Are others' expectations killing your soul?

Not regulating your empathy can destroy your life and your health.

You are special. You, as an INFx type possess highly empathic skills, and I know that you understand what I mean when I say it’s both a blessing and a curse.

Our heightened sense of empathy can sometimes be considered as a superhuman ability, and we use it to pick up on others’ needs in order  to anticipate what is happening next. This ability is often both appreciated and relied upon by our closest people, but it can turn to a massive liability when it is expected of us by our nearest and dearest.

Others’ so called psychic junk can easily overtake our own goals and well-being, if we’re not careful. And as you know, this can happen as easily as being in the same space with needy people, or even talking to them on the phone. And I’m sure you’re familiar with the exhaustion that follows.

Here are some reflection from my beautiful assistant Aj:

If you are like me, shutting out the psychic junk from the people close to us can be the biggest challenge of all.

The people I most commonly absorb an excess of ‘junk’ from is my parents, especially my mother. Recently my dad has been very ill - he had a benign brain tumour removed which we had thought was the end of his health problems.
Wishful thinking… he has been diagnosed with secondary cancers of his tonsils and lymph nodes. His treatment starts 2 days before my mum’s birthday and it finishes a couple days after his own.

You can’t imagine (actually, you probably can) the amount of ‘psychic junk’ that seeps through the phone lines and straight into my very soul. I find this to be suffocating and I can feel myself getting sick because of it.

The first time I was asked if I think that INFs could turn off our empathic abilities my first thought was why would we want to? After all, being an empath helps us connect deeply to parts of people that have remain uncovered, and to turn off those abilities would only be a disservice to the world. How naïve was I?

I quickly came to the conclusion that I need to protect myself from this psychic junk that others seemed to be spewing at me without any consideration, whatsoever.

As you can imagine, everything that is going on with my dad and the stress my mum is experiencing hit me at once, and I begun to move away from my idealistic point of view to a more practical one.

The whole situation with my parents was like being hollowed out at warp speed and getting filled back up with poison. Think about it - poison that has nothing to do with me, other than I happen to be related to these people.

So at this point all I can do is to cut myself off from these people that I care about so deeply.

I know that escaping into my ‘inner world’, and giving up on my family is not the answer, but just a remedy. A remedy that usually involves not talking to any of them, but instead numbing my senses with monotonous routine, substance, or back to back tv shows (you know the kind that suck you in completely and make you forget the outer world exists).

Because I am SO open to people I love, I find myself getting repeatedly run down and sick, and there are plenty of studies that show that years of self sacrificing for others lead to terminal illness - cancer, heart disease and addiction to mention just a few.  

In a nutshell: We can make ourselves sick by not learning how to ask others to respect us as who we are.

But then I realised something: I could get help. I could start paying attention to my needs, because at the end of the day, I realised that no-one else was going to, at least not in this severe turmoil that my family is going through right now.

Instead of completely shutting my family out, I decided to set some boundaries to have “a breather” from them and their what seems to be a continuous drama.

I begun to self parent, as I knew that ultimately it was my responsibility to be happy. I started to figure out who I was as an adult, not just who I should be for others when they need me. I did the INFx Unveiled Course Exercises to get a better handle of staying in the reality that was right for me.

And now I cope. Most of the days better than some, but I cope with everything that is going on around me and I am living my own life now.

Thank you Merja. Aj

Aj had been keen to find her own footing for years, and like it often happens for us INF types, her most amazing transformation happened at the time of a crisis.

Here are some exercises that can help you move through your transformation:

1. Connect to your Inner Child on a daily basis through something that stimulates your senses - smell, touch, vision, sound, taste. Prioritise it above everything else. Do not share this time with anyone else - just you, your inner child and your inner parent!

2. Book in time to contemplate your goals as an adult. What is it that you actually want to achieve in life? If you were to die in 6 months’ time, what would you want to have achieved?

3. Begin to move towards those goals one small step at a time.

For those of you who want to go deeper into these learnings, I invite you to join us on our INFx Unveiled home-study course. This course is guaranteed to give you insights and specific exercises that will open you up to your purpose, relationship happiness and good health.

We have a 30-day money back guarantee on all our products just to make sure that the course is right for you.

For more information, go here: INFx Unveiled

However you are going about your transition deeper into yourself, I wish you all the very best. Just remember, you're not alone! Your tribe is here. 

With love,

Merja

Ps. If you are not a 100% sure on your personality type, do a free test here:Personality Hacker Genius Style Assessment