A friend once wrote me a message and asked me the following question: “Do you have any suggestions for how someone way too empathetic can work with and love whoever they’re helping without being swallowed up by the painful stuff being addressed? Or does that indicate some brokenness in itself?”
I thought this was a really great question, and the answer is both extremely simple and highly complex. The simple answer to this question is “You need inner healing and deliverance.” As you can guess, I will now give you the complex answer, so buckle in.
Quite often when someone is “too empathetic” and they get absolutely steamrolled by other people’s emotional junk, it is usually unhealed emotional wounds on behalf of the person who is receiving the emotional overload. The new vogue thing in prophetic circles seems to be “I’m a prophetic feeler” but in reality most of the time people are just super unhealed and their soul is so open to other people’s emotions that they have trouble having internal emotional and energetic boundaries. This means that there is what I would essentially consider emotional contamination coming from the other person that you are receiving and being overwhelmed by because you lack the internal barriers and protections that someone normally would have in place to prevent that from happening.
As for why this subject comes up and people find it overwhelming, that is because it absolutely can be overwhelming. The key for a “prophetic feeler” is that you must identify
1) what burdens God is giving you and
2) what issues you are picking up on that aren’t yours to bear and
3) what of the burdens you are picking up is due to you being unhealed and far too wide open
“Oh, but Michael, you don’t understand. If it had happened to you then you’d understand what it is like.”
Oh, I understand perfectly well. I avoid most non-God-focused events with large crowds for a reason—not because I *don’t* understand. I don’t even find stores that are very busy and full of people enjoyable. It’s too chaotic and really unenjoyable. I was in Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and it was packed. Absolutely teeming with people. I expressly remember having the thought at that time that “this is exactly why I avoid these types of situations.” It can be intense at times. I just don’t talk about it very much and haven’t styled myself as a “prophetic feeler” because I don’t really think the title adequately describes what is going on for me.
Now, I have a dear friend who I go on mission trips with and she and her husband are both absolutely awesome. They are some of my favorite people to minister in the nations with. She is absolutely what I would term a “prophetic feeler” (and I’m fairly certain she would say that she is if you asked her), and at times the Lord will have her absorb the painful emotions of others. In my opinion it’s not actually hard to do, and it’s a skill anyone can learn, but yes, some people are more naturally gifted and/or inclined to it than others, and some have a special divine grace for it as well. I don’t know which of those categories I fall into, but I know how to do it and at times have to be very intentional not to.
Well, I was on a ministry trip with this friend and she mentioned how sad she was feeling constantly. In talking a bit, we recognized that she felt that way because she was picking up on and processing some pretty intense emotional stuff that I and another person on the trip were each dealing with. And sometime after she got on her flight, thereby leaving our presence, the emotional difficulty literally just cut off like someone turned water off from a running faucet. Our emotions were literally the source of her problem, and it is because she was engaging in a form of intercession, which among other things means “to bear and carry away.”
Now, on one occasion a few of us did discuss the whole thing about feeling other people’s feelings and carrying those burdens, and she shared how she used to be absolutely floored for a month or so after a mission trip because of all the emotional baggage she picked up and carried away from others. Eventually the Lord intervened and taught her how to release those emotions after she picked them up so she wasn’t carrying hundreds of people’s emotional pain for months or years at a time. And this ties in with what I was saying in the beginning about being too open and absorbing everything. In addition to needing to have a bit more of a firm hold on what we do and don’t absorb is something I think most prophetic feelers also need to learn—how to take whatever they are picking up, give it to the Lord, and fully release it from their own soul. Intercession is, among other things, the ability to “bear and carry away” burdens. It is not bad to be able to bear someone else’s burden, but it is extremely unhealthy to pick up that burden and not set it back down in the loving hands of the One who already pre-planned to carry it away for all of us on the cross.
If you consider yourself to be a “prophetic feeler” and want to get better at managing it, as well as releasing all of the things you’ve picked up from others that aren’t your burden to bear long-term, I have a few suggestions. First, I encourage you to get the book Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps by Praying Medic. It gives a very simple prayer template that can help you pray through releasing any emotions you are feeling regardless of whether they originated with you or not. Second, I encourage you to connect with an inner healing minister who can help you become more internally healthy yourself and thus address that issue of internal barriers I mentioned earlier (links listed below the article). Third, I encourage you to check out the resources that Freedom Flowers has to offer for emotional health, and specifically I recommend the Yarrow Shield essence which is specifically designed for helping those who tend to pick up other people’s emotional and energetic “stuff” and can get overwhelmed by it.
Prayer Ministers
Integrated Life Strategies – Robin Perry Braun
WhenYouNeedGrace.com – Grace
Transformations Community – Adena Hodges
Risen Light Works – Danielle
Holy Fire Disciples – Mason Ledbetter
