An empath in ANXIOUS times

Foreign. Hello and good evening. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach and empath. This evening, I want to talk about us empaths out in the world and how we are feeling with the collective shitstorm that's basically brewing currently. Just want to do a little housekeeping. We're talking about empathy. Feelings are here. Want to make sure everyone's feelings are taken care of. I am going live to both my Facebook pages, to LinkedIn, to YouTube and to Twitter, even though I only have like seven followers there. Anyway. But if you comment, I love for this to be interactive, but if you comment and I don't say hi to you and I don't acknowledge what you have to say, sometimes the technology just fails us. Okay, so I. We're talking about feelings, we're talking about empathy here. I. I don't want anyone feeling not heard or not acknowledged in what they're sharing. So I like to usually go and check and see if comments didn't come through after the fact. If you comment something, I will. Will acknowledge you unless it's really rude, which I don't think I'm going to be attracting with this talk. But anyway, so we're talking about empathy. If you don't know what an empath is. An empath is someone who feels feelings very deeply and also picks up on the collective feelings of people around them, of the environment, of the world, all the things. And we're going through kind of a stressful period in the history of the world right now. Can we just acknowledge. And I don't need to, like, hark on about this. We've been through a rough couple years. There's a lot of things that have been happening. Pandemics, wars, recessions, mass job loss, all of it. And empaths tend to take it all on. Okay? So I know every single time something comes up in the news, I personally will get flooded for a moment. I will get more flooded if I know people who are impacted by it. And it takes me a little bit to reset. Now, I am very conscious of resetting because I do do a lot of work, one on one with my clients and in groups. So I have to be ready to put my feelings aside all the time to support the person in front of me. Okay. This is a skill, and this is something that. If you are an empath and you struggle with all the feelings and how to separate them, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go over some tactics that could help you. I also want to acknowledge that tomorrow, especially if you're us based is going to be an empathically charged day, okay. And, and depending on how long it takes them to, to tally votes, it could also go on later in the week. And so I just wanted to come and share how I tend to myself as an empath. That will hopefully serve you if you're, if you're feeling flooded right now. If the stress is everything, it's just getting to you, even if it's not even your stress or fear. Okay? So first and foremost, let's talk about your human body. Okay? So your human body needs very basic things. It needs food. When you get stressed out and you forget to eat or you eat the wrong things, you actually mess with your own hormone levels, okay? And your hormones need to be kept in a very particular balance to prevent you from feeling extra stress, okay? So you need to eat. I always forget to eat when I'm stressed out. Something I just put off. It's like when I'm stressed out, I just like got to power through the day. I just kind of find stuff to do and then all of a sudden it's 4 o' clock and I haven't eaten anything. Okay, so you do need to eat something. You also need to stay well hydrated, okay? I want you to think of like, water is the lubrication in our brains. It helps our brains function the way they're meant to, okay? Also, you know, just think of like your blood running through your veins, like if it's dehydrated and it's trying to deliver oxygen to your brain and your whole body, if it doesn't have enough liquid to keep it really, you know, viscous, getting really graphic here, then it's not going to be able to deliver that yummy oxygen to your whole body and to your brain, okay? The other thing here is exercise. Your body needs exercise. So the reason I want to talk about exercise is that when you're an empath and when you're feeling everyone else's anxiety and everyone else's fear, your system can actually get kicked into fight or flight, okay? You can actually get kicked into an adrenaline response, a cortisol response. Now, adrenaline is a very interesting hormone in your body. Adrenaline cannot be like, washed out by drinking water, okay? Adrenaline cannot be meditated away. Once adrenaline is in your body, the only way to get rid of adrenaline is to work it off, okay? Exercise works it off. Doing jumping jacks in your kitchen, which I've been known to do, works it off. Dancing to a high tempo song, works it off. Going for A long walk or a run or doing some kind of weightlifting, that works it off, Okay? I want you to think your heart rate goes up and it eats up all of the adrenaline in your system, okay? So I want you, if you are looking at tomorrow and thinking, holy fuck, this is going to be so stressful, find a window of time. It can be five minutes, it doesn't have to be long. Find a window of time for you to do some aerobic exercise. Justin, I'm a stressed non eater. Oh, another one. Thank you. I forget food and water and go straight to Red Bull and then regret it for days. Oh my God. Recovery from neglect takes forever. Yeah, and you know what? Like that, that