navigating feelings of unworthiness as an empath

The doors for Worthy Women Rise: the collective experience, the rebranded version of my popular Own Your Spotlight group program, is now open and I am feeling all the feels. This program is the most expressed, grounded project I have created yet and it thrills me to no end that I will be spending four months exploring and healing the worthiness wound with a handful of women in just a few weeks.

Speaking of the worthiness wound, one of the feels that is definitely coming up and accompanying my journey of birthing this newest iteration of my signature program into the world is the feeling of trepidation, fear, and unworthiness that stems from a tiny voice that asks me, “who do you think you are?”

I know I am not the only one that carries with them some variant of this thought. It goes something like this: "There are people who are much more knowledgeable than me doing what I want to do, with the efficiency and platform that I can’t offer, so what’s the point of putting our stuff out there and trying?"

On the one hand, we know this belief, and the feelings that come with is, aren't based on reality. We know that we are the only ones doing this work the way we are doing it and that if we have the calling to do this work, then we have to honor it and trust that our unique voice will make the difference it’s supposed to make.

And yet, that knowing doesn’t seem to internalize into the type of unshakeable confidence that we hope it would. So we find ourselves constantly battling ourselves, fluctuating between doing it despite the voice and feeling like a fraud, and believing the voice and judging ourselves for believing it {this often times happens late at night when our guards are down} and spiraling into self-pity. We find ourselves overwhelmed with emotions.

And being overwhelmed with emotions, particularly around beliefs that we sense are outdated, is to put plainly, exhausting. While the appearance of such beliefs are of no surprise {as you pursue the path of growth, all sorts of internalized beliefs that teach you to play safe get activated}, it’s the emotions that accompany the beliefs can seem the most debilitating, especially as empaths... often leading us to emotionally shut down, become extremely reactive and erratic, hurt others, and hurt ourselves.

Navigating emotions are somewhat of a specialty of mine, and I know the terrain of emotions as a sensitive woman well.

First and foremost, whenever I start the conversation of emotions I begin by sharing that we live in an emotionally illiterate culture, a culture that emphasizes logos over pathos, that suggests that logic is the superior form of decision making, that looks down upon emotional people as erratic and unreliable. So it's actually not that the inherent nature of emotions are overwhelming, it's that in our masculine dominated society, we have never been given the tools to handle emotions.

If we WERE given the tools to not only honor our emotions but also to use them to guide our lives, we would see that emotions are in it of themselves neutral. It's the meaning we've assigned emotions that make them "good" or bad." And again, because we are not taught how to navigate our emotions {because our caregivers were not taught and their caregivers were not taught}, it's little wonder that we label any emotion that hurts our chances of receiving love as "bad." Now, when they appear, not only do we not know what to do with them, but we also immediately jump to the conclusion that it means something is wrong.

The irony here is that psychological studies after studies show that we actually make a tremendous amount of decisions from our emotions.

So on the one hand we aren't taught how to leverage our emotions and on the other we still end up being driven by our emotions. No wonder we feel so overwhelmed and confused. What we don't know, we make an enemy of, and the cost of making an enemy of our emotions is our worthiness.

It makes sense then that since we aren't taught anything about emotions, we shift to what we do know - controlling our mind. If our emotions stem from beliefs, we just have to change our mindset, and then the emotion will go away! And while this can work on a shallow level, engrained beliefs are held in place by a collection of memories and experiences, much of which are in our unconscious mind and hard to access. That's where emotions come in. Our emotions act as a portal, gifting us access to the deep recess of the mind, showing us what we are perceiving and offering us insights into what we can do. It's this two pronged approach, leveraging both our beliefs and our emotions, that can lead to lasting transformation. Like weeding a garden, cleaning up what is visible is only half the work.

