Excuse me, does this feeling belong to you?

Many women who are energetically sensitive or empathic don't realize it and mistakenly assume that what they feel inside belongs to them when it actually may belong to someone or something else. Sensitives pick up the energies around them, sometimes from pretty far away...even as far away as across the globe. That may surprise you but it is real, supported by the concept of quantum entanglement.

Humans are made up of the same elements as the rest of life, so we resonate with the whole of it on some level, which means we are not truly separate from anything in this reality. Isolating ourselves or trying to ignore what we feel doesn't make it stop. In fact, it may intensify it.

It's our job to sort what's ours from what we're picking up on that belongs to others. But most of us aren't taught how to sort this. There's a shamanic tool called shielding that can help. Shielding is a way of setting an energetic boundary around us so we can distinguish what's emanating within our auric field versus what's emanating outside of it. When something originates within our auric field, it's ours to deal with. When it doesn't, it's not. At least, not directly. Nice, huh? Shielding is a technique that can be learned and practiced to help us fortify ourselves against the energies around us.

Energy has to move. We must move too, to stay physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and energetically healthy. The emotional energy we generate or absorb needs to be moved through and out of our body system. Otherwise it can leave us feeling heavy, lethargic, confused, tired, unclear, indecisive, angry, fatigued and even sick. To move it, we must know it's there, examine what it's about and safely release it.

Releasing emotional energy in safe and constructive ways means we do not direct it at anyone or anything, or indulge it. Instead, we emote it in productive and neutral ways...like crying, screaming, dancing, creating, ceremony, journaling, laughing, or moving our body in some way.

These are just a few examples. The After A Breakup HELP book (2021) has a list of healthy ways to emote things like grief and anger that don't cost anything, are safe, and productively move emotional energy out of the body. This is essential because most of us carry around an "emotional storage tank" that must be emptied in order for us to stay healthy and operate from a state of vibrant presence in our relationships and lives.

When we don't do this kind of self-cleaning, the emotional baggage stored in our tank rears its head where it doesn't belong, causing us to react in ways that don't help and often hurt. The challenge is that our emotional response patters are deeply ingrained habits that are hard to see in ourselves. They can be easy to miss until they're pointed out to us or cause enough pain or chaos around us to get our attention. The most obvious place we'll see them is in the context of our more intimate relationships.

Cultivating healthy relationship dynamics means we look inward at our own patterns, preferences and tendencies instead of pointing our finger at everyone else. When we do, we can notice how our choices and behaviors led to our experiences, and that other people are never 100% to blame, even as we may want to blame them. All relationships involve an inter-dynamic. When we finally accept responsibility for our part of things, we reclaim the power to change them. And that is when our personal evolution can kick into high gear.

Remember that nothing changes if we change nothing.