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My Darling Empath

Ingrid Oliphant

May 31, 2020
1 min

My Darling Empath

My darling empath, you cannot separate yourself from the fabric you are part of. There is no shield, bubble or cloak. The route of intentional blindness serves no one. Feel it, be in it, breathe through it. Sit quietly or holler, pray softly or yell with you heart behind it. If you think you can hide from your true nature, you are mistaken. You are no more separate from the suffering than you are the love, than you are the holiest of the holies and Grace. Hiding will create h

Corona-Inspired Empath Myth-Tip #2

Ingrid Oliphant

Apr 21, 2020
1 min

Corona-Inspired Empath Myth-Tip #2

Like the other gift that keeps on giving, it can cause great unseen harm and reinforces fears and trauma response. It is this: “you are feeling things like other people’s emotions to teach you empathy.” I listened to a celebrity spiritual-type say that a couple of weeks ago, out loud. It is absolutely not true. You are feeling the emotions of others because, quite simply, you can feel the emotions of others. Period, it has nothing to do with you not being an empathetic-enough

Corona-inspired Empath Tip #1: Telephone and Video Calls

Ingrid Oliphant

Apr 20, 2020
2 min

Corona-inspired Empath Tip #1: Telephone and Video Calls

There are so many people describing the near-anxiety they have before telephone and video calls and the fatigue afterwards. If you are feeling preemptively tired before telephone calls and video meetings and fried after them, you want to get really clear on why. Is it your nervous system firing ahead of time, afraid everything is going to be just like last time? Are you pretty sure you’re going to get laid off? Or, is there no additional fear present? Has it become an automa

Ingrid Oliphant

Mar 25, 2020
1 min

Feeling Knowledge

Have you ever felt a piece of knowledge slide across your skin? Slippery, like that little something or other that won’t come off the tip of your tongue? You know it’s there but you can’t quite touch it? Then, have you noticed the moments when it suddenly comes forth? As if it’s long been settled in the depths of your being, waiting for you to find it? Try it. Then say ‘thank you’ for what has been entrusted to you, now trusts you to reveal itself. There is a learning that ke

Ingrid Oliphant

Aug 3, 2019
1 min

Dear Empath

Dear Empath, The more you try to ‘protect’ yourself, the more harm you’re causing yourself. Please stop and choose, instead, to pay attention to what is going on around and within you. Begin by asking ‘is it mine?’ and paying attention to how your brain and body respond. #empath #mythsofempath #beinganempath #empaths #empathbullshit #psychicempath

Lessons for the Empath from Walmart

Ingrid Oliphant

Apr 26, 2019
5 min

Lessons for the Empath from Walmart

Here’s how my experience with Walmart changed and subsequently changed me. I’ve never been a fan of the place myself but in 2011, I happened to be in a Wal-Mart in central Virginia attempting to get in and out with little fuss. While I never experienced anything like panic in the store, I was easily befuddled and could never go without a list and pen to mark things off the list. Otherwise, in the haze, I’d forget half of what I needed and probably looked like a coked-out squi

Ingrid Oliphant

Apr 18, 2019
8 min

The Empath and Walmart, Part 2

Mindfulness brings to light experience in its pure immediacy. It reveals the object as it is before it has been plastered over with conceptual paint, overlaid with interpretations. ~Bhikkhu Bodhi If you haven’t yet, read The Empath and Walmart, Part 1 before reading through this post. The sensation of touch involves more complex processes moving information from environment, often to an area larger than our ear canal, to the brain for the interpretation of that information. T

Ingrid Oliphant

Apr 16, 2019
6 min

The Empath and Walmart; Part 1

“Walmart is the seventh level of hell” ~ a few hundred empaths “We live a story that originates in our autonomic state, is sent through autonomic pathways from the body to the brain, and is then translated by the brain into the beliefs that guide our daily living. The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state.” -Deb Dana, LCSW I’ve said before that the only trait empaths share is that they are just that. However, those I’ve worked with, with a few outst

Ingrid Oliphant

Apr 4, 2019
6 min

My Own Experience as an Empath–beyond the bullshit: Part 3

Inserting ‘empath’ or ‘highly sensitive people’ into your favorite search engine and the resultant 7 million bits of information floating in the ether can lead to hyper vigilance, overwhelming irritation, and the desire to never leave the house again. About eleven years ago, when I was searching for words that would explain my experiences, I Googled the word ‘empath’ and I knew, just knew, that nothing I was reading was true. The lot of us are repeatedly labeled as introverts

Ingrid Oliphant

Mar 25, 2019
3 min

Exploring All Things Empath–beyond the bullshit: Part 2

If you missed the introduction to this deep dive, you may want to read this first. At the end of the introduction, there are links to my initial empath myth-busting. Being an empath is the most visceral expression of the spiritual truth that we are interconnected; to each other and to all things. It is the psycho-somatic reflection of our capacity to feel more than our physical senses and limited awareness can see. Being an empath is a modern expression of a time when commun

Ingrid Oliphant

Mar 18, 2019
3 min

Oh, My Darling Empath

You have no idea You have no idea your desire to retreat is merely your fear of meeting yourself in another. You have no idea that your fear of another is merely your fear of intimacy with the one you’ve separated yourself from. Your avoidance of the stimuli that feeds your soul has led you to substitutions that are no substitution at all. You feel because there is no separation. There is no separation. You want there to be, though. You feel the reality will split you open an

Ingrid Oliphant

Feb 24, 2019
1 min

Afraid to feel?

