The NO B.S Guide for Empaths to Set Boundaries and say NO without feeling guilty (life-changing)
Aaron Doughty explains why empaths struggle to say no and feel guilty setting boundaries, tracing it to childhood trauma that shifts energy away from the body. He shares his own people-pleasing patterns and offers a core practice: repeat "that's not my shit, it's theirs" to stop absorbing others' emotions and rebuild your own frame.
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There's a lot that an empath can learn from the symbol of a skunk. I remember back just about a year ago, I lived in Sedona, Arizona, and I had some friends there at their house. What they did is they had two dogs that were chasing a skunk, and what happened is I'm on my way back home and they give me a call and they say, hey, can you bring over some dog shampoo from Petco that like removes the skunk repellent or removes the, the, the skunk smell or whatever? And I was like, yeah, sure, what happened? And they're like, the dogs were barking at a skunk and it sprayed it with its fumes and now the dogs smell like crap. Now the reason that there's something we can learn from skunks is because skunks are the ultimate masters of boundaries. If you cross the boundary of a skunk, it will spray you with its fumes or with its stuff so that you go away. And I remember seeing that and there was a symbol because I think in life what happens is we have these things that happen in our lives and that we perceive of. And there's like symbols that we get back from that. And that for me was like me becoming aware of my own sense of boundaries. Am I lacking boundaries? Am I allowing myself to say no? And there's something that we can learn from that. Now in this video, I believe that you will learn the key and the main things that are gonna help you to completely transform your own energy so that you're no longer having difficulty saying no to things that you normally don't wanna do, but you say yes to 'cause you feel guilty or you feel obligated. You're gonna learn how to say no, how to set boundaries without feeling guilty, and how to really transform this empath that you think is maybe a curse or maybe there's negative side effects of it, and how to make it you're like completely embodied in your own power, in your own frame, And this is things that took me like 2 or 3 years to learn and it changes everything. And you're going to exponentialize and like shorten that timeframe by simply watching this video. Welcome back to another video. My name is Aaron and I help people expand their consciousness. Now, first thing we need to do is this is the no bullshit guide for an empath. Some of the things I'm going to say in this video, by the way, as an empath, you might not like because it may be true or it may seem a little bit harsh, but it's what you need to hear to really take your power back and wake up. And I want you to know, first off, I am an empath and I don't even really identify as much as an empath anymore because I think that I've integrated a lot of that to where I can turn it on and off when I want. But I used to have trouble saying no to just about anything. If a friend or people wanted me to do something, If I felt like, you know, I would let them down in any way, then I would say yes to it. I would feel other people's emotions and always try to fix them. When I was in relationships with people, I'd do anything I could to make someone else's life easier, even at the expense of myself. And what ended up happening is it would then depolarize my relationships where a lot of times sexual polarity would go away 'cause I'm just trying to fix them the whole time, or I would just not be strong in my own frame. I would also find that I would tend to attract more narcissistic personalities, people that have, that had a very narcissism is a lot of times like a really emphasizing on the self. So a lot of times that the form of manipulation, manipulating others to get their needs met, it's all about me, me, me. I would attract a lot of people like this and I remember thinking, why am I doing that? And then I started to go more into this whole understanding of an empath and once I understood why I was an empath, I didn't understand what I had to do to completely switch around the pattern, and that is what completely shifted my life. So first off, what is an empath? An empath is somebody that can feel other people's emotions at a certain level. Everyone has a level of empathy. Now empaths have an extreme sensitivity to other people's emotions, to how other people feel, and a lot of times empaths can end up being clairvoyants, psychics, things like that because they're so they're so sensitive that they can feel what someone else is feeling. They can feel someone else's energy and they're able to like interpret that in their own way. So a thing to understand with this when it comes to empathy is that empathic people, many times the reason they are this way is because of this right here. So this right here is a little stick figure. Haha. Yay. Now this is imagine this as a little baby, not a baby, maybe a baby, maybe a teenager or whatever. We have these chakras in our body. It's been around for thousands of years, different, like Buddhism and different things have talked about chakras. Now the root chakra all the way moving up. Now what happens is, let me know if this is you as well. When you were a kid, did you go through some type of trauma that had you maybe leave the bottom 3 chakras, which is the bottom 3 chakras are safety, the, you know, the, the root chakra, the sacral chakra, which is the second one, and then the third one is the solar plexus. Now, a lot of times what happens is people that are empathic, they leave the safety of their bottom 3 grounded chakras, and what they do is they then move up into more of the higher ones of like the third eye, which is like the intuitive center, so that then they can tune to other people. And the reason being is because they've started to associate how other people feel with their own sense of survival, with their own sense of getting by. So have you experienced