Are You A Person of Color who is an Empath or Sensitive?
Do You Think You Might Be?
Here’s How to Know.
I’m an Empath/Psychic who is also a person of color. My heritage is multi-racial. Both of my parents come from multi-racial backgrounds as is the situation of many Black Americans who are descendants of slaves. I had my DNA analyzed and found that I was a combination of 16 different nationalities. On the surface I appear Black enough, and socially and politically I consider myself black.
I didn’t realize I was a sensitive or an empath until well into adulthood, even though I had been seeing spirits since about age ten. I thought sometimes you see might see a spirit. Doesn’t everyone? I thought, sometimes you know what just went through the mind of the person standing next to or in front of you, in spite of, or in contrast to what was coming out of their mouth or what they were doing.
Empaths are often created by life experience. Abuse or trauma in childhood or as a young adult and/or narcissistic parents can contribute heavily to what creates an empath. An empath is a very sensitive person. A person who is capable of feeling other people’s emotions and projections. You feel emotions more deeply and intensely than the average person. You notice details about people and life that others around you wouldn’t see without being directed to them. You internalize the burdens of the world. My estimation is that there are far more empaths of color than anyone, including the empaths themselves, realize.
The difference I have noticed between the books I’ve read for empaths and my own experience is that an empath of color can have far more experiences of absorbing negativity and/or feeling under psychic attack than empaths of European/Caucasian descent who are the authors of most of these books. This negativity and psychic attack can affect your self-image and potentially alter the course of your life for the worse if you don’t realize that what you’re feeling may be energies that are not coming from your own mind and heart. Which was the case with me early on.
You may be wrestling with depression and anxiety, anger issues, feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem. Not realizing that the bulk of these emotional issues are bleeding in from your environment and the people you come into contact with not so much from your own crazy brain. That’s not to say that your emotional problems are all someone else’s energy being dumped on you, some of them are your mental issues to deal with. Discerning between the two is of crucial importance if you want to overcome what can feel like an overwhelming and confusing emotional burden at times.
When you are insecure, unsure of yourself, or emotionally open to the persons offering the negative energy, as in a trusted friend or relation, this is something that can easily happen. My intention is to help you get out of your misinterpreted emotional issues, and feeling like a psychic punching bag, and into using your gift of sensitivity as a very important tool and advantage in your life.
Pay close attention to interactions with everyone because that is when you will find your first clues. The times when you are around certain people or have recently left the presence of certain people will often be what you need to sense.
In social and work situations we tend to be more focused on how we appear to others and what we’re saying and doing more so than what we’re getting from others beyond the superficial and the task at hand. That is why I include, when you have recently left the presence of certain people. Sometimes that quiet time in the car on the way home is when you will feel the true energies of the people you were interacting with. Sometimes you may even feel it before you arrive at a gathering.
One of my early experiences was when I would work for a certain client, I’m self-employed, I would leave after working and get in my car, I would get this feeling of hate just out of the blue. I didn’t hate working for this client, nothing overtly negative happened in my interactions with them, everything appeared to be going swimmingly and they were a very lucrative client for me. But on the way out of the parking lot I’d feel that hate vibe clinging to me, bringing me down.
The other confusing aspect is when you are dealing with group of people and maybe only one or two is offering this negative energy. You can’t really pinpoint who those people are, and you can’t react to all of them like you know what they’re really feeling about you. And on the job, you can’t react at all if you want to keep your job and not appear to be crazy.
No reaction is the best place to start. Because your reaction is a distraction for you. Never mind letting them know that you see through them, it’s not the most important part of this interaction. Not reacting will allow you the mental focus to perhaps see who exactly is offering what type of energy in their interactions with you and reactions to you.
Honing your ability of not reacting, especially for young people, will take some concentrated effort if you’re not already there. It requires a certain amount of inner peace which many of us are sorely in need of. You may realize that you don’t protect your inner world as much as you protect your outer world. This what I personally realized coming from narcissistic parents who had very little regard for my inner world and subsequently taught me very little regard for my own emotional well-being.
For working on your inner peace, I recommend doing yoga, meditating, chanting, some sort of daily spiritual devotion. God is real, Jesus is real, and angels are all around to help us. Praying helps if you know how to pray effectively. Praying should not solely be a list of material things you want God or Jesus bring you or do for you.
In order for your prayer to be effective you need to connect to love. To a loving place in your own heart. Pray from there. It might help to think of someone you love and hold onto that feeling, let go of their image and put God, Allah, Jesus or whomever you worship in their place. Ask for peace, truth, love, compassion and understanding in all aspects of your life.
Be grateful for the blessings you have no matter how minute or insignificant. Then you can add the other things you may be striving for to your prayer. Ask for the strength and inspiration to achieve the things you want. Being human in this life, all that work is yours and yours alone to do. First and foremost you have to be able to calm your own mind and mental chatter.
Usually in my experience when an energy or emotion comes from the outside, I will feel it or sense it in my eyes or forehead first. Every empath will have a different way of determining, a different sensing pathway for energies encroaching from the outside. This is where meditation and yoga help, you become more aware, centered and anchored, confident in your mind/body connection.
Thoughts and feelings that originate from me and even from my spirit guides, radiate outward from inside, from solar plexus or heart center. A quiet, sure and subtle truth. They don’t encroach from the outside or are accompanied by a twinge in my neck or shoulder. Or in moments of sustaining an intense negative projection from someone, feeling like I’m under water, a dense heavy-ness in the air around me.
Everyone will be different, different empaths and psychics feel their sensitivities in different ways. It’s your job to figure out what your sensing pathways are. If you’re not sure where the energy originated from, in that moment, quiet your mind and ask your guides or guardian angel where it came from. What is this about? Be patient and let some time go by for the answer to come. And ask again if you’re still not clear, it may be coming from more than one person, there may not be a simple answer, or you may not be ready to hear who it came from. Keep asking and refrain from reactions and expectations. The answer will come.
This is the first in a series of articles I’m going to do for empaths of color and empaths who haven’t had easy lives. I am currently working on a book that goes much deeper into this subject of psychic sensitivity for people of color based on my own journey. It’s not finished yet, but every week or so I’ll post another article until then. Hope this helps in these turbulent times. I recommend reading Your Erroneous Zones by Dr Wayne W Dyer. It’s a great first step into figuring yourself out and a gem of an emotional self-help book.
“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”
Dalai Lama
