Kia ora ano, I'm Rachel. Welcome back to my
channel. I'm here talking about well-being in activism. And today I
wanted to talk about my experiences realizing that I'm an empath and what
that means for my activism and asking the question is this something that
resonates with you? Some of you will be like "oh, yeah, I already knew that", others will be (cat) others will be like "what are you talking about?" and then there'll be some that, you
know, that maybe this actually does connect to your exp
erience, but it hasn't been something you've thought about. So it's something that I've been slowly
slowly learning over the years and so I'm still just partway on my journey
with working with that idea. So I'm just kind of in the middle.
So I hope that this yeah starts some conversations and resonates with some
people out there. If this doesn't resonate with you, you might want to
click away now, that's fair enough. Or you might just be interested to watch it and
see what other people you might
be working alongside experience. I assume
that there will be lots of people in our movements who are empaths, because
impacts are basically people who are highly sensitive to other people (and
sometimes animals and plants as well) highly sensitive to the emotions of
others and have a tendency to feel those emotions in our own bodies. Sometimes
with some confusion as though those are our own. I think that a lot of
us who are attracted to activism are likely to be empaths, because that
sensitivi
ty to the pain that happens in the world can be hugely motivating to
want to be part of the change that lessens some of that pain. So I think that
a lot of us in our movements are empaths, whether we know it or not. And that
that is a wonderful ability and it can also be something that
can be really overwhelming and can lead to a lot of exhaustion and a lot of
burnout. So it's something I think that's really worth knowing about and sort of
taking an active kind of role in managing and, yeah, I
just like to share
some reflections with you today. I'm also excited to do this video because it is a
response video to one that Kelly-Ann Maddox put out a little while ago, about
staying strong while sensitive. And I'm not really sure, like being new to YouTube, I'm
not really sure the etiquette of response videos. I don't know if they're
supposed to be like quite soon after, this is not very soon after, but her
video that she put out about this is one of the things that really sparked me to
ma
ke this channel actually and kind of get back into the fray of activism. So
yeah, I really want to direct you to that video and also if you see this Kelly-Ann,
thank you for that, because it really shook me up. It got me got me going
again. So yeah, depending on how much sense I'm making, you might want to check
out Kelly-Ann's video first and then come back to this one. Hopefully I make
enough sense that you can watch them in whichever order. But like I say, I'll link
it below, as well as a few
other resources. I won't try
to just repeat everything Kelly--Ann says, I think you need to just watch her video,
but the main kind of challenge that she's putting out there
is that people who do consider themselves empaths and have sort of gone
out there looking for information about how to be in the world as an
empath, a lot of that information out there is quite focused on how hard it is
and how overwhelming it is and she's putting the challenge out there to flip
that a little bit and see it
as a superpower.
You know, just work on, sure work on lessening the overwhelm, but also work on growing what's beautiful about that, as well. And
she asked if there are people who, you know, used to feel like it was a really
difficult thing about their life and now see it as a really wonderful thing about
their life. This response video is it's not quite there. Like I say, I'm
kind of in the middle of this journey and what she had to say
especially about actively protecting yourself as you go
out in the world (I'll
talk about that a little bit towards the end of the video) that really was an eye-opener to me, that made
me go "oh yes, this is something that I'm just at the beginning of
working out how to do that." So yeah that's where I'm coming from, I'm gonna
share some experiences of how I sort of realized that this is a
thing for me, in case they click with you and you can go "oh, yeah that happens to me too, maybe I should think about this" and I'll talk a little bit about, you k
now, how these things can
affect our activism. And then yeah a little bit about what you can do
proactively about it. Where do you begin with something like this? I think that empaths it's an innate experience, some people are just
more sensitive to other people's emotions than others, just like some people are less sensitive other people's emotions. And so I think that has been
with me since I was a small child, but when I, you know, this really gets into the kind of spiritual, woowoo, witchy
side
of things, that I've kind of dabbled with on and off since I was a
teenager and, like I say, I've kind of dipped into their stuff, but I didn't
really recognize it, I didn't really give it credit and really like fully
integrated as a solid thing in my life until a few years ago, when I was working
in a workplace that was really stressful and we had a lot of very stressful
meetings in our actual office, where people would come, you know,