caffeine actually helps kick in more adrenaline, which I'm talking about. A friend of mine who was a doctor, like this is a verifiable person that I could hear this from, made the comment once that when we're hungover, basically what's happening is we have alcohol in our system, which is a depressant. And this, sorry, this is reversed so it's not a mirror image of me. So I'm going to get confused with my arms going up and down all the things. Anyway, so we have alcohol in our system and it's depress and our body's like homeostasis, so it starts kicking out adrenaline. Right. But your body doesn't know how to account for the shelf life of alcohol. So as alcohol is leaving your system, it's still pumping out the same amount of adrenaline. And oftentimes, my friend told me he's a cardiologist for Kaiser in California. Oftentimes, like when we're sick, the next day, we're actually adrenaline sick. Like when we're throwing up. I'm a big puker after one being hungover. I know that's what you want us to know about me, but when I was sick, like oftentimes you can taste the adrenaline. I know that's really gross, but yeah, hitting the caffeine super hard is probably making the situation worse. Justin, I'm sure you're aware of this. I don't need to lecture to you, but thank you for sharing. This is, this is something that so many of us do. We reach for something that we feel normally makes us feel better. And so I imagine when you're stressed, it also feels like you're tired. And when you're tired, typically caffeine is the thing that you reach for to make you feel better. But definitely remember to eat tomorrow. Okay, so how do we burn adrenaline? Adrenaline off of our bodies or out of our systems. We exercise, we move our bodies, we get our heart rate up, we sweat a little bit. Okay. If you can tell, I actually went for a run today. Doing this is honestly going to make sure that you sleep better. It's going to make sure that you make better decisions. It's going to make sure that you are a better human being when you're stressed out. Okay? So really be conscious to prioritize these things. Okay, now I want to talk about the energetics that we have to tune into. As empaths, we can feel all the things, we take them on, and we don't really know where to go from there. If you haven't been trained in your empathy, which is kind of a funny thing to. To say because it's like, it's very. It's a very feeling thing to get trained on. There are a couple things that you can do. Okay? So the first thing is stopping. Recognizing what feeling or emotion you have bubbling up in you. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's even happiness. And you acknowledge what that feeling is, and you stop and you ask yourself this question. Whose feelings are these? Whose feelings are these? Now, sometimes they will genuinely be yours. Sometimes you check in with yourself and you're like, yep, that all that anxiety is all mine. Yay, that's amazing. And sometimes you're feeling it and you're like, you know, actually, this doesn't belong to me. This. This comes from the other people that I've come into contact with today. Comes from the stuff I've been reading online. Okay, cool. Now you have a couple options here for releasing it. Now there's like, literally just wiping it off you. And I know this seems silly because it's like emotions are felt in our bodies, but there is a somatic practice of wiping things off and just imagining them just leaving your body. Okay, so you get to wipe everything off, all the emotion and do it everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Anyway, that's something I find really grounding. And it just also helps me just, like, feel cleared out. Another thing is eft tapping. So just tapping yourself and. Yeah, and Amber. Hello. Yeah, absolutely. Shake it off. Yeah, shake it off. Absolutely. That is also a way to relieve adrenaline 100%. But EFT tapping really helps you move through emotions. I know it sounds crazy. If you have bad emotions, I recommend going faster. And if you have a good emotion, okay, this works for. For negative and positive. If you have a good emotion, go slow. Let that good feeling, like, really sink into Your body and really feel it. A couple mindfulness things that I recommend, taking into your little repertoire of ways to deal. Making sure that your feet are bare and grounded and on. On the ground, and just being aware. Just giving yourself a moment of being 100% aware of how the floor feels against your feet, against your skin, the muscles, the bone. Like, just being really aware of that. Another thing is if you can go outside, look up, and look for five living beings. And living beings, I don't mean plants. I mean actual living, like animals. So if you live in a city like I do, one of the things that I like to do is. Is go and look for just anything that's alive, that's moving around. So, you know, it could be a fly, it could be a bee, it could be a squirrel, There could be an ant on the ground, and then there could be, like, my neighbor's cat. All that counts. But what I find when I do this is like my. My brain goes into search and find mode. Like, you search for something and you find it, and you search for another thing and you find it and. And you start training your brain that whatever you look for in the world, you will find. This goes for emotion as well. So as empaths, if we can remind ourselves in a very literal way that what we look for in the world, we find