The cost of pushing away our emotions:

• Cultivate distrust of ourselves and our impulses

• Prevent us from actually addressing the issues and experience radical healing

• Alienation from the feminine, including our intuition

• Perpetuates the exact beliefs we are trying to change like the worthiness wound

• Creates behaviors that are erratic, unstable, and hurtful

• Unable to deal with difficult situations as they arise

The good news is, when we can befriend and tend to our emotions, we slowly start to step into wholeness, and with that comes the experience of full spectrum living. The more we welcome the uncomfortable emotions, the more we experience the ones we want more of, like joy and happiness. When we push a part of ourselves away, we end up pushing away the good stuff too.

I want to add one thing here for those of us who consider ourselves empaths or highly sensitive. Usually {though not always}, empaths and sensitive people become empaths/sensitive due to childhood trauma. Because of our inability to cope with what was going on as children, we develop empathetic skills and cultivate super sensitivity to their environment as a means of survival. Being attune to what is happening around us alerts us of danger.

Now as adults, sensitive people feel everything but because we haven't been taught how to actually feel and listen to our emotions, we tend to be the most disconnected from them. Our greatest gift can often feel like a curse. If we don't learn how to use our skills of empathy/sensitivity, we find ourselves feeling overwhelmed, shutting down frequently and wanting to numb out. 

I will be going in depth on emotions in my Worthy Women Rise program, so if you're interested in learning more about it here.

It's a beautiful thing, when we are no longer afraid to feel and know how to be with our feelings in a way that informs us rather than collapses us. We find that we become more in tune to the flow of life, more equipped to handle difficult moments, and more worthy and sovereign. We are no longer trapped in the patriarchal narrative that we are inherently broken and that as women we are the problem because we feel more.

One of the greatest ways we can begin to understand emotions is by knowing that when we are feeling overwhelmed by emotions, odds are it's because you are not actually feeling them, you are mentalizing the emotion. Having a mental experience of an emotion is not at all the same thing as actually giving yourself permission to feel the emotion. An emotion passes through the body in less than two minutes. So if you are feeling something beyond that time frame, it's because you are perpetuating the emotion through your mind. Again, you are not actually feeling the emotion, you are having a mental experience of it. By mental experience I mean analyzing, critiquing, judging, assessing, running a narrative, telling a story about why you are justified in feeling what you are feeling. 

Instead, what we want to do is drop in and experience the emotion in our body. Start by feeling how it truly feels in your physical body to experience happiness and excitement and love. Creating a container with the easier to experience emotions pave the way to feel into the harder emotions like sadness, anger, resentment, fear, etc.

As you play with feeling into your emotions in your physical body, I want to make sure to emphasize that emotions are data not directions. Emotions tell us how we are perceiving the situation, consciously or unconsciously. It does NOT tell us what is actually happening. Just because you feel slighted doesn't mean you are being slighted. Just because you feel shame does not mean you are being shamed. This difference is critical to understand. Because it brings the power back to you. Next time you feel hurt, explore first why you feel hurt and what is coming up, rather than react and blame the other person for your hurt, as if your truth was The Truth. This right here is the whole work. It's easier said than done, but when you can do this, you will be free.

Please understand, I am not saying that everyone is a mirror and that no one should be held accountable for their actions. Relationships are a dance, both parties are responsible for the exchange. However, what would it look like if we collected all of the data, honored what it is telling us and sat with what is coming up before responding? Reacting to your emotions is another way we push it away and place it as a burden on someone else's shoulder. It is still not actually feeling our emotions.

I truly believe our emotions are our source of power, offering us insight, guidance and healing, if we allow them. Dismantling the ways we've been indoctrinated to treat our emotions and find a new way of relating to ourselves is critical to our rise.

So yes, I am feeling all the feels right now, including the feelings that come from the worthiness wound. But because of the tools I now have in my tool belt, I don't make it mean something about me and my work. I don't act on it like it's a valid source of input. As I untangle my power from these feelings, I create the space to address the worthiness wound directly. That space of not taking things personally and being able to sit with what is coming up, is what allows us to find freedom and wholeness. It's the most incredible journey of a lifetime.

To your worth,