some level of trauma? Have you experienced some level to you where you think maybe you've elevated your intuitive abilities because energy has left the bottom 3 chakras so that you could tune to other people? If you have, like this video and comment below and let me know. I bet you there's a lot of us that have had that happen. Now what happens is Empaths move into the top chakra. What they're doing is they're then able to tune to other people to get their needs met. When I was a baby, my mom was going through stuff. I was like 1 or 2. My mom was going through stuff and I remember that I started to feel like uncomfortable because I was trying to like change or see like, am I doing something wrong? There's something wrong with me. And I would a lot of times develop the belief that I'm not worthy. There's something wrong with me. And that emotional abandonment caused me to feel not worthy. But then what happens is I started to then change myself or to try to change the situation, change my mom, tuning into her to see if she's okay, because if she's not okay, then I can't be okay. I can't feel safe. You see? So what happens is this is really the key to understanding empathy and also, uh, and to being an empath and how to switch this around. It'll completely change your life. The stuff I'm about to share with you now. Here it is. This is, let's imagine that this is me or you. Okay, this is me. Now just imagine me in this little box. Now imagine this box is a dotted box. This box represents a sense of frame. Now what happens is if there's a weak sense of frame, because when we were kids we had to tune to other people and we didn't feel safe and we weren't empowered in our own frame, what we then do is we can then feel other. Now this right here is the empath versus the other. There's a dotted line because there's a lack of boundaries. Now other has a strong frame around it, and what happens is a lot of times empaths will feel safe in the frame of others because they're tuning to someone else to see if they're good enough, to see if they're accepted, to see if what they're doing is okay. So a big part of this lesson of understanding that, of being an empath and healing from being an empath, is realizing that what is lacked is a sense of frame. It's a sense of safety. It's a sense of being in the body. And it's because when you're a kid, you most likely went to the top chakras and you are no longer in the body as much, so you can feel other people's emotions very strongly and powerfully. Now, I remember when I was going through this process, I was going through a process of letting go of people pleasing. I was going through the process of letting go of like really caring what other people thought too. A big part of this was like when I was on YouTube and I was first getting on YouTube, I wanna go to a different part of the house. When I was on YouTube, I was so much caring what other people thought of me that what happened is I was making content that I thought would like make people like me a certain way. When I read negative comment, it would really have an effect on me. And one of the things I really had to learn to do is to not care what other people think. And to also realize that I can just share what's authentic for me versus like trying to make everyone else happy. So for empathy and the no bullshit guide to this is what you need to hear right now that you might not wanna hear is that there's actually a lesson in here for you. Why do empaths normally attract narcissists? Now empaths have a very sensitive energy to other. They can feel others' emotions. They can feel how others think and they can kind of like, they're very intuitive because they're in the top chakra. Now what they do is they then feel the narcissism energy. Narcissism is all about self and empaths and narcissists have something to learn from each other. That's the crazy thing. My dad, who attracted a narcissist of my ex-stepmom. I have a lot of experience with this because my ex-stepmom, when I was 7 to 15 years old, my ex-stepmom was in my life and she was very manipulative, narcissistic, mentally, physically, emotionally abusive. And my brother and I had no freedom. It was kind of like living with an army sergeant. And if we were to ever talk about what happened in the household, we'd get in a lot of trouble. We weren't allowed, I remember one time we went to like a therapist and we started to say something and then we got in so much trouble after that. It was like, no. My dad is a fire investigator, super nice guy, but he allowed it to happen and he in a way was like, so he was just allowing her to set the frame. And his lesson in this, because even after I turned 15, my dad divorced her, he's had to deal with a lot of the bullshit of my ex-stepmom. And she has something to teach my dad. She does stand up for what she believes in. She does stand up for her daughters. My sister, she will fight at no end and manipulate to get the result that she wants. I'm not saying that's healthy or good. My dad, on the other hand, gives up very easily. My dad has trouble saying no. My dad has had to learn from my ex-stepmom of the narcissism how to get more into his power. And I can tell that that's his lesson, for him to get into his own power, for him to say no, for him not to allow certain things to happen that happened you know, to my sister and stuff, and she was manipulative. My ex-stepmom in court and stuff. This is a long, like a whole bunch of BS, but there's something to be learned from that though. And what I've had to learn, and the thing and the key to this whole video for an empath is knowing that yes, you are sensitive to other people's emotions, but one of the reasons you are that way is probably because at some form of when you were a kid, you may have felt abandoned. You may have felt like you weren't safe in your own body, so you started tuning yourself to other people. Now, the reason I share this too is because what I've realized in my own lives and my own relationships is I would allow people to take advantage of me. I would allow people to like, you know, kind of dictate and control