often from out of town and bring all of their stress a
nd, you know, have these
intense meetings and then go away afterwards and we would kind of be left
with the vibe in our office and impacts of that. And that wasn't something that I
necessarily consciously credited as something that was happening, until I
realized that the other people around me in my office and some of the other
people who came into our office occasionally, were noticing it and were
recognizing it and were responding to it in very simple practical ways to clear
that energy, that
was in the room. And when I say energy, I just mean, yeah,
people's emotional stuff, that I mean if you're not at all woowoo, it might
sound really weird that that stuff can stay in a room, but I guess what I'm
saying is that over time I've come to accept that it does and I feel it. And
during the time in that office, I would like go in there and I would think "oh
yuck, it feels awful" but I'd think "oh well, I'm just remembering that yucky
meeting over the last week or whatever, but then when
other
people would come in and notice as well, I started to recognize that it wasn't, yeah
there was something more to it. And like I say my colleagues were very good at
just running the vacuum cleaner, burning some incense, getting that stuff
cleared out, you know, clearing the wairua of the space, so that we could get on
with our jobs without that yuckiness. And so during that time I really started taking
care, clearing myself of other people's stuff seriously and I started
to realize how oth
er people's stuff sticks to me. And started actively clearing that stuff. So you know, doing things
like trying to spend time in nature regularly and you know, having baths
with some salt in it, things like that, you know, burning incense, burning candles,
things that just kind of clear the air basically. And that stuff
all really helped me. And during that time, somebody also said to me, like this
thing about taking on other people's emotions, this is maybe less woowoo but
just in a pure empath
y sense, somebody else that I knew
through that job, she ran sexual violence prevention
workshops and she said there she was talking to her co-facilitator about how
she would always feel really exhausted after running a workshop, because she
would feel all of the emotions of the people in the room responding to that
quite heavy topic and like she was holding all of their emotions and then
she would feel really drained afterwards. And her co-facilitator was like "oh that
doesn't happen to me. Yea
h, I don't feel any of that, during or after a
workshop." And when she told me that, I was like "what the fuck?! How? What? People don't feel that?" You know, that was one of those moments where I really realized that
this something very real for me that I need to be aware of and manage and it isn't something that everybody experiences. One of the things that Kelly-Ann talks about in her video is that often if we experience
this kind of stuff we can feel overwhelmed by it and end up using it as
a
reason not to engage in the stuff that we find meaningful. Not to keep doing the
work or going into particular spaces that we'd like to be in, because we just
feel too tired and overwhelmed by other people's stuff. And that really kicked me
in the guts actually. I was, you know, hanging at the laundry at the time, when I was listening to her clip, I usually have my headphones in and phone in the back pocket listening to YouTube clips while I do chores and I
was hanging out the laundry shaking
with how true that was for me. That I had been avoiding getting back involved in politics, just
because of the sheer dread at having to be in / around all those personal politics
again and feel other people's stuff so strongly. And I hadn't recognized that
that's what it was, but when she said that I was like "that is what it is" and
that's why I say that seeing that clip from Kelly-Ann and Thank You
Kelly-Ann genuinely, for shaking me up in that way, that sparked me to want to
get back into the
fray and to start this YouTube channel and yeah be really
reflecting on some of this stuff, because she's right, you know, like we don't have
to live a small life. We can actually take control of some of this
stuff if we know what's happening. And so it makes me reflect on some of the ways
that having that experience of being highly sensitive to other people's
emotions can play out an activist scenes and so like I say, you know, intense
meetings if you've got all of the tension in the room, you
're feeling
everybody's stress responses (basically) to what's happening, with each other and
that can, you know, be resonating really intensely in your own body and if you
don't know that it's actually other people's stuff that you're picking up on,
it can feel like that's all you. That that's all of your stress and neurosis
and upset, when actually, and sense of shame or sense of competition
or whatever it is, that is actually coming from the people around you. So yeah, meetings whether it's i
n your workplace or your collective or whatever,
where there's a lot of conflict. The exhaustion of feeling all of that. And I
used to find that I would go home after those kind of meetings, whether it was,
you know, volunteer collectives or workplace ones, and because I was feeling
all of this emotion and I was revved up by it and I didn't know that it was just
