Best Self Magazine

Survival Tips for Empaths and Sensitive People

empaths, highly sensitive people
Photograph by Meiko Arquillos

Survival strategies for empaths to embrace their highly sensitive nature without absorbing other people’s negative energy

Like many empathic children, I never fit in.Growing up, I felt like an alien on earth waiting to be transported back to my real home in the stars. I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time by myself. I had no one to relate to who could understand my sensitivities. No one seemed to be like me.

I remember sitting in my front yard looking up at the universe and hoping that a spaceship would take me home.

My parents, who were both physicians (I come from a family of twenty-five physicians) told me, “Sweetheart, toughen up; get a thicker skin,” which I didn’t want or even know how to do. I couldn’t go to crowded malls or parties; I’d walk in feeling fine and walk out exhausted, dizzy, anxious, or suffering from some ache or pain I didn’t have before.

What I didn’t know back then was that everyone has a subtle

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