me because that did feel safe to me at a certain level. This is gonna sound, I've told this story before, but when my dad divorced my ex-stepmom at 15 years old, By the way, one of the reasons he divorced her was because my grandma pushed him to do it. He had to learn how to like stand, you know, stand firm in his frame. But at the same time, it was like my grandma had a big part to do with that. I think he's, my dad's still learning those boundaries, how to say no, how to like, you know, my dad's really good at what he does for a living and he leads in that area of life. But I think in personal life, he has trouble leading because it requires a certain level of strength. So I do kind of find it interesting how this dynamic works. But I remember that when my dad divorced my stepmom, I was 15 years old, we go over to our house, like we left the house and then we were living at our grandma's house in a small house, like 5 of us in this little small, like 2, 3 bedroom house. We didn't go back to get our clothes. And I remember my ex-stepmom and her mom, my ex-grandma were throwing our clothes into the dirt and like giving us our clothes back, like, here it is, all dramatic and stuff. When that would happen, I remember that thinking about going back to my grandma's house where I have ultimate freedom now, I can watch TV, wasn't allowed to do that from 7 to 15. I can talk to friends and have friends, wasn't allowed to have friends from 7 to 15. I don't have to work outside all day long, locked outside, have drinking water out of a hose, don't have to do that. I am allowed to eat the food. I'm not like limited to a bowl of cereal in the morning and TV dinner at night. I can eat more food. Like I have all this freedom now, but with all that freedom, it felt kind of scary because it was the unknown. Like at least knowing that I had to be with my brother and we had to like sneak food and we would have to as well, like if we wanted to watch TV, one of us would have the remote with the previous channel button on and we'd be like on the lookout and the other one would be watching TV and then we'd like take turns and then as soon as someone came home, we had the previous channel and then bolt out the door because if they knew that we were on a different channel, then they know we were watching TV. Even though there was that level of control, there was a sense of certainty with what I was experiencing in life. There was a sense of certainty that I knew I wasn't, I felt safe in that. And I remember it was the weirdest feeling ever. And I understand the Stockholm syndrome now, it's called Stockholm syndrome. And as an empath, you might find safety in other people's frame, but the key to this is feeling safe in your own frame. The key to this is validating your own frame and knowing you're worthy for just being you. You don't have to do what other people want you to do to be worthy. I've realized this over this last year when I've started to ask myself, what do I want? Not what is gonna make other people happy to then give me validation and support or whatever. What do I want? In relationships, I've stopped abandoning myself and I've started doing what I want and being who I am and then attracting somebody that also is able to meet me in that way and appreciates who I am. Does that make sense? Whereas before, the pattern I had was losing my sense of self to make the other person happier, to fix them. And friendship dynamics, it was like somebody would ask me, or it was like someone's, it was a good friend of mine's birthday party. I drove like 10 to 12 hours to go to a birthday party that I had to cancel like 5 important things I had to do before I went to Costa Rica last year because I couldn't say no. I felt guilty. Why would I feel guilty? Now, one of the reasons we feel guilty with being an empath is remember that chart I showed you where it said me and then other, and then me is dotted line and other is solid? When it's a dotted line, we literally feel like we are responsible for other. That's how we feel. And because we feel that way, what happens is we then don't, we can't differentiate the difference between self and other. We can't, we don't know the difference. Like you are me, like your happiness is my happiness. And if you're not feeling happy, then I can't feel happy. And this many times stems from childhood experiences where we felt abandoned and we had to change ourselves in order to feel worthy. And the thing that you can realize, and the biggest thing that changed my life, is realizing that my parents' own shit, their stuff was their shit, not mine. That's the mantra. That's the mantra. And if you could just repeat it below, if you could like this video and comment below and say, "That's your shit, not mine." You can apply this to your parents' stuff, realizing it's not your fault if they went through a lot of emotional trauma and you felt like you were trying to like make them happy or whatever, but this little saying right here, that's your shit, not mine. If my friends would've gotten mad that I couldn't drive 10 hours to go to this place where there's nowhere to fly into, it was in the middle of Colorado, and if you're watching this video, you know who you are, I still love you, but I'm saying I couldn't say no. I couldn't say no to you because I wanted you to be happy and I wanted your birthday to be amazing, but even though I had to cancel a photo shoot, all this other stuff, it was a lesson to me that I need to stop abandoning myself to make other people happy. And the funny thing is my friend's birthday that it was, there were like 20, 30 people invited, but only 5 showed up because we're all like entrepreneurs who own businesses and we don't have, like for many people it'd be like a longer drive than that or it'd be like, you know, a day of travel to get there because the only way to fly in was to Denver and then driving 5 hours and then flying. Like it was just a, it was a long process. Other people had about no problem saying no to that, even though they're great friends with her, you know? I did though, I couldn't say no. And it's because I literally