defensive, but as the quiz will show you, there are certain fears that are more intense than others. When we recognize what they are, we can do something about them.
For example, when we recognize that we have a need for safety or a fear of losing contact, being controlled or betrayed, we have gathered important information. We know that this has happened repeatedly in our life and is something that needs our attention.
If we have a need for safety, for example, the way to decrease our defense against this is to learn how to create safety for ourselves. That’s the healing step forward.
After we have cared for ourselves in this way, we ultimately transcend the problem and can truly be free. That\’s is how you heal from learning about and taking care of your defenses.
But to start the process, we must give ourselves what we need, regularly and consistently. If we engage in this deep level of self-care, we’ll be able to really heal from what has happened in the past. There are a number of different ways that we can attend to these wounds. We can learn to provide what we need for ourselves and we can learn how to receive it through the support of the people around us.
Once we are clear that we are being defensive, why we are being defensive, and then provide for that need, we’ll see ourselves getting softer, more open, and more flexible. Our strength will return to each situation that would have previously been challenging so that we’re able to respond in a way that is less defensive and more connective.
And, in the end, when we do this, it gives us more of what we want.
If you\’re curious to discover what is hidden behind your defenses, take my quiz!
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Feb 11, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
Pleasure gets limited airtime in the personal development world. We talk about happiness, fulfillment, and other positive states, but pleasure somehow feels a bit more challenging to engage with.
It often goes in one of two directions: Pleasure gets entirely left out as we focus on goals and purpose, or it\’s implied that after you reach your goals or develop your purpose, pleasure will be the result—once you are successful, then you will fully enjoy your life and feel regular pleasure. In either case, it becomes a silent but active participant in evaluating our goals and activities in life. If we are not feeling pleasure, we can wonder if we are going in the wrong direction or didn’t actually make the good choices we thought we had. This may or may not be true.
I want to talk a little bit about both of these approaches to pleasure because they\’re both really informative.
When pleasure is seen as an end result or gets left out entirely, life becomes quite dry. For example, you might achieve your goals, but even when you get them you find yourself less than thrilled about your life. You might see a large degree of success in many different ways, but you are not actually enjoying the benefits of the work that you\’ve done. Along with misguided thinking that creates this perspective comes a lack of skill in how to experience pleasure. We actually have to learn how to embody pleasure in many different ways before we can add meaning to the hard work we do to reach our goals. When we do, we start not only to reach our goals but to enjoy them.
When we live believing that we should always feel good (regardless of how conscious this belief is) and we evaluate our life predominantly through this lens, we deaden our experience and ultimately decrease our pleasure. Very important things happen in our lives that don\’t exactly come with a lot of pleasure, such as difficult realizations, moments of transformation, and moments of embracing the more difficult aspects of ourselves. These moments don\’t necessarily feel good as we move through them, but the discomfort is not a sign that we are doing something wrong. In fact, if we allow ourselves to feel discomfort, the end result is that we embrace a whole new level of pleasure.
Pleasure is something to pay close attention to. If you do not, then chances are you\’re not working with it as effectively as you could be.
If you start to pay attention to where pleasure is in your life, it shows where you might want to spend more time or where you might want to direct your energy. If you\’re noticing that there is an absence of pleasure, even if you are meeting your goals and expectations, you\’re doing your life in a less successful way than if you were meeting all your goals and having pleasure. In this case, you might want to look at how you can bring more pleasure into your daily life.
Exploring pleasure and how it informs your experience is really a very important component of our overall growth process. It is something that I very much enjoy working on with people in my intensives and any of my programs, because as we start to work with it, so much of our life changes.
How does exploring pleasure distract from or move us toward self awareness? Find this video and more videos that support your personal development here: The Wisdom and Distraction of Pleasure
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