Updated 2022.08.24

This page contains affiliate links and this site earns from qualifying purchases made through these sponsored links. 

Can you pick up on emotions or vibes in a room? Do you feel different before and after you enter situations with lots of energy?

Chances are you are highly empathic, and these are just a few of the signs that learning to manage these abilities may be in your best interest. 

Managing your sensitivities can help you better predict your own emotions. This makes it easier for you to interact in public, and it can help you feel better about your healing and therapeutic gifts. 

Managing your gifts can help your gifts feel safe.  

People who feel the emotions of others are treasures in society because they tend to be the most caring, most supportive, and first available when someone is in trouble. 

So we want you to feel safe with your abilities. 

However, when empathic people get drained, they can feel cynical, moody, and be temper-prone. If you’ve found yourself behaving this way, not to worry, this isn’t the real you. This is only the you that’s absorbing everything in your environment. 

To get back to the real you, the you that everyone loves, it’s essential to learn how to manage your empathic abilities, which is possible. 

Whenever you start to feel yourself becoming moody, drained, or irrational, common signs of empathy overload, try a few of these mindful ideas -

4 Simple Tips To Manage Empathic Gifts

Use the S.O.A.R. Method

First outlined by Aletheia at LonerWolf, The S.O.A.R. Method is an emotional management technique that allows you to identify and separate from the energy you’re experiencing. 

Is this mine? This is an excellent question for the empath, and the S.O.A.R. Method can help you do precisely this -

SOAR stands for Surrender, Observe, Accept and Release: 

Surrender — Relax your body and surrender to whatever tension or discomfort you are feeling. 

Observe — Feel the emotions within you. Use your senses to build a tangible image of them. 

Accept — Accept this energy is moving through you. 

Release — As you observe and accept the feelings you have, and eventually, the feelings dissipate, notice how they move out of your field like a cloud.  

When you identify what energy you sense, it’s easier to move it and place it out of your auric field. Read the full technique at LonerWolf.com.

Experiment With A Few Different Empathic Shielding Techniques

The most common techniques you’ll see to manage an overactive emotional connection is cord-cutting, white light shielding, and animal guide protection.  

My favorite empathic visualization technique depends on the scenario, though I tend to like to do all three at once. 

Dr. Judith Orloff has a Jaguar Protection meditation for empaths I like, and I think it’s pretty accurate. 

The jaguar is the animal guide I often see come forward for the sensitive ones in my readings. I’ve even had a Jaguar Guide come forward for me in my spiritual meditations. 

I use the cord-cutting technique (available here) when a person keeps coming to mind who is calling up my energy. 

I also use a white light or bubble shielding technique (available here) when I can feel a lot of energy coming in. For example, when I feel an energy rush, and I don’t know where the energy is coming from. 

Use Essential Oils For Empaths

When your empathic abilities seem to need balancing, I like to lean on herbalism.

Nice essential oils for empaths include any oil that lifts the mood, purifies the energy field and puts you into a space of comfort and peace.

Open And Close Your Chakras

You can visualize clearing your chakras of negative energy by closing your eyes and taking a hand over each chakra, imagining light running through it. Then you visualize any negative energy (usually seen as black or grey clouds) releasing from that chakra. 

You can also move from the ground up through each chakra and watch it open and close. 

Opening them all the way up to big circles and then close down to the level you feel comfortable. I like to open up my chakras before closing them to let out any energy I’ve already absorbed. 

I have several guided meditations on how to do this in The Member Center Archives of this site. 

So To Recap, To Better Manage Your Empathic Gifts 

• Know you can manage the energy you take in through psychic and physical techniques

• Use observation methods to release the energy and let it work its way out of your energy field

• Try a few different visualization techniques and see if they work for you

• Don’t forget that essential oils can help too 

• Closing and opening your chakras can assist you in releasing the energy affecting you as well

Also, sometimes nothing is better than a little rest and some time away from the stress to manage your empathic gifts. 

I have another article on Strengthening Empathic Gifts, which focuses on shutting out energy sources and how this can help you manage your gifts, too. 

Empathy is a fantastic ability, but when we don't manage it, just like all things, it can work against us. 

As sponges, when we take too much in, we have to go in and clear the field occasionally. This restores our energy to who we truly are - loving, supportive human beings. As we do this, everyone around us benefits. 

If you notice yourself feeling snappy, moody or impatient, this is a sign you’re experiencing some empathetic overload.

Take note when this happens, and try one or a few of the techniques above. Also take note of who or what situations create these feelings.

Self-care is essential for the empath. Even if all you can do is inhale some essential oils once in a while, little boosts like this build-up, and make all the difference. 

Even the smallest actions can help you rise to be the beautiful empathic caregiver, healer, therapist or teacher you are destined to be. 

For more resources like this, join The Membership!

Other Articles You May Enjoy:  

• Empathy Development // How To Develop Your Empathic Abilities //

• 13 Signs You're An Empath And What It Means

• Strengthening Empathic Gifts

• I Am An Empath. Does That Mean I Can Sense Spirit, Too?

The statements regarding the emotional uses of essential oils in this article have not been evaluated by the FDA and represent personal experience and opinion only.

As a Plant Therapy affiliate, this site earns from qualifying purchases made through links on this page.