I too was an empathic child, but unlike Murray I didn't know that my feelings were related to anyone else's. When I was told I didn't have a “thick enough skin” or I was “too sensitive” and needed to toughen up, I bought it. My friends couldn't wait for the weekends to hit the shopping malls or to go to parties, but I was never as up for it as they were. Since at times I felt overloaded in large groups of people (I could never predict when), ordinary pleasurable activities could turn into a nightmare for me. At these moments, I would try to clamp down hard and block everything out, afraid that if I weakened my guard the intensity might blow me to pieces. I was a gigantic sponge, unknowingly absorbing the pains and emotions of people around me, often without even the thinnest membrane between us. I could be sitting on a bus and suddenly get a dull ache in my lower back, never guessing that it was coming from the elderly man sitting beside me. Or I might be in the checkout line in the market, standing too close to a woman who was sad, and not know why I felt like crying.
I had become a human chameleon, a condition ingeniously portrayed in Woody Allen's
Zelig.
In this film, Zelig has such a weak identity that in order to be liked he actually turns into whomever he talks with. During the film, he becomes a Nazi SS officer, a Chinese laundry man, a Hassidic rabbi, a mariachi singer in Mexico, and an obese fellow tipping the scales at 250 pounds.
It wasn't until I started working in Thelma's lab that I spoke with other psychic empaths, many of whom were healers. I was stunned to find out that there was a name for what I'd been feeling, and that such ability could be put to good use. For so long, it had felt like a third arm I didn't know what to do with. But empathy was second nature to these healers. They were so accepting and nonchalant about it that for the first time in my experience it didn't seem strange.
One afternoon I had lunch with a wonderful woman with a waist-long gray braid who was in her early eighties. She had been a psychic empath since childhood. A psychotherapist and healer with a thriving practice, she used her talent to diagnose patients by sensing their ailments in her own body. Even so, the symptoms she picked up didn't stick to her. Through meditation, she had learned how to become empathically attuned to another person's physical and emotional state but not take them on.
“How do you do it?” I asked her, fascinated.
“I simply see myself as a channel,” she said. “I let the feelings flow through me without overidentifying with them.”
This sounded reasonable at the time, but it has taken years to really understand and apply what she meant. An astute therapist once pointed out that the qualities I absorbed from other people were the ones I wasn't clear about in myself. Take anger, for instance, which sometimes creeps up on me unnoticed, or may simmer just beneath the surface. If, however, I remain oblivious for too long, my psychic empathy lets me know by kicking in full force. Then I not only sense other people's anger more keenly, I also attract it: Everyone around me now seems angry about something, and the negativity registers in me. But once I resolve the source of my own anger, the “hook” is gone, thus I no longer pick up these feelings as readily in others or empathically take them on.
Magic? Not really. The most basic principle of psychic empathy, the secret for you to disengage from a barrage of unwanted emotions, is to remain as conscious of your motivations as possible. Don't allow depression, fear, anger, and resentment to build, thus unwittingly magnetizing them toward you. The clearer you are emotionally, the less problematic empathy becomes. The difference is that when you're at a restaurant and a disturbing wave of angst comes your way from the man in the next booth, it won't glom onto you and sap your energy. The energy drain comes only if your buttons are pushed. As long as you don't resist or engage the angst in any way, you're able simply to notice it and say “Ah-ha. Isn't this interesting”—and then let it pass right on by.
But what about physical symptoms? How can you avoid taking these on? This is a little different. It's true that if you're prone to migraines you'll also tend to notice them empathically in others, can probably spot them coming a mile away. This generally applies to any physical vulnerability you have. And yet you may also pick up many ailments that you have never personally experienced. The art is to learn how to detach from them.
Meditation can help. Your body will be your guide. By centering yourself through the daily discipline of sitting, you can learn to become a neutral witness to your sensations. If you feel a slight pain in your back, notice it coming and going like clouds drifting in the sky. Don't resist or overemphasize it. Simply observe. The point is to get distance from the pain while still remaining aware of it, as if watching a movie. This gives you the flexibility to choose whether or not to engage the feeling. It may take you a while to catch on, but give yourself time. By not latching on to the pain or tensing up, it becomes more fluid, softer, may even disappear. There's great freedom in this.