other people's emotional stuff that I needed to clear physically from my body
and whether that's by sort of spiritual clearing like I w
as talking about with
the incense or if it's about like what I talked about with a stress response
cycle, you know, on this channel recently,
about actually like physically doing something to just let your body know
that you're not in danger, because I didn't know to do all that stuff
I would obsessively problem-solve. I would lie in bed at night trying to work
out how to bridge the differences between people, you know? Like how can I
understand this person and explain it to that person, so that
their
stuff can ease? And you know, there's some family dynamic stuff for me as well,
coming through in that role that I took on, but I think again part of it is
just that empath response and not knowing what was happening and what I
needed to do about it and so therefore not being able to sleep and not being
able to put down other people's stuff, because I felt it in my body. So I think
knowing about this stuff is really powerful. So yeah, meetings, let's think
about some of the other spaces t
hat we're in as activists too, like again
running workshops. Usually as activists, even if we're bringing a real message of
hope, we are often presenting information about harm that's happening or just
distressing information to people a lot of the time. Sometimes, you know, say if
it's something like decolonization or feminist work, we might be actively
challenging people to rearrange the way that they see the world and whenever we
hear, as humans or just as animals, our view of the world
chall
enged and shifted, that creates a natural stress response in our
bodies, because we need to feel like we understand the way the world works. So
anytime we bring people information that is unsettling like that, if we're an
empath bringing that information to them we're going to feel all of that
discombobulation that the group's feeling, you know? And often on top of
that, we're trying to manage so hard our own response to that and also manage the
dynamics of the group so that people can feel okay
and safe in that space. That's
a lot emotional work right? So again a lot that
needs to sort of be cleared and taken care of. And again if you don't realize
that's what it is, and you're just feeling exhausted and just going home and wanting to like watch Netflix all night or whatever, which far out, I did a lot of that, yeah there's stuff there that isn't
necessarily being cleared and attended to. Other things might be things like demos.
Oh my god, demos. Like any kind of protests and stuff,
I have to work
really hard not to cry. Like there's the teenager in me who grew up
in Taranaki, where you gotta be really staunch, is so ashamed to admit that and
I have to work so hard to not show it when I'm at demonstrations, but I just
want to cry the whole time, because I'm just overwhelmed by the intensity of
emotion of all of these people and it's not even a bad thing, it's kind of a
beautiful thing it always feels like so moving and glorious that all these
people care so much, but again
that's just like a huge amount of emotional
stuff in your body, right? And that wipes me out, I'm always exhausted after demos
and I kind of got put off going to them because I just feel too flattened
afterwards. And not only that, but there's so there's that happening and then also
like often in demos there'll be a bunch of different people who don't normally
talk to each other anymore, like they might have been in collectives together in the past or they might have dated or whatever and then t
hey're
suddenly all in the same space at the demo and there's kind of the weird
tensions of them coming in and out of the same space. Aw, you know? Like it can
be really intense. Yeah, and I was just thinking like even at working
bees and stuff, you know, there's personal dynamic stuff, even if it's stuff that's
not like gross conflict, even if it's just like two people are really crushing on
each other hard out or something, you know? And so there's a lot of kind of
erotic tension in the room c
an be really distracting. And yeah, there's so
many ways I think that if you're sensitive to other people's emotional
energy and you're not aware that it's outside of you, that can be really
draining and confusing and stuff eh, as activists. So
those are just some of the ways, I'll be really interested to hear other people,
if you've got ideas about the other ways that it can come into our activism. So I
think all of these things just add up to being tiring and draining and if
you're not aware o
f it and not knowing how to clear it, it can be a problem and wear you out
overtime. Also just watching like even when you're not in the room with people,
like just watching like clips, you know, like how I talked about in that one I did a
while ago about caring for your ability to care, when you're exposed to a lot of
films and Twitter feeds and all that sort of thing of people talking about
harm that's happening, all of the physical emotional response that can happen in
you even from that can
be overwhelming as well. And I really noticed that
recently. I was watching a, I'll link it below, but I was watching the stand-up
comedy of Grace Leung, who's somebody that I know and she's talking in that about
when she was sexually assaulted and how she fought the guy off. And because I'd