as we're overloaded by all the feelings, we get to choose which feelings we want to look for and find we get to look around for. Who are the people who are happy? Who are the people who are helping right now? Who are the people who are bringing joy? Who are the people who are. Who seem to have their shit together and are giving some direction? Just want to go. Okay, so this time of year, politics. I have to envision a bubble around me at all times. Also, a million methods of clearing vibes. Also, I know the nearest running bodies of water. I'll walk into them in the middle of winter to reset. Shopping is painful at best. Cold sweat, panic inducing at worst. I have to go into places with earbuds and with my happiest music possible. Justin. I love these. I actually never thought about picking happy music and carrying that into spaces. That is such a brilliant way to control the feelings that are coming into you. I'm gonna steal that Christopher Moss. Exactly. Get on the horse and start up a business. Don't be a weeding kitty. Yes, absolutely. Heck, yes. Get on that horse. Absolutely. So. So that's some of the energetic stuff that you can do. Now there's the social stuff as well, so empaths tend to be drawn to other empaths just because, like, we have a lot of feelings. Like, people who don't have a lot of empathy, we tend to stay away from. How weird. Because they can't recognize our feelings. Here's what I want you to know, is that it is okay for you not to go to your friends who don't know how to deal with you right now. It's okay for you to stay away from them. It's also okay for you to stay away from the people who tend to get flooded and let themselves stay flooded. And I'm talking about the Debbie Downers, the ones that are like, oh my God, the world is ending and this is happening and this is happening and this is happening. And they don't bring themselves down. They kind of like. It's like they're the fire under the pot that gets all the water bubbling. Okay. Instead of the person who comes over and turns it down is like, calm down, be warm, but don't. Don't boil over. You have full permission to stay away from those people when you're feeling this way. Thank you, Amber. You have full permission to consciously reach out to any empath who you feel like, knows their shit and knows how to handle all the emotions that they're experiencing and that they're taking on for the world and say, hey, I think I might need a little support. Do you mind talking or can I just text you, like a gut check on something? Full permission. Okay. We don't have any ability to sort emotions that are coming into us with before they come into us. Okay? It's kind of like a Salvation army drop off center. Okay? People just line up with their cars, they dump boxes of shit, some of it worth reselling, some of it garbage at the place. But it's a. It's a Salvation army drop off center. And the volunteers there are too tired to say no. And also, like, people don't like hearing no to their stuff. So they get these boxes of shit and they have to sort through and they have to reject some stuff and they have to put it in a dumpster. They have to like, you know, ship it off to stuff somewhere else. That's what you're going through. I want you to have so much compassion for yourself, okay? And I also want you to know it's okay to set boundaries. If you see a car coming that usually drops off a whole bunch of garbage and you're not willing to accept garbage, you get to say, you know what? I'm so Sorry, we're not accepting donations today. Okay. You have a phone call from a friend who tends to spiral or tends to get you into a darker place. Full permission to just not answer their call or tell them that you're. You're busy. That is absolutely allowed. Those are those who are always out of 10. Exhaust the. Out of me. Yeah. Healthy boundaries are what keeps empath sane, 100%. Another thing that helps empaths is doing something. So if you're in the US and you're a voter, please go out and vote. What hits us really hard is when we see suffering happening out there in the world and we didn't do anything about it, we take on all the ownership of all of our complicity. And so it is on you. If you are an empath, if you're an American and you can vote to go and vote tomorrow, vote like your life depends on it, please, for the love of God. With that, I think my dinner is about to be ready, so I'm gonna go and eat something, take my own advice. How. How fitting. Justin, thank you so much for all of your tips. And, Amber, thank you for your acknowledgment during this. And Christopher. Yes, absolutely. Stop being a weenie. We're starting businesses here. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach and. And fellow empath. Sending you so much love and light and compassion for the next 24 to 48 hours. Fingers crossed that it goes well, Justin. I call it being sideswiped and hit in. A hit and run of emotions usually needs 15 to 20 minutes of silence and alone time to get back to baseline. Yes. So for my people who have empaths in your life, and you notice that sometimes they turn off, it's really helpful for you to know this, that this is what happens to us. We get sideswiped or our feelings get hijacked. It happens. Anyway, thank you for that final bit of wisdom, Justin and Amber. Yes. Heart back to you. Anyway, dinner is almost ready, so have an amazing night, everyone. Thank you for joining me, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.