My friend Hay den didn't even realize she was being zapped by psychic empathy until her husband pointed it out. Hayden is one of the kindest people I know, unselfishly supportive of friends and family. She loves to give, but there was a downside. When speaking with someone who was anxious, depressed, or suffering physical pain, Hayden noticed, she'd also start feeling the same way. Drained, she often needed hours to shake off the discomfort.
Hayden's husband, an intuitive himself, was concerned. He suggested that she might be picking up people's feelings through psychic empathy. Recognizing this to be true, Hayden could begin to deal with it. She treasured being empathic—it allowed her to love with all her heart, to be present to the fullest. She didn't want to give that up. But to preserve her energy, she could no longer shoulder everybody else's worries. It wasn't good for her or them. Hayden solved this dilemma by reenvisioning her style of giving. Besides meditation, a strategic change in attitude can allow you to detach. Hayden knew intellectually that she wasn't responsible for other people's pain, nor could she fix them. But though she had tried to act on this understanding before, now, given her predicament, she really had to live it. For Hayden, this was the key. It gave her permission to back off a little, to be just as caring but from a more centered place so that she could use her empathy well and enjoy it.
In my work, empathy gives me a head start on what my patients are feeling and allows me to track them, not only mentally but in my own body. When I open the door to the waiting room to greet a patient, I can often sense how she's doing before she even says a word. It's as if invisible tendrils are protruding from her body all the way over to me. We touch each other, though not physically. So delicate is this sensation, that it reminds me of how a butterfly feels, wings still fluttering imperceptibly when it alights on the palm of my hand.
The heightened sensitivity that goes along with being a psychic empath can be a mixed blessing. Some people never get to the good part because it seems almost too much to bear. I believe that many agoraphobics are terrified of leaving their homes because they're actually undiagnosed psychic empaths. They can't tolerate crowds, and will go to any lengths to avoid them. Being on busy streets, in hectic department stores, in jammed elevators, or packed like sardines in an airplane is overwhelming, so much so that they must get out, and fast. Surrounded by throngs of people, there's just too much psychic stimulation. That's why they feel safer at home, driven into isolation simply to survive.
But not all psychic empathy is this extreme. More commonly, it appears in our everyday lives in subtler ways. I'm friendly with an elderly Jewish couple, Bertha and Saul, who have been married for over fifty years. Constant companions, they're so close it's as if they live in each other's skin. Sometimes this drives them crazy. Their rhythms have so blended that they are a single unit and respond to each other viscerally. If he gets a pain in his hip, she feels it. “What's the matter with you?” she asks him without his uttering a word. Then there are times when Saul detects a recognizable pang in his heart and says to his wife, “Don't deny it, Bertha. You're longing for your sister to call.” “You're such a know-it-all,” she snaps back, annoyed by how easily he can see right through her. Because they've lived together for so many years, they've become as one.
This also happens with many parents and children. A patient of mine who had a five-week-old baby boy woke up in the middle of the night, her throat constricted, gasping for breath. As a new mother, before even thinking of herself, her first instinct was to check on her baby. Panicked, she rushed into the nursery and discovered that her son had a terrible cough, was burning up with fever. The moment my patient identified the problem, her normal breathing returned, as is sometimes true of psychic empathy, and she immediately placed an emergency call to her pediatrician. Empathically developing her son's symptoms turned out to be a godsend. It grabbed her attention, enabled her to act quickly and get him the treatment he needed right away.
My friend Liz was so empathically linked to her cousin, who was in Cedars-Sinai hospice dying of AIDS, that she felt his highs and lows as if they were her own. It wasn't that she tried to do this. They were simply that close. Raised in the same neighborhood in nearby Hancock Park, they were inseparable as children. Before he got sick they talked at least once a day and told each other everything. She had been at his side for each beat of the illness, sharing it all, down to the smallest details. Whether she was at the hospital or across town, at moments she would get nauseous, dizzy, or depressed just as he did. Toward the end, she also experienced waves of unusual peace. Of course, this wasn't always comfortable for Liz. But she viewed such intense response as a sign of their deep affection and wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Love is like that, she realized—this was its true beauty. Their mutual connection allowed Liz to fully be there for her cousin when he needed her, to participate lovingly in his death.
