Protect Your Peace!

Empaths, protect your peace! People love to talk to empaths. They pour out their struggles, sufferings, pain, and loneliness. Strangers come to you on the street and feel comfortable telling you what’s bothering them. Because it’s easy to sponge their emotions, it’s imperative that you learn to protect your peace.

If you are like me, you have no problems occasionally being there for others when they need an emotional pick-me-up. I know that people feel better after they talk with me, and let out whatever is a barrier to peace in their life. I also know that after some of these “sessions”, I need to cleanse myself of whatever they left behind.

And, it is in this sense that I say “protect your peace”. There’s nothing wrong with helping others through their pain, but we must protect ourselves at all cost. This may mean declaring a required distancing until we can recover our own peace.

Recently, I saw something online that few people these days think about. We aren’t required to make ourselves available 24/7. It wasn’t all that long ago that we didn’t have a phone attached to us at all hours of the day. If we ran to take a shopping trip, nobody could get in touch with us until we returned home again. We had a chance to disconnect. That disconnection was our peace.

But today, everyone is too available. If someone doesn’t answer the phone when we call, or answer a text right away, we immediately get offended and think they are refusing the call or that something is wrong. In truth, they are just not attached to their phone at the moment.

Recently, I initiated a way to help me find my own peace each day. I made a practice of switching my devices to “do not disturb” between 9 PM and 9 AM. They still received the messages, emails and other notifications. They just didn’t let ME know about it.

I noticed the difference in how I felt. 12 hours of peace. I had 12 hours of being able to think about things that made me happy. Twelve hours when I left the rest of the world behind and focused on myself and my needs.

So, I’ve decided to include another way to protect my peace. I’m actually turning my devices completely off for lengths of time when I want to get something accomplished in the physical world. I really want to spend more time writing and doing my art. It’s Spring, so my roses will be in need of attention shortly here. My dogs can enjoy our time outside again.

I’ve decided to set actual hours when I might be available for conversation, but the rest of the time is mine. I can choose to talk to someone if I want, of course. But I can also feel free to shut the world out and watch the sunset, or drink coffee and listen to the birds with the sunrise. There’s a chance I might go upstairs and do some writing on my book projects. I’ve been neglecting my painting.

As an empath, it’s vital that you protect your peace in whatever way works for you. Unplug, disconnect from the virtual world for a time every day. Detach yourself from social connections of all kind daily and use that time to reconnect with yourself.

Protect your peace at all cost. In this world where our gifts are a blessing to those we help, we need to keep ourselves healthy enough to be that blessing.