I battle with this introverted identity, in trying to understand the difference, if there even is one. People can feel exhausting to me mainly because when we share our feelings we’re in a state of discharge. And here I am huffing away on their tail pipe trying to help them not feel the way they do, which is arrogant of me. Who the hell am I, to block them in their purge? But the question is, how do I not get pulled into their story, instead witness it in a space of neutrality.
It dawned on me that maybe it’s not so much that I don’t like people but that I don’t know how to stay in my own vibration when in their company. I’m an empath, I know this, it’s been my entirety but the problem with that label, is it doesn’t inspire many solutions in my self care. I sponge it up, everything, and not necessarily with full permission. It’s like I’m a magnet without discernment and ironically enough some of the people I attract into my life, are very opposite of this. I cherish those folks, studying them, finding their secrets of success to not taking on another’s ‘stuff’.
I really don’t want to live on an island, as I like a few close friends but even them, I get exhausted by. Why? Maybe because we rarely reflect till after telling our story, or we project much of our stuff, completely unaware we’re doing it. We ALL do this. I suppose no way is the right way, but given my spongy self I take on what they might not and even what they are purging, which is meant for the compost bin yet I’m activated charcoal. Then it comes down to what’s my responsibility? Ahhhh personal responsibility, a term so misunderstood…by me, but that’s another article. In their quest to connect sometimes the communication of owning oneself issues, becomes a friend whose a sounding board, working through issues they have yet to be aware of, masquerading behind the story of themselves in which they’ve built a life. And who am I to judge that or take it away thinking they can’t handle the truth? But many times what I am doing is seeing them naked. It’s what I do, I try not to, but I can’t help it. ‘Naked’, figuratively speaking, of course. I just can’t listen to their story without going deeper, and sometimes it looks like I’m not listening to them at all. True, I’m not. Rather I’m listening to the undercurrent of what’s being said, I feel everything, sometimes things they don’t know they’re even feeling. I get overwhelmed, my body starts to complain, and then I get mad at myself for not being a better friend, being neutral.
(A big ‘WTF’ is wrong with me, shall be inserted here.)
I guess, it’s how it is, just like how they are. We’re people behaving like people. What I’ve learned though, is if I want to be a better friend, I have to be a better friend to myself. I have to stop judging myself; that I’m not doing enough. Just like I accept them for whoever they are, even however they feel, can I do that for myself?
So, I call myself an external introvert, whatever that means, as I tend to make up words to fit into my dictionary of meanings. My practice, is learning how to call myself back home. Pull inward, because I left parts of me in the grocery store listening to the bagger’s joke hoping he feels appreciated for existing, and attending to my husband’s unspoken words of feeling overwhelmed. And then I get depleted, not due to anyone’s taking, but my own over giving. Heck, they didn’t even ask for me to be like this, that’s the arrogant part I’m dealing within me. I go within, I tune into where I don’t feel enough trying to give more than humanly possible. This is the true inquiry. And then we have a win-win friendship. I look forward to putting my chest full of spiritual tools to the test.
I took a ‘Transform your Birth Experience’ course with Stacia and Jenevieve at A Mom’s Space where they taught how to energetically pull yourself back from where you’re over extended, even unconsciously. It was so powerful, besides I was ready.
So, maybe instead of labeling ourselves as introverted and/or extroverted we can find where we’re depleting ourselves as it’s never from another. Either we have insufficient boundaries, or we’re overfull sponges. There’s many possibilities when we take our power back by looking within; where we’ve been giving it away carelessly.
Power to the people,
Vanessa Wishstar, IM
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Many Blessings,
Vanessa Wishstar ∞ Intuitive Medium
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