The communal state of psychic empathy feels more natural to me than the arbitrary walls and self-imposed prison cells we construct to isolate ourselves from one another. When you first begin to recognize empathy in yourself, you may need help acclimating. Don't hesitate to consult someone who is knowledgeable about the challenges involved. This may be a therapist, a skilled psychic, a meditation teacher, or a healer—it's best if they have had some direct experience in this area themselves. Once you're no longer frightened by psychic empathy, you can view it as a seamless extension of love with the potential to unite us all. Its very existence suggests a oneness, a brotherhood and a sisterhood that each of us can embrace. A deeper compassion arises in you along with an appreciation for our similarities.
I believe there is an invisible network connecting all sentient beings. But it lies dormant until the psychic acts as a generator to activate and enliven it. Our everyday lives provide a potent backdrop, a laboratory of sorts in which we can experiment with a plethora of possibilities. A light touch, a sense of play, and an abiding respect will invite the psychic in and show us the lay of the land. The psychic needs to be neither exaggerated nor diminished, but rather recast in the context of the modern world so that we may integrate it. We must recognize it in the much-discounted miracles of simple things in our daily life. Then a marriage between the mystical and the ordinary will part the veils of the mists, so that Avalon may once again exist—not as an enchanted remote isle, but alive and pulsing in our streets and in our hearts.
T
HE
W
ELL
-B
ALANCED
P
SYCHIC
Humility is the surest sign of strength.
—T
HOMAS
M
ERTON
Rows of glaring hot lights made everything in the television studio seem unreal. I was sitting in the audience next to a woman whose sister claimed that she'd been cursed by a witch, waiting my turn to appear on a talk show focusing on psychic fraud. Already onstage were the cursed woman, a well-dressed attorney's wife; her current psychic, a flamboyant bleached blonde with an excess of cleavage; and a 300-pound man—also a clairvoyant—who owned a psychic phone line that doubled as a sex line during off-hours.
I was mortified. When I agreed to appear on the show I had imagined a panel of regular people, each of us describing the potential for fraud. Not this circus! Worse, I was to appear last as the so-called expert, commenting on what each person had said, tying the show together. Recognizing the awful spot I was in, the cursed woman's sister squeezed my hand sympathetically and sighed, saying, “Honey, good luck.”
Until that moment, even with all the work I had done, my exposure to psychics who were such blatant caricatures was minimal. It mattered less to me at this point whether they were authentic or not. What really upset me was the flaky, off-the-wall stereotype they projected, one major reason why reputable people mistrust psychics. Of course looks aren't everything, but in this particular area they communicate a lot.
The well-balanced psychic doesn't wear long white robes or carry a crystal ball. She doesn't grab your palm in the middle of the supermarket and insist on giving you a reading. Nor does she blurt out unsolicited information. She's an ordinary person; the most remarkable thing about her is that she appears unremarkable. Her power is internalized, integrated. She doesn't have to flaunt it. As she uses her gift discerningly, radiating an understated sense of calm, we see before us someone with no need to glorify herself, someone who is profoundly simple.
The identity of the psychic has, sadly, been tarnished. It must be rehumanized, its integrity reestablished. The essence of holiness in the psychic has to be restored. There is a film I love,
Resurrection,
that follows the life of a woman who passes through various stages of acceptance that she is a psychic healer. Although for a time she is pulled into publicly demonstrating her power to the masses, she eventually opts to use it in a more humble fashion. In the movie's final scene, she is the proprietor of a gas station in an isolated stretch of California desert. When a young cancer-stricken boy happens to pass through one day, she embraces him without saying a word, secretly and silently healing him. She does it not out of a need for recognition or applause, but from humility and a pure desire to help.