felt responsible for other, I felt responsible. Now, when I realized that, it's a different value system is really what this is. Imagine your values. If you value other people's opinions, other people's validation, then over your own, then what happens is you will tune to others to make yourself happy. One of the things I had to do is I had to start valuing vulnerability. I had to start valuing being in my own frame. I had to start valuing leading in my life. And as I started valuing authenticity in these things, I started to naturally become that version of me that was more authentic and blunt. I had a hard conversation with one of my best friends the other day, and I had to have say some things that I've like kind of held back for a long time, and I had to be very brutally honest. And honestly, it was bringing up similar stuff to my ex-stepmom, where it was like, I felt like I was confronting an aspect of my ex-stepmom because I was afraid that if I said something that triggered this person, that they'd come back at me, or I was just being super brutally honest, but there's a new version of me. I was wired in by doing. I felt so empowered after this conversation because I took my power back. And this person respects me more now, I can tell, because I had that hard conversation. And it had to do with exactly what I'm talking to you about now. I felt like I lost my sense of self by being around someone else, but I realized I got safety out of that, but I had to learn to stand up for myself. I had to learn how to get inside my own body. And I had to learn to start valuing myself by stop abandoning myself. And the thing that I have a message for you of, you being an empath, is to stop abandoning yourself. Start to fill in that dotted line. Start to realize what do you want? What do you value? And one of the biggest things you can do that will completely transform your life if you have not done this already is start to ask yourself these questions. What are my values? What is authentic for me? What can I say no to today? Comment that below. What can I say no to today? Doesn't mean you're looking around for things to say no to, but like yes man, if you're an empath, you're already saying yes to everything, right? What can you say no to that? 'Cause by saying no to something, you're also saying yes to yourself. I'm now at a place to when like, I used to, like somebody reached out to me the other day on Instagram wanting business advice for them starting their YouTube channel. Someone I used to go to the gym and see. And they asked me this question and I'm like, I'm so busy now. I don't have time to like give a whole bunch of personal advice to someone. I have Full Time Purpose, which is like this, you know, something that helps people go full time doing what they love. I could send them to that, but send in a friend to my course. I'm like, do I do that? And instead what I did is I was like, but I realized I don't have time to do that. My challenge is like, you know, talking to my family more often and my friends that are already in my life. I don't have time to set up a call where normally a coaching call with me is actually, I don't do those. It'd be expensive. So what I did is I sent him a video, like a free training video that I have. And I said, just watch this, but I'm sorry, I just don't, I don't have time to jump on a call with you personally, but you can do that or get Full Time Purpose to learn more. Like back in the day, I would've felt guilty. Like, oh, I have to overextend myself and give a whole bunch of advice because it's tied to my sense of worthiness. It's completely different now. Now, one of the most powerful things that you can begin to do though is realize how can I stop abandoning myself? And one of the things you can do if you haven't already is I have something called the 21 Day Magnetic Love Challenge, which is all about getting more in your body, more in your own frame so that then you can stop abandoning yourself, feel 100% worthy, and start to trust more Those are the 3 biggest wounds that we have so that you have more self-love. This will impact your relationships with other people. This will help you remove love blocks. This will help deepen the relationship that you're already in. It's 21 days where I went live for an hour to an hour and a half a day coaching people through attachment style patterns, all this stuff I'm teaching with you now. I've had over 4,000 people go through that. We've had over 10,000 people go through the challenges in general, whether it's the Raise Your Vibration Challenge or that. If you wanna join, click the link below, join the Magnetic Love Challenge. There's something in there called the frame technique. The frame technique is one of the most powerful processes I've ever learned. I learned it from my shadow work integration coach, somebody I've been going to for years. He's completely transformed my life working with him. He's honestly too, his specialty is narcissism and helping people that are victims of narcissists or helping narcissists to heal. So he either helps empaths or narcissists. I've learned this like frame technique from him and it has completely transformed my life. It has to do with more getting inside the body. If you wanna learn it, what you can do is you can click the link below. Below. Join the 21 Day Magnetic Love Challenge. It's one of the bonuses. Other than that, let me know if this video resonates with you. This is the no bullshit guide. You got to get more inside your body. You got to stop abandoning yourself. You got to realize that your sense of getting value and validation from others is how you were primed when you were a kid because it was based on survival, but it's time to bring it back. It's time to bring your energy more inside of your own body. The frame technique will transform your life like like it did mine. Other than that, let me know if you guys like this video, if you want more videos on healing for empaths and narcissists and understanding that. And other than that, I hope you guys enjoyed it, and I'll talk to you in the next one. Peace, much love, and namaste.
