I’ve always been empathic and intuitive. I’ve been able to sense subtle energies, especially emotional energies, and their sources, for as long as I can remember. I didn’t really begin to understand how this made me different from others until I was an adult and began having problems with friends for crossing their boundaries. When you’re naturally clairsentient you’re always aware of things about other people that they may prefer to remain hidden, even from themselves. I didn’t always know this. For a long time I didn’t understand that not everyone could sense the same energies from others that I could. As a consequence of my naïveté, I’ve gotten in trouble with friends more than once for waltzing into personal territory that they didn’t really want to discuss. I would get very confused and hurt by their angry reactions to my well-intended observations or questions about their personal lives. I’m still challenged by this at times since every friend has a different level of intimacy that they’re comfortable with.
There are three things have helped me to deal more positively with my abilities. The first is developing a personal sense of psychic etiquette, the second is learning to better understand different people’s comfort level with intimacy in relationships, and the third is strengthening my self esteem.
For me, the first rule of psychic etiquette is: don’t “read” people without their express permission. This sounds simple, but when your sense of empathy is as much a part of you as your eye color or sense of smell you first have to learn how to not-sense (or maybe more accurately how to ignore).
This leads to the second rule: when you sense something about someone without meaning to keep it to yourself unless and until you’re asked for your input. This is where much of the challenge of psych etiquette arises. Imagine yourself sitting in a room having coffee with a friend…no problem focusing. Now imagine that your friend is surrounded by a swirling whorl of colorful mist and bright lights and that standing around her are several other people listening intently to your conversation while some strange critter sits on her shoulder glaring at you…not so easy to focus.
The third rule of psychic etiquette (ethics) is arguable the most important, but is listed third as it comes into play after you have received the information: do no harm; consider carefully the impact that revealing the information may have on the wellbeing of your friend/client, yourself, and any others.
Learning about relationship intimacy has been hard. I grew up in a home in which I was allowed no emotional/psychological boundaries of my own; my mother wouldn’t allow it. It’s taken me decades to learn that boundary-less intimacy is not only bad social form its actually very unhealthy. However, both because I was raised boundary-less and because I crave emotional intimacy I still tend to slide into areas of my friends’ lives that they might prefer I step gently and respectfully around. Add to this the fact that each person is very different in both the level of intimacy they’re comfortable and the areas they are more or less willing to share and the fact that I’m both empathic and intuitive and you get a very confusing area of human interaction to try to navigate through. The fact that I’ve learned enough to be able to articulate this much is a huge accomplishment. I’m still learning.
The other thing that has helped me to deal with the repercussions of my occasional and unintentional boundary violations with friends is to work on my self esteem. So much of the pain and desperation I have experienced over the years in the face of angry friends has been from my own self questioning. When a friend says to you, “you don’t know what you’re talking about,” or, “you’re just projecting your own issues,” or worse, “I just do’t trust you!” it has a tendency to make you take a step back and question yourself (or at least I do). So, over the years I’ve had to toughen up (still working on this). I’ve had to learn to believe in my own abilities, believe in my own positive intentions, and believe that friendships can continue even in the face of conflict. I could write multiple posts on each of these topics and I’m sure that in the months and years to come I will. Stay tuned.
Bright Blessings!
Sarah
Read more about it:
Easy Psychic Etiquette for Everyone – what you as a non-psychic person can do to help those of us who are
Psychic Etiquette – Clairvoyance – how to deal with incoming information