Does it feel foolish to you, impossible even, that your ‘feeling too much’ isn’t that at all? Can you, even the tiniest of moments between the fear, understand that when you truly recognize what it is you’re feeling and from whence it comes, you’ll know it is the highest expression of love there is? That is what being an empath is–the highest expression of love there is. The capacity, without a word being said, to say, “I feel your pain”. Can you wrap your head, maybe even yo

Feeling the Pain is not Failure to Thrive

Ingrid Oliphant

Mar 1, 2017
1 min

Feeling the Pain is not Failure to Thrive

The avoidance is There is a new, perhaps renewed, ‘depth’ of raw feeling within many and a deep desire to express it. As if, the uncapping of the well of torment has given, at the same time, a glimpse of the possibilities of love and the doubting capacity to dive into the wellspring of it all and bring it through. There is still profound pain. It is manifest in physical discomfort that is awaiting recognition and release. It’s the fog of the mind that feels as thin as a veil

Ingrid Oliphant

Aug 26, 2014
4 min

The Importance of Being an Empath

There are three reasons for my recent posts about empaths. First, I’ve a class called the Empowered Empath beginning October 4. Second, there is so much craptastic stuff that’s being cut & pasted into ‘facts’ about what being a psychic empath is & how to be one that I decided to address it rather than keep bitching about it. The myth-based framework perpetuates the misplaced ideal of empath as an overly sensitive soul, unable to move through the world without fear, hiding

Ingrid Oliphant

Aug 26, 2014
4 min

Mind over Myth; Illness and the Empath

“If we’re not actually absorbing other people’s shit, how is it those empaths have all those illnesses?” Well, honey, I am so glad you asked! This is where the rubber meets the road. It doesn’t go far at this point but it’s hit the road. Consider, at least for the time you are reading this, that all things are energy. Some of you have heard the adage or described your interactions with people as ‘like moths to a flame’. Often energies, particularly those associated with o

Ingrid Oliphant

Aug 20, 2014
1 min

You’re Grounded

Myth: Empaths need to ground themselves No, they don’t. By now, I’ve worked with a few hundred empaths. More than ninety percent feel relief when they are told they don’t need to ‘ground’ themselves. This is really quite simple: We’re not all meant to be ‘grounded’. In the same manner we’re not all meant to be engineers, electricians, or elephant riders. For some of us, being grounded is being tethered, restrained, yoked, leashed, stuck in the fucking corner with our nose

Ingrid Oliphant

Aug 20, 2014
2 min

On Empaths Absorbing Other’s Emotions

Myth: Empaths take on other people’s emotions and illnesses Truth: Empaths do not absorb other people’s shit. We feel it. Period. The emotions of others aren’t contagious. Any ‘taking on’ of has little to do with having a psychic gift and everything to do with being otherwise human. There are plenty of people who choose to take on the Atlean task of holding the world on their shoulders who are not empaths. And there are those who can’t bring themselves to empathize

Ingrid Oliphant

Aug 16, 2014
2 min

Thirty traits of being an Empath

Myth: There are 30 Traits of Being an Empath or Symptoms of Being an Empath No. There is only one trait that identifies one as an empath. That is the capacity to feel other people’s emotions. It is a trait, not a symptom. While this gift doesn’t operate or exist in isolation–because nothing does–being a psychic empath has little to do with ‘symptoms’ listed in the regurgitated google lists. Being an empath doesn’t preclude you from being: precognitive, creative, overwhelm

Ingrid Oliphant

Aug 14, 2014
2 min

Not all Empaths are Empathetic, Some are just Ath-holes

Myth number one: All psychic empaths are empathetic. Notsomuch. Being an empath simply means one can feel other energies–here we’re talking about those with emotions of others (though that is an incomplete definition). Being empathetic is a state of active compassion, an identification with the feelings of others. There are plenty of people who can sense energies but do not have the capacity to relate to another being at the level of being able to understand what another’

Ingrid Oliphant

Mar 17, 2014
3 min

On Compassion for Self and Fear of Feeling

This post is inspired by interwebz discussion last Monday following Twelve Years A Slave winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. I paid attention to two primary themes: my generation’s response to slavery & racism and the discussion by people who feel too emotionally sensitive to engage with the movie (or, more generally, any media that might make them feel bad, feel emotional, or retraumatized). I’ll save the former for later and address the latter here. Let me first

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The Braided Voice

words woven into prayer & prose