If you do not understand your emotions you are not in control of your life. You do not know who you are and you are prey for people who can manipulate you.
One of the most common patterns I work with empath on healing is attracting toxic relationships. Growing up in our culture, there are many traditions and practices that are quite damaging to children. And especially so for empath children.
During childhood, it is not uncommon for empaths to begin to dissociate from their bodies. This happens because children do not have the cognitive and emotional maturity to understand conflicting messages they receive from their own senses and the adults in their life who they love and trust to protect them. This opens the door to the repeated pattern of attracting toxic relationships.
The emotions and sensations experienced during cognitive dissonance can be overwhelming and extremely uncomfortable causing the psyche to disconnect our consciousness from our emotions and physical sensations brought on by outside stimuli.
How This Pattern Shows Up
For example, an adult family member walks into the room and your body buzzes or shudders in response to their energy or aura. Their aura is providing important information for you. This information is meant to warn you that they are not a safe person and you should do what you can to avoid being left alone with them.
As a child, you understood this information instinctively and maybe you recoiled from their attempt to hug you. Then perhaps your mother or father overrode your instinctive reaction and encouraged or forced you to hug them. This situation sets up a cognitive dissonance within the body–your adult protector/parent hijacks your intuitive avoidance of something threatening to cause you to become confused.
Over time and repetition, this cognitive dissonance causes you to override your natural instincts because the dissonance itself is so uncomfortable and unbearable. You begin to look to others for your social cues like hugging relatives and do what is expected instead of resisting and causing a scene. This is the result of disconnecting from your body, emotions, and intuition.
Toxic Relationship Building Blocks
Once this disconnection occurs you are essentially flying blind. You no longer have a warning system helping to guide and protect you. Your consciousness will not register their behavior as problematic or dangerous, it will simply discard those red flag messages to allow you to be comfortable and “good” and polite.
Without this warning system, you are vulnerable to people who manipulate and take advantage of your inherent goodness and empath strengths. From friends to romantic partners to bosses and coworkers, losing your ability to discern safe people from dangerous people sets up a repeating pattern of harm.
How to Heal this Wound
Healing this disconnection is multipronged and begins with identifying that there is a pattern and then observing how those relationships affect you. Healing the old wounds that caused you to betray yourself. And reconnecting consciousness with your body, emotions, and intuition.
It will take time to learn to trust these sensations/intuitions and override your habits because your intuitions about other people being unsafe or dangerous to us can sometimes feel like judgment. Intuition isn’t judgment, it is simply alerting you to a potentially unsafe person and asking you to remain conscious and aware during your interactions with them to keep yourself safe.
If you notice a pattern of toxic relationships in your life and wonder why this keeps happening, it is time to heal. Various trauma therapies and/or intuitive energy healing can restore this connection and provide an early detection system when you encounter new people.