recently made that stress video and I was really tuning into my own stress
during that month afterwards and trying to actively work my stress out of my
body when I felt it, I really noticed that here I was a
gain doing the dishes
and suddenly I wanted to fight this guy as well. Like my body was like "I'm gonna
beat the shit out of this guy" I'm so angry about it. And I had to stop doing
the dishes and just dance it out in my lounge, because my body was resonating so
hard out with that. So you know, that was just another reminder to me about the
intensity of empathy and the way that we can feel things in our body as though
we're under attack when it's actually somebody else who's been threatened and
and just how direct and powerful that can be, even when we've just been exposed
to it, yeah, through media rather than through somebody in a room with us
sharing their experiences. So yeah, those are all of the
ways that it could impact on our own activism, there's probably more, but those
are the ones I've been thinking about. So the other real challenge that
Kelly-Ann put out there, which was well, I don't
know if this was her intention to challenge, but it really bowled me over,
was she talke
d about shielding. You know, taking responsibility for protecting
yourself, your emotions and your energy or whatever you want to think of
it as, whenever you go into these kind of spaces that might have a lot of other
people's emotional energy in. And yeah, when she said that I was like "oh yeah! I
haven't been doing that." Like I say I started taking care of clearing stuff,
but I hadn't been consciously putting up a sort of emotional, subconscious,
psychological, spiritual, whatever you want t
o call it, barrier around myself to
make sure that the stuff wasn't coming in as much. And in fact I don't even know
if I really had clicked that it was something that I could do or I was
allowed to do (that sounds dumb) but I think again family dynamic stuff, that
feeling like, yeah, not feeling like a clear separation between myself and others was
an option that I could really take charge of. And it's funny because like I
say I've sort of looked at witchy stuff and spiritual stuff for years an
d you
know had a kind of inconsistent practice with it, but, you know, done bits and pieces and
there's often this, there's a lot of stuff in that space,
and I guess what I'm saying with this video as well is if you're resonating
with some of these experiences, but you're not at all interested in witchy
stuff, that's fine you don't have to be, but you might find that there's actually
some real great tools there, for this stuff. And so yeah, maybe check it out. And you know take it any way you l
ike.
I often, I think there is some kind of mystery behind all this stuff, but I also
think even if there is not, like I've seen this stuff sort of described as
"embodied poetry" and I think that's a beautiful way to think about it, that
our subconscious connects to symbolism really easily in a way that kind of
bypasses our conscious mind and so if you set in an intention that also
involves things that you can touch and smell and feel and beautiful images and
stuff that help you to hold on to t
hat intention to just know that you in here
and other people stuff is out there, that can be really helpful. And so, like I say,
I'd come across this stuff in witchy kind of woo-woo spaces about
protection and shielding and stuff and I had done a little bit of it, but I'd
never really taken it very seriously in terms of my everyday life or really got
into it in a big way. And I don't want to talk shit on anyone who does, because you
know fair enough, but I just didn't. I was like I'm not messing
with spirits, I
don't think spirits are gonna come to attack me and you know I don't think I'm
pissing off any witches because I'm just doing some stuff quietly in my own home, so I
don't think witches are gonna put the evil eye on me or whatever, you know,
like what am I protecting against so much? But then when Kelly-Ann was talking about it, I was like: "oh,
of course! I'm protecting against other people's emotional shit, from getting
into me! You know, which happens to me every fucking time
I leave the house!" Duh. So
you can use it for that. Yeah, it's so simple and so dumb that I didn't make
the connection myself, but yeah, thank you Kelly-Ann for stating the fucking
obvious and I've got to try a lot harder to do that from now on. And
you know, I think she's great in that she says, you know, find your own way. Like
there's so many different ways to do it, go out and try different ways and find
what works for you. If you're looking for somewhere to start, for
kind of this witchy
stuff, if you've like never been here before and you're sort
of intrigued, I'm gonna link below Mintfaery's one
that she did on how to protect yourself from your crazy relatives during the
holidays. This is a, she's like Mintfaery is adorable, like I just what to share something of hers anyway, but this is a really good little
introduction to like all of these different approaches that you could take.
And of course she's talking about relatives, but this stuff applies to
your crazy collective as
well. Or your you know, your collector or your
workplace or your whatever of people that you love, but also bring all their
stuff, you know. So yeah, check that out if you want a kind of an in way to this stuff.
