Dear Soul Arcanum:
I’ve been having these weird experiences that my friend calls “Sonya’s feelings.” The first time was while crossing a busy street in my hometown. As I stepped out onto the crosswalk, a feeling of dread came over me, and I saw a “vision” of something that seemed inconsequential. As the “vision” passed, I grew cold, fearful, faint and nauseous. Since then, this has happened numerous times at that same crosswalk – in fact, I can’t go that way anymore. I also have had them at home, work and in other public places. They hit me with no warning, and can sometimes leave me physically drained, faint and sick for a short period.
It’s hard to recall the details of the “vision” aside from the general feeling I have. I feel fine mentally and physically aside from these episodes, so I’d rather not see a doctor about this yet, for I’m afraid they’d put me on anti-psychotic meds or something! Have you ever encountered anything like this? I’d really appreciate any light you could shed on what’s happening to me. Thank you!
– Sonya
Dear Sonya:
What you’re experiencing is a normal symptom of high sensitivity. You’re like a lovely little insect with long antennae; whenever a breeze stirs, your antennae go up. As they’re new and a bit rough around the edges, your impressions get lumped together in a general feeling of unease. It’s how your body tells you that “something is happening.”
I recommend you read The Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide, by Kyra Mesich, Psy.D. In it, she describes how one night, she suddenly had an intense wave of depression wash over her, and the same negative thoughts about herself run through her mind over and over again. She put on a certain CD, but found it so depressing that after a while, she had to turn it off. The next day, she saw a client who told her that he had been up all night the night before, feeling suicidal and repeatedly playing that same CD on his stereo!
I share this because it illuminates how empaths may be affected by outside energies and never realize where those feelings are coming from. Had Mesich not seen that client the next day, she may never have known why she felt as she did. When she began to pay attention to her feelings and what was happening with other people in her life, she realized that she was “picking up” others’ emotions.
Psychic empathy can happen whether you are physically close to the other person or not. It can even happen with someone you haven’t seen for years if you still have a strong psychic bond to them. This can make it hard to figure out that what you’re feeling is coming from someone else.
You can also pick up the energy of thought forms and the emotions of discarnate spirits. For example, at that particular corner in your hometown, I feel you’re walking through a cloud of energy from a traumatic experience that occurred there in the past.
As for how you can deal with all of this, you basically have two options. First, you can “close down” your sensitivity in some way. This is not what I would recommend, however, because it’s like chopping your psychic antennae off: it’s a step backward in terms of spiritual evolution. You’re sensitive for a reason, and there are lots of blessings in being just the way you are, so it’s best to learn how to work WITH your true nature. I thus recommend your other option, which is conscious psychic development. That way you can determine what these feelings mean.
When psychics get hit with a wave of feeling, we stop and ask what it is about. In response to that asking, we may have a person come to mind and then get a feeling about that person. For example, the other morning a wave of emotion came over me. (Note that term “came over me”: it reflects our instinctive understanding that this energy is moving in from somewhere outside of us.) I stopped and asked where it was coming from, and then I just knew that I was picking it up from my husband. He was at his last day of work, for he was retiring that afternoon after 26 years in the fire service. When I met up with him later, he told me that the reality of retiring had hit him that morning, and he’d gotten very emotional.
Once I knew where this feeling was coming from, I could consciously detach from it if I wanted to. Sometimes, however, I actually like being empathetic with my loved ones. I like knowing how my husband or my child really feels by experiencing what they are feeling WITH them. It creates a great sense of intimacy and understanding.
Of course, I don’t want to be at the mercy of everyone’s feelings all the time. Years ago, I often got swept up in others’ emotions and felt overwhelmed like you do. Then I learned how to consciously control my own psychic barriers.
To do this, first you have to stop and separate your awareness from what you’re feeling, then ask your inner knowing and/or Spirit where this is coming from. Sometimes, it may be from within you. For example, grieving is a long process, and we may think we’re just fine when something unconsciously triggers a memory of the loved one we have “lost,” and another wave of grief rises up to be healed and released.
Once we have determined that some feeling is NOT our own, it’s much easier to detach from it so we can study it objectively. Some psychics never learn how to do this; perhaps that is the only way they can work. These are the sort of psychics who actually feel in their own bodies what the spirits or people they are connecting with felt. They say things like, “I have a man coming through from Spirit, and I’m feeling a lot of pain in my chest…”
This is not the most comfortable way to move through the world! I much prefer to observe such things mentally as opposed to emotionally or physically. I think it also allows us to access higher guidance and more useful information, because it’s hard to maintain a very high, clear vibration if we’re caught up in emotions like fear, pain or sorrow.
Once you’ve separated from the feeling, ask Spirit what it’s about. Getting clear answers will require general psychic development, so you might take a psychic development course, read books on the subject, begin to meditate regularly, etc. I’m limited in space here, so you’ll have to explore your options for psychic development elsewhere.
You seem to be highly kinesthetic with a primary psychic modality of clairsentience. This means that you FEEL things with your body and all of your being. Your secondary modality seems to be clairvoyance. This is apparent from your question, where you talk about first having feelings, then visions. You also use the word “feel” throughout your description of your experiences.
Clairsentience is generally the hardest modality to master, because it can be so hard to put words to feelings. You can work with your gift for clairvoyance and translate those feelings into images, which can then be interpreted. I also recommend you work on developing clairaudience, because it will really help you put words and thus meaning to your impressions.
Your psychic training should also include the ability to turn your antennae off if you want to. I have an agreement with Spirit that unless I need to know something for some reason, I won’t go on alert with every little ripple in the psychic atmosphere.
For example, I never dream about airplane crashes or global catastrophes. I also don’t pick up on problems with people I’m close to unless I need to know for some reason. While I can always ask and receive answers, it would be hard to function if I was psychically “on” all the time.
May you refine your natural abilities into a great psychic gift!
– Soul Arcanum
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