Why Do Empaths Absorb Energy?

Energy absorption is one of our biggest challenges, but in order to learn how to stop taking on the energy of others, we first need to understand why empaths absorb energy in the first place.

We don’t take on the energy of others simply because we are empaths. In fact, being an empath doesn’t imply that we inevitably absorb energy. We may have the tendency to it, but we are not doomed to it.

Energy absorption depends on various factors, and most of them are in our hands to shift. That’s part of our journey of healing and empowerment. Let's explore why empaths absorb energy.

Reasons why empaths absorb energy:

Our empathic nature

An empath is a highly sensitive, highly intuitive, highly perceptive person who can feel the energy and emotions of others. We experience and navigate the world through our intuition, our powerful sensitivity, and a felt sense of people and situations.

However, because of our empathic nature, we not only feel but also can and tend to absorb the energy, emotions, experiences, and even physical symptoms of others - If we are not present in our body and grounded in our power.

Being highly sensitive

Empaths are highly sensitive people. We are sensitive to energy. We feel everything. We innately sense what's going on around us without even trying thanks to our powerful sensitivity.

When we are in our power and connected to our intuition, our sensitivity can give us valuable information that can help us navigate the world better. But when we are disconnected from ourselves and we are not in our power, our sensitivity can overwhelm us and leave us vulnerable to absorbing energy.

Being overly empathic

Being empathic is a gift, but being overly empathic is a problem.

Our empathic nature allows us to intuitively feel and sense the energy around us, but when we go from feeling energy to absorbing it, we shift from being empathic to overly empathic.

One thing is to understand and relate to what another person is feeling (which is what empathy is) and another thing is to take on their feelings and experiences as if they were our own – which is what absorbing energy really is.

When we go from attentively listening to how someone is feeling about an experience with care, understanding, empathy, and detachment to taking on their experience, feeling like it was happening to us, and trying to solve their problems for them; it means we are absorbing their energy and we have now moved from being empathic to overly empathic.

Merging of energy

When we start taking on the feelings, energy, and experiences of others into our body, it becomes hard to separate what is ours and what is not. It is like our energy gets enmeshed with their energy – Basically, our energy field “merges” with the other person’s energy field.

Merging refers to the experience of taking on the emotions, feelings, and experiences of others as our own. Once the other person’s energy is in our body, it basically becomes ours to take care of it; whether that means to clear it, give it back, or to explore why we absorbed it and what it is trying to tell us.

When empaths absorb energy, it means that something is off. This is valuable information that tells us that we might be out of alignment, disconnected, ungrounded, exhausted, out of center, giving our power away, or it may be showing us that something needs healing.

Not being fully present in our body

For empaths, merging occurs when we are not fully present in our body. When our energy is not inhabiting the fullness of our body, especially our lower body and lower chakras, we are leaving a vacancy for other people's energy to take over.

When we are not grounded in our body and we are carrying a bunch of unhealed wounds in our lower chakras, our energy tends to lift up in the body and we end up living mostly in our heads and even hearts. From here, we can function in our daily lives, but we are leaving free space in our lower body to absorb other people’s energy.

We tend to disconnect from our lower body as a result of a possible root chakra contraction, energy blockages and imbalances in our lower chakras, and unhealed wounds and trauma. Our energy moves up in our body where it feels safer to stay.

Lack of boundaries

Empaths' energetic field is extra sensitive to energy, without proper boundaries, we are left susceptible to taking on other people’s energy.

Setting and maintaining emotional, physical, vocal, and energetic boundaries is crucial for our wellbeing as empaths.

Throughout our work of awakening, healing, and empowerment, we will learn how to set inner and outer boundaries that not only will protect us but will keep our energy in our body and prevent the absorption of other people’s energy.

Not being in our power

When we don’t know who we are and we are disconnected from our Soul, we are not in our power. When our energy is not present in our body and we are not using the full power of our chakras, we are leaving us susceptible to other people’s energy to take over.

When we are not in our power, the energy of anybody can come in and create havoc in our being. We must reclaim our power in order to stop absorbing energy.

Childhood patterns

The pattern of absorbing other people's energy often starts in childhood before we learn how to set emotional, physical, and energetic boundaries.

As highly sensitive kids, we didn't know how to handle all this overwhelming energy coming at us, especially if we were not raised by people who understood our experience and taught us how to deal with energy.

Without knowing how to set and maintain boundaries, it is very easy for other people's energy to cross into our energetic field and into our body.

One of the reasons we might have learned to take on other people's energy is because we noticed that by doing it, we could calm them down and their energy would stop overwhelming us. We might have also realized that by helping or pleasing them, they would get closer and give us love.

Also, if we were raised in an environment without clear boundaries, where the energy was overwhelming, people were projecting emotions onto us, we were not able to be ourselves, we didn't feel safe, or felt like we belong, we might have learned to absorb energy in order to cope and keep us safe.

There is so much more to unpack as far as childhood patterns and their relationship with our present empathic experience, for now what is important to understand is that the pattern of absorbing energy, which probably started in childhood, got ingrained as a default setting in our energy system, leading to unhealthy patterns that influence every area of our lives.

It basically means that absorbing energy became a subconscious and automatic pattern of behavior for us. Even when we are not intending to absorb energy, our energy system is responding in the way that it was wired to do so.

We must undo this unhealthy pattern by re-programing and re-parenting the energy in our lower chakras, for us to be able to stop absorbing the energy of others.

As you can see there are many reasons why empaths absorb energy (there are more that we’ll explore) and to stop doing it, we need to go deeper in each one of them and do the inner work, which we will do together.

With Love & Light,

Angela

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