Today, we’re diving into the empathic, intuitive survival guide for healthy relationships. I’ll share with you what I identify as common pitfalls that sensitive individuals often encounter, such as low self-esteem, over-giving, and barriers to connecting with the universe and their spirit guides.

This topic is rooted not only in my personal journey of discovering that my compassionate, empathic superpower, while a strength, could also be my Achilles Heel.

Through over a decade of working closely with clients, I’ve observed these same patterns. These traps can be toxic to our spirit, keeping us in relationships where we feel stagnant and pressured to constantly strive harder.

So let’s get into it.

The very first one, and this one is huge, is understanding too much.

When we are empathic, intuitive people, oftentimes, what we are good at is seeing the spirit of people, their wonderful gifts, what they have to offer, and how often they need healing and support.

Red for a red flag. A huge red flag.

When I say understanding too much, what that boils down to is that we can offer an excuse for bad, toxic, unhealthy behavior by understanding why they acted that way.

Maybe you got into a fight, and they attacked your character. But then all of a sudden, you’re like, Well, I understand that they had a hard day at work and they came from a traumatic background and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The list goes on. It’s never-ending. There always can be a reason why.

Now that isn’t really compassion or empathy. It’s using our intellect to rationalize our feelings or reactions, or even our boundaries. So be aware of understanding too much.

My therapist, Ana Maria, who I love, (shout out Ana Maria!) once said, Understanding doesn’t create change.

So, rather than trying to understand the people we’re in a relationship with and why they do things, we should focus on establishing clear boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not.

Second one comes a lot in fighting, disagreements, conflict, and a lot of empathic, intuitive people, really shy away from it. They find it scary and overwhelming.

But conflict actually breeds intimacy because it allows us to know what we’re pushing up against.

This also means that we have to have some rules of the road.

What I mean by that is making sure that any disagreement does not include attack of character or is malicious intent.

If you have a family member, a partner, anyone who attacks your character instead of their behavior, how they made you feel, that is an absolute NO. Time for a boundary. Walk away. Use your right and left foot. That is a do not pass go. No matter what, no matter why.

That is crucial to consider when establishing rules for conflict because in healthy relationships, we should be able to disagree.

For myself, some of my rules for conflict are:

One, not attacking my character.

Two, when I feel overwhelmed during a conflict, I find it helpful to take a timeout. I let my partner or whoever I’m with know that I need a moment to collect and organize my thoughts. This gives me the space to work through the disagreement calmly and reach a resolution.

That can be like, “Hey, I need a five minute timeout. I’m going to set my timer and I will come back and we are not talking.”

The reason why this is so important is that in conflict, what happens is our heart rate raises and actually our ability to listen to each other narrows. And with empaths we can often have a lot of anxiety, a lot of emotion that really surges through us. 

So to have practices that are self loving ahead of time, knowing what it is that you want, will help you better navigate any and all relationships.

So this brings me to number three. Not seeing your partner or relationship in rose colored glasses.

Oftentimes we can be idealists and see the best in people, but that doesn’t allow us to be grounded in reality and be discerning when we can only see the good in people.

That is a way that we are actually trying to people please, where we negate our own experiences and end up in toxic relationships that help feed low self esteem, low self-worth, feeling that we have to try harder.

In reality we don’t have to try it harder. We have to try less hard.

So in taking off the rose colored glasses to see what is in present time. Your intuition and your spirit resides in the present moment. The more that you can be present and discerning with love, (It’s not judgment, it’s discernment.) the more that we can make choices founded in self-love, in all of our relationships.

And finally, a major pitfall I often see with empathic and intuitive people is taking on too much responsibility.

What I mean by that is when something goes wrong or somebody is having an issue, let’s say your partner can’t pay their rent or a girlfriend is having a hard time. That empathic, intuitive place can get into people pleasing where we want to fix, being on edge, solve other people’s problems because they’re uncomfortable and we feel the discomfort in our own bodies.

So instead of having a practice like grounding ourself byputiing our hand in our heart and one hand on our belly (my favorite tool of all time), or even just taking a breath, we take on their problems. We hope that by doing that, we can give ourselves relief by trying to control the situation.

So don’t be overly responsible. Pay attention. What is my half of the yard?

And before agreeing to anything, check in.

Is this a generous heart, centered Yes, with no strings attached?

Am I trying to fix, manage, solve, manage somebody else’s emotions?

Then that is a big red flag. So stop, pause, and take a moment.

I hope that you enjoyed some of these really big flags and tools around navigating relationships as empathic, intuitive person. I know that for myself it has been a learning curve, but one that has been wonderful because it’s given me a lot more self-worth, grounding and has improved not only the quality of my relationships but life overall.

So yeah, leave me a comment. Let me know what you think. What’s your favorite tool?

I cannot wait to hear from you and I will see you next week!

Sending you all my love,

Sonia