This site has limited support for your browser. We recommend switching to Edge, Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.

Self Care for Empaths: 6 Tips to Help You Take Care of Yourself

INSIDE: As an empath, you have a natural inclination to care for and help others. But in order to thrive when you offer your time and energy to others, you need to learn self care for empaths. Try these tips for taking care of yourself today!

 

When you travel through an airport, you hear messages reminding you to take care of your belongs – not other people’s, but your own.

On the plane, the flight attendant instructs you to secure your own mask before helping others in the case of a change in air pressure.

Care-giving professions speak often of taking care of yourself as equally as you would a patient or client. If you run yourself down, you won’t be able to provide proper attention, service, and healing. 

Seeing a pattern? If you’re an empath, at this point, you may have a gnawing feeling that squeaks out, “You aren’t taking care of yourself at all!” 

That’s because self care for empaths needs to take priority. Self care practices can protect your physical and mental well-being to be able to fulfill your giving intentions.

Why Empaths Need Self Care More Than Anyone

In our busy lives, we often forget to set aside time for ourselves – to relax and rejuvenate. It’s even harder to practice self care for empaths, but they are the people who need it more than most.

Are you wondering how to know if you're an empath? Read on for a few quick signs so that you can learn how to take care of yourself as an empath. 

Protection Crystals

What is an Empath

One of the biggest indications of an empath is how easily you feel other people’s feelings. You find yourself actually feeling their emotions and experiences even though you're removed from what happened to them. It goes beyond feeling sympathy – you mourn or delight just as the person confiding in you is.

There are other signs that suggest you're an empath as well, although they can overlap with the signs of an introvert:

  • You have heightened senses. Loud sounds, strong scents, and abrasive textures can bother you.
  • You thrive in small group settings. Large gatherings and crowds bring you stress.
  • People feel safe and comfortable around you, but you tend to feel disconnected from others and unable to share your true self.
  • You find that you have to take alone time because you reach a point of overwhelm with others. By unwinding and escaping to nature, you feel calm and understood.

Even if these signs don’t resonate with you, you still might be an empath. An empath tends to draw people near them because they are so receptive to listen to others’ stories and feelings.

That means you bump up against the vibrational fields of so many people. This can be a beautiful gift, but it has consequences too if you don’t learn self care for empaths.

What Happens to Empaths

With so many people coming to empaths and unleashing their joys, frustrations, and sorrows on them, their own energetic field gets bombarded. 

Empaths tend to have more porous auras, which means that other people's energy doesn't just knock against theirs – it can invade their spiritual field.

This is especially harmful when the energy received is negative. Of course, an overload of other people's positive energy can make an empath feel overwhelmed, but negativity tends to dominate positive energy and transform what they do have into feelings of resentment and anger.

When this happens, they turn into someone they don’t want to be. They become more negative and, as a result, people detract from them – but not in ways that are healthy. They recognize the negative energy and the negative reactions people have when being with them, and they feel guilty and defeated.

Empaths definitely suffer from overwhelm. This activates anxieties and can lead to very serious issues with their mental health. Empaths often suffer with depression when they ignore their self-care.

Another major symptom of imbalance for empaths can arise from episodes of post-traumatic stress disorder. For many empaths, past experiences have led them to become the type of person who is sensitive to others feelings and needs. 

These experiences were probably incredibly difficult, and they may not have dealt with them fully. Even if they have, when they take on the trauma of others as an empath, it can resurface through severe PTSD that can endanger their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. 

Importance of Self Care for Empaths

6 Self Care Tips for Empaths 

While all of the “side effects” of being an empath may sound scary, don’t worry. There are so many ways to give yourself the love and attention that you offer to others. These self care tips for empaths will get you on track to a more peaceful energy that allows you to thrive.

The very first step before taking any action is to acknowledge your feelings – tension, overwhelm, and anxiety. These are valid and true, and once you confront them, you can soothe the negative hold they have on you so you can heal.

Ground Yourself

Empaths tend to have a very intuitive nature to sense underlying emotions and connections. That tips empaths chakra balance towards the crown chakra, where higher consciousness, intuition, and intellect flourish. However, this trait can also weaken the energetic grasp of the root chakra.

We all have our unique cord with Mother Earth through the Earth Chakra. For empaths who are constantly pulled towards other people and their needs, this cord can start to stretch thin or even get pulled out of socket from your grounded connection. This affects the fields of your root and earth chakras. 

Connecting to the earth and focusing on grounding is a great way to rein yourself back to your roots. Taking time in nature is already a healing experience for you, so enhance this act of self care for empaths by carrying crystals with you to elevate your vibrations with earth.

Black Onyx is a fantastic crystal to help you reconnect to your true self and rooting energy. Another incredible stone for grounding is Black Tourmaline because it takes the negative energy and transforms it into positivity that can fill your spirit again. 

Try these crystals for empaths to help you ground yourself!

Grounding Stones

Protect Yourself 

As an empath, you need to get in touch with your needs so that you can protect your emotions and health. The amazing energy that you resonate attracts people to you, but you also have to turn your aura into a shield against negativity, manipulation, and overwhelm.

An act of self care for empaths is learning and practicing how to set boundaries with others. Take time with yourself to reflect and define your limits. Set them and respect them. Expect others to respect them, too, and be prepared to assert them. 

