A Survival Guide for Empaths: 7 Practices to Protect Yourself

Are you an empath? Do you struggle with flying emotions and negative energy? Feelings and emotions are intense and everywhere, that is why I am here sharing these 7 survival tips to protect ourselves so together we thrive in our lives. When we can tune into knowing, being an empath is a great gift not a hinderance to us.

What Is an Empath?

Being an empath is someone who feels deeply for their surroundings. It’s when you are around certain people and you can’t help but take on their anxiety, fear, worry, or even excitement. Certain people make you want to crawl out of your skin or sink into their serenity. Or surviving being an empath is when you go outside and can feel the vibration radiating off of nature or the animals around us. Feeling like we might explode can be an everyday feeling as an empath.

So we feel deeply, emotions can overwhelm us, and energy can make us feel like we can’t take it anymore. But exhale, because I am here as an empath who has learned how to cope by protecting my energy from negativity and low vibe people and the everyday rush of energy.

An Empaths Survival Guide with 7 Practices to Protect Yourself

From one empath to another I share my heart with you and the insight I have gained over the last thirty-eight years. Exhale, it is going to be okay, you can learn how to move from surviving to thriving with these 7 practices below.

Like I say in my book, AWAKEN YOU From Pain to Healing a Woman’s Way of Waking Up to Her Life, life is a practice not a perfect. When we can embrace this truth is when we begin living.

1. The Practice of Grounding Your Energy

Grounding your energy can be done as you find a comfortable seat, lay down or stand as you please. Exhale, if you are in a safe place, close your eyes. Imagine as you exhale roots growing down from your feet and legs. With these roots send them down and allow them to dig into the dirt and grow deeper and deeper down until they reach the core of the earth.

Sometimes it can be helpful to imagine the earth with a fourth cut out of it, so the layers of the earth are exposed. If you need help here look up an image of the earth core to give you some inspiration. You can also imagine your energy or a light that connects from you to shoot like an arrow down into the earth’s core. Here you can affirm or mantra “I am rooted into the earth. It is safe here. I am grounded.”

2. The Practice of Protecting Your Energy with Intention

This survival guide for empaths is here to help you learn how to protect your energy, especially from negativity. Protecting your energy can be performed with an intention.

Set the intention, “I intend to protect my energy. My energy is mine and nothing can penetrate or permeate my energy bubble.” Intentions are everything, when you intend something, feel what it would feel like for that intention to be your reality.

3. The Practice of Meditation or Visualization

This practice involves the exhale and finding a comfortable seat or laying down and getting comfortable. When you are in a safe place focus on your breath. This most likely with be the most challenging part. Or perhaps you will have those practices where you are floating around up in the eithers and coming back down is the last thing you want to do.

Meditation can mean many different things, when it comes to surviving being an empath meditation can allow us to tap into what we are feeling and be with it. Here all of the feelings and even sneaky thoughts will do their best to take you over. But it is up to you how you choose to handle it all. The more we resist the more things will persist. Exhale, unclench your jaw, and allow.

On the next inhale allow whatever is happening inside of your body to happen. You can tune back into your intention to get rooted, to help protect your energy from negativity, or to protect yourself from whatever you need protection from.

Visualization can be a powerful tool to help you see within the eye of your mind and allow it to unfold. Within yourself, imagine you calm and walking through your day, afternoon, and evenings into bedtime with ease. Seeing your energy staying with you and others keeping theirs to themselves.

4. The Practice of a Protective Bubble

From the previous practice do whatever it takes to get you to a space of settling in with yourself. Remember it is a practice not a perfect. Showing up is well over seventy percent of the work.

Exhale and set another intention to create a protective energy bubble around you. If you are someone who needs to add movement in you can extend pointer fingers directly in front of you on the ground and move them around your body or until you can bring them touching them behind you. And then grow and send the bubble up and over your body to the top of your head. This is your safe space, and nothing can come in that you don’t want to.