I've been trying really hard to just practice the stuff more and work out
what works for me and I find that it does help a lot to really
deliberately set a space around myself that is just for me, you know, and to
know that I don't have to take on other people's things. I'll also put a
link
below if you're not so woo-woo and you just want some practical information for
empaths. I'll put a link below from a woman called Lola Pickett, just some tips about
sort of you know more practical things that you can do to just survive the
experience of being around intense emotional stuff. Again, she's talking
about family, but you know, it applies anywhere, as an empath. But
year, the more I sort of explored this stuff, the more that I noticed it
happening, you know? So like recently I w
as at a, like I do a Maori language
night class and you know we go around the classroom each taking turns speaking
the phrase that we were learning and it was coming around to me and I was
feeling really really nervous and I was like "why am I so nervous? I know this
phrase, I'm comfortable with this phrase" and believe me I'm often really nervous
just on my own behalf, but on that time I was like "what's going on here?" and then
I realized that it was actually this woman next to me who was real
ly really
nervous and it wasn't coming from me at all and once I realized that it was her
and not me, yeah I could just settle a lot more. And so yeah, like I say,
some of this road of exploration is not about kind of working out 100%
straightaway how to protect yourself from other people's stuff, it's just
there's just a period I think of observing how you are in the world.
Noticing how this stuff impacts you and just noticing itself goes a long way to
lessening those effects. And it's also jus
t a first, sort of, step I think, to
yeah, working out how you can be more empowered in that space. Yeah, in terms of like Kelly-Ann was
saying who have gone from being people who are finding it overwhelming to
people who are really empowered by it and use it as the superpower and feel
really and in their strength with it, I'm not there, eh, but I would love to hear
from people who are further down that road as well and, you know, are applying this
stuff in their activism and yeah really have st
uff to share. I think I could
learn a lot from that and other people watching this could learn a lot from
that as well. What else did I want to say? Oh yeah, that observation thing also is just (and
just again, does this resonate with anybody else?) that the thing of
shielding is kind of like in many ways I think the symbolic opposite of or a sort
of a reminder to not have, I feel like my nervous system is kind of out here like
these little tendrils or antennas that are just kind of feeling arou
nd the room
and sometimes even bigger than, you know, like if I know that awful things are
happening in the world, which they are all the time, like feeling out into those
other things and then, like it sounds, I know that this will sound crazy to people who
don't experience this, but this is something that I experience and I know that other
people do as well, just this kind of sense of out here and it takes real
discipline for me to actually bring those those antennae in or those tendrils
in a
nd just get them, you know, just get my kind of emotional energy to just be
with me and, you know, my body and where it ends, and
where I am. That's a real discipline in itself. So again I think
that, it's connected but it's a slightly different thing, but this thing
of shielding and practicing just bringing yourself back to
yourself. Bringing yourself back to your breathe and what your authentic emotional
reactions are. Yeah it's interesting and hard work. But again like so freeing. So
freeing
of not carrying other people's things. And yeah, kind of like I
say, this is not something that I feel like I have a mastery over, but kind of
interesting to think about it, you know, how you do use this as a superpower? And
how once you know we're where you are with somebody else is, that if you can
detect, you know, that they are feeling shame or competition or and you know
that that shame or competition isn't actually coming from you, that it's coming from them, that you can identify that and
leave it with them
and also maybe, I don't know, work out how to interact with them within that knowledge that they
may be feeling those things. Hmm yeah not in a creepy power over way, but just in an
empowered way. Yeah so I think that, God there's probably all kinds of other
things I could say about this, but I'm just gonna leave it there. And yeah, it
feels kind of funny and vulnerable outing myself as having this woo-woo,
spiritual side, because a lot of people who I'm friends with and know
me in activist spaces, don't know me in this way, but, you know, I want this channel to
be kind of an integrating project for me where all of my parts of me
are here, so here is this part. And I will leave you with that, and just the real
reminder, you know, whether you are, wherever you are at with the stuff, that
you're entitled to keep your energy for you and let other people have their
energy for them. You don't have to carry other people's stuff. Yeah, often we distracting ourselves
from o
ur own stuff actually by carrying other people's stuff, so that's
the kind of other challenge as well with this. But there's a freedom in that, as well,
to just put other people's stuff down and just work
with this, what's here. So yeah, with that, take care. Thanks for joining me
again and if you found this useful and you think other people might as well,
please share. It I feel like at the moment it might just be people that I'm
friends with on Facebook who are watching this channel, so I thin
k that
other people could find it useful as well, so if there are spaces that you think
this could be useful in, please share it. And take care, ka kite, noho ora mai.
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