Setting boundaries can bring on even more overwhelm for an empath because it’s hard for you to say no. Part of self care is the practice of letting go of the guilt you feel around taking alone time or of separating your energy from others. Also, you never owe anyone an explanation for needing to set your boundary.

A great meditative practice that can help you visualize your boundaries is through etheric cord cutting. Incorporate crystals like Labradorite and Red Jasper can protect you as you explore areas and relationships that do not serve you.

Carrying protective crystals with you in your pocket is another great way to shield yourself from the energy that tries to take over. 

Keep in mind the lengths to which you go to protect yourself as an empath though. You don’t want to overprotect yourself and close yourself off from people – that can be draining too. As an empath, you have a spiritual gift to connect with others, but you need to protect yourself with balance.

Release Your Emotions

Like we mentioned earlier, acknowledging and feeling your emotions is an important first step in self care. Now, you need to release them. 

You take on so much from others that you shouldn’t burden your own spirit and emotions, too. That’s the thing for many empaths – they forget that they have to experience their own feelings in addition to others! 

Finding ways to express your emotions will take them from inside your mind out into the world. That might be through movement, meditation, or art. 

Journaling is an excellent practice to help you articulate your emotions. It can just be a list of adjectives that describe the sensations you feel, or it can be a story that someone else shared with you that has weighed on your mind. It can even just be colorful lines and scribbles. There are no rules to journaling. 

Many people find meditation as a helpful form of self care for empaths. Crystals like Amethyst and Aquamarine can help you dive deep during your meditation to gain awareness of emotions that need to go and to cleanse your aura of negative, stale energy. 

Empaths and Nature

Detoxify With an Epsom Salt Bath

Self care for empaths (or for anyone) takes work and focus. But there is tremendous release and reward from it. Drawing a warm, soothing bath that is rippling with crystal energy is a practice that works for you while you relax and tap back into your physical and mental sensations.

Adding Epsom salt to your bath ought to become not just a self care ritual but a habit! Epsom salts have so many beneficial properties.

Not an edible table salt or kosher salt, epsom salt can be dangerous to ingest, but it is incredibly beneficial for your body to soak up. It is a mineral salt made of magnesium and sulfate. The magnesium is key here. 

Magnesium is an abundant mineral in the human body, so an epsom salt bath can help replenish some magnesium through your skin. The salt helps to relax your muscles so that you release pain and tension and can spend your soak in meditative, thoughtful repose.

As epsom salt detoxes your body of negative feelings and energy, you can let powerful (water-safe) crystals absorb it and revitalize your positive aura. Using crystals to steep in the water with you or setting them up along the rim of a tub can boost the healing energy of your bath. 

Smudge Yourself & Your Home 

Another part of releasing emotions and energy can involve smudging yourself and your home. Your home and the items in it can absorb so many vibrations that then continue to radiate and influence your own emotional balance.

Smudging as an act of self care for empaths needs to happen with intention, so before you do it, make sure to focus on the energy you feel isn’t serving you and seek to release it. Smudging is an ancient, sacred practice, so treat this ritual with care and respect. 

Smudging your home with sage, incense, or palo santo involves slowly passing through ventilated rooms as you hold a slow burning bundle or stick of these woods and herbs.

As the smoke sweeps over surfaces and corners, it dusts away negative energy and cleanses your rooms, opening up space for new, positive energy.

You can also smudge your own body, carefully. In the same way that you pass the stick of sage or Palo Santo into every corner of your room, sit and pass the bundle slowly around your body. You can start at your heart chakra, move up to your crown chakra, down your sushumna nadi, and finally to your root chakra to reground.

Once you’ve smudged, you can energize crystals in rooms of your homes to help protect the cleansed space. You can also wear crystal jewelry during and after a body smudge to enhance the absorption of the positive effects of the ritual.

Sage and Palo Santo

Breathe in the Moment & Recite Mantras

You can implement moments of self care for empaths at any time of the day, even in a moment of empathic energy exchange. 

For one, always remember to breathe. Taking the time to cherish deep inhales and exhales can stave off feelings of overwhelm.

When you are in the moment with a person who may be overloaded with emotions that they are trying to pass to you as an empath, you can take a moment of pause and breathe slowly together.

Then, you are demonstrating to them your ability to care for them but also your need to care for yourself.

Along with breathing, you can try to incorporate mantras into your day to remind yourself of your own feelings and power. You can recite these before you meet with a friend who you know tends to transfer a lot of energy to you. The mantra can express your boundary and help you set it in your mind.

Final Thoughts 

It is in your nature to want to soothe and fix the world for other people to experience joy, peace, and harmony. But if you allow yourself to become drained and overwhelmed, it'll be impossible to serve others. 

Learning self care for empaths will equip you to protect your own physical and mental state while offering a safe space for those you love to feel grounded.

Taking these self care tips for empaths and incorporating them into your self care routine every week will help you develop healthy habits to better fulfill your spiritual intentions as an empath.

How to Use Crystals for Health Ebook

* Crystals and stones should not be used as a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Please read our full disclosure notice here.
Self Care for Empaths
Self Care Tips for Empaths
How To Do Self Care for Empaths

Leave a comment

Please note, comments must be approved before they are published

Cart

No more products available for purchase

Your cart is currently empty.