Or make an energy light. Close your eyes, tune into your breath. Inhale, start at your heart, move to your entire torso, and then neck, to head, and feel into arms, hands, legs, and feet. Now imagine a glowing light, (whatever color resonates with you). A glowing white light or a golden light, or a lavender light can bring a sense of calm and peace. See this light begin at the top of the head and allow it to spiral all the way until it reaches the toes. Allow this color to be safe and bring the thoughts or intention to allow this to be a protecting energy.

This energy will allow you to keep your energy, emotions, and feelings for yourself. And you will only allow in what you want. You can imagine it like a shield, or a bank window that closes. When your energy is protected nothing can get in.

5.The Practice of Crystals

Crystals are an empaths soul sister because the healing and natural vibration can help keep us protected when we feel like we can hardly survive in this chaotic world. Healers all over the world, including myself use crystals to help heal ailments of the mind, body, and spirit. Crystals can be held, worn, or placed around our living and sleeping space to help protect our energies.

The following crystals are the most powerful when it comes to helping protect an empath’s energy: Amythyst, Laborite, Clear Quartz, Selenite, Black Tourmaline, Obsidian, Hematite, Tigers Eye, and Himalia Salt Stone. Many of these you can find in a local source or do your research and ask and search for what is authentic crystals. Be careful online because some of the giant mass-producing sites can trick you and sell you fake crystals made out of plastics or resins which will not be a helper.

There are many crystals that can help protect your energy and help heal many aspects of your mind, body, and soul. Be intuitive here. Notice if when you hold or wear crystals (like in malas or stone pendants, or bracelets) if the energy is light and good feeling, this crystal is for you. If it feels heavy and like you want to throw it across the room, you may not need this energy in your life right now.

6. The Practice of Clearing Your Energy

Here you can set an intention to clear your energy, you can use those lovely crystals to aid in clearing. Crystals like Clear Quartz, Selenite, and Himalia Salt Stones are excellent friends to empaths. I wear mala necklaces everyday (crystal and stone, hand strung and tied) as well as selenite on a pendant as a necklace and have a clear quartz crystal mala bracelet to help keep my energy clear and help me protect my energy. When I forget to put on my lovely helpers, I feel scatter brained and like an emotional wreck.

Saging is another effective way to clear your energy. Native Americans were the founders of this incredible bush that grows outside of my home in the mountains of Colorado. Sage is known to remove or ward off negative energies, thoughts, and emotions. Palo Santo is a sacred wood used to replenish our energies and align to positive vibes. If you begin with sage you can finish with Palo Santo to align your energy and protect your empath self.

Signing bowls are an instant energy clearing because the vibration emitted from the bowl. These vibrations are created when the mallet is chimed in or outside of the bowl, or when the mallet is ran in a circular motion repeatedly will shift and cleanse energy in a matter of a minute.

And of course, water, a shower, or a bath (with Epsom salts) will shift and clear your energy. This is the most obvious, but we can’t always jump in the shower when our empath self is feeling overstimulated with the energy surrounding us.

7. The Practice of Listening to Your Intuition

The best resource we have is ourselves when we are in alignment. Listening to our intuition can feel few and far if we are drowning in the world of flying emotions, but with the help of these practices, we can learn how to listen to our intuition.

Our intuition is the first thought, the first “hit” we receive. Not the third, fifth, tenth or seventieth. Trusting yourself and if you feel good around certain people or experiences this is a sign, this is your person or there is something you want to pay attention to here. If you feel the negativity and feel emotionally drained, limit your time and make healthy boundaries or just say NO. You can read more about making healthy boundaries at the end of this blog.

As an empath you are an essential part of this world, the world needs you and all you have to give it! Remember life is a practice not a perfect. There will be those days where we feel in alignment and can keep our distance from the negativity of the world, and others we need to crawl back into bed and sleep to replenish our energy. Use your practices from above and come back to this survival guide because it is here as a friend to you.

You can do this; I know you can thrive in your life when you acknowledge this gift you have been given of being an empath and how it is a part of your life’s purpose.

I love you, I am grateful for you.

Love,

Shelly