Hello! If you’re new to POWERS, welcome! To those returning, welcome back! My name is Carolyn Fallert. I’m a five-foot-three writer and former ballerina sharing my self-defense journey. In this POWERS newsletter, I share practices to help you stay safe, protect your true self, and reclaim your body’s power. Thanks for joining me.

I’ve been in a rough mental place over the holidays.

Spending time with family over Christmas, I started to feel a lot of grief, anger, anxiety, and irritability for reasons I could not explain. Feeling saturated with these feelings and, despite five years of therapy, having no idea why, I started to spiral into self-critical thoughts. (I have a habit of misdirecting unprocessed anger and grief toward myself in the form of self-disgust. It’s a habit I’m still unlearning.)

In the depths of this dark, self-critical spiral of thoughts, I remembered one of my mentors telling me I might be an “empath.”

I decided to look up the definition of the word. According to Cleveland Clinic, “An empath is a person who has the ability to feel what others are feeling and understand what others are feeling. They’re also known to feel feelings on a deeper level and take on the feelings of others.” Empaths are often intuitive, caring people who are also very sensitive — even to sights, sounds, and smells.

This seemed to describe me perfectly. When I interact with people, I tend to feel their emotions deeply and become a vessel for them. I’m sensitive to bright lights and all sorts of noises — from dog barks to my husband chewing. Even watching TV shows or movies, I feel characters’ fear, anger, and pain as if it were my own.

Being an empath gives me super powers. I have an intuitive sense of how people feel even before they tell me. I’m curious about and understand other people’s experiences in a way that invites connection, healing, and change. As a writer, my hyper-empathetic state empowers me to connect with readers through the page.

But being an empath also feels like a liability. When I absorb other people’s emotions, I become saturated with them — so saturated that I can no longer feel my own. Holding other people’s emotions drains my energy and leaves me feeling burned out. Compassion fatigue can negatively impact my mental health — sending me into dark, self-critical spirals.

Over the Christmas holiday, my empath tendencies were in full force. There were a lot of big, heavy emotions among family members. Close relatives felt anxious about their financial security and dissatisfied with their careers. Other relatives feared death and aging and were doing everything in their power — botox and beyond — to reverse the inevitable. Distant relatives grappled with diagnoses of a neurodegenerative disorder and its horrific progression. One relative using GLP-1 drugs to loose weight, felt anxious and desperate for some control over their life. Another relative grieved the loss of their family post-divorce.

Loving and caring for my family, I wanted to be present for each of these emotions. But, without realizing I was doing so, I had absorbed all of them, becoming completely saturated. My body was so heavy and overloaded with other people’s emotions, I had lost touch with my own.

Being an empath requires me to practice a specific kind of self-defense: setting clear boundaries between other people’s emotions and my own, releasing the emotions that never belonged to me, and replenishing my emotional energy.

Here are some strategies I’ve discovered that work for me:

• Setting emotional boundaries: Before entering a social setting I sometimes visualize a bubble around my body. My writing coach, Lisa Cooper Ellison, taught me an excellent visualization for this. She invites me to imagine rooting my body down toward the core of the earth while reaching the top of my head toward the sky and then, from my heart’s center, grow a crystalline bubble around myself. I try to practice this visualization whenever I remember. Sometimes, if I’m mid-conversation with an overly-anxious or angry person, I also imagine one of those COVID-era plexiglass shields appearing between us, which helps make their emotions feel less contagious.

• Releasing emotions that are not my own: I, admittedly, forget to set these imagined boundaries with other people. And, as with family interactions over Christmas, still become a sponge saturated with other people’s emotions. When this happens, I need to release the emotions that never belonged to me. Here are some strategies I find helpful:

  • Journaling helps me identify what I’m feeling and where it came from. It also helps me release the emotions into the page.

  • Going for a long walk helps me identify the emotions that aren’t my own and release them from my body. Sometimes I imagine the feelings draining from my body like dry sand, leaving a trail in my wake.

  • Visual meditations. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine what I’m feeling in different shapes, colors, and textures. Then I imagine some sort of container — a jar, a box, or some other vessel. I imagine pouring the emotions into this vessel like filling a Mary Poppins bag. There is not bottom to it. I leave the container in some imagined place and walk away.

  • Taking a hot bath with Epsom salts and eucalyptus fragrance helps me visually and physically wash away the emotions that never belonged to me.

  • Crystals! Who knows if these actually work, but in a moment of desperation this spring, I bought a rainbow fluorite crystal that is supposed to help clear energy. Sometimes I hold it in my hand and imagine the crystal absorbing all of the emotions I no longer need.

• Replenishing my energy: No matter what, I need to recharge my social battery after a lot of time with other people. This can take different forms. Cuddling under a cozy blanket with my pup on the couch. Journaling words of love, affirmation, and celebration for myself. Cooking a pot of soup from scratch, reveling in the colors of the ingredients and the smell of the soup as I do. Moving my body to good music. Reading a good book. Sipping steaming tea. (See the POWERS Play section of my newsletter for more ways I fill myself with moments of pleasure each week.)

Setting clear emotional boundaries between me and other people protects me from compassion fatigue, emotional burnout, and negative mental spirals.

It also helps protect my physical body. When I set clear emotional boundaries, it makes me less vulnerable to emotional manipulation by someone with bad intentions. It helps me stay grounded in my own emotions and my intuitive wisdom in an emergency situation. Its also makes it easier for me to counter-attack when my body’s physical boundaries are violated.

Setting emotional boundaries keeps both my emotional body and physical body safe.

Are there moments when you’ve become saturated with other people’s emotions or experienced compassion fatigue? If so, how do you navigate these experiences? I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment or send me a DM.

With fist bumps & fancy pumps,

Carolyn

POWERS Play

There’s power in pleasure. When I practice play — finding joy and delight in life — I’m filled with positive energy. That positive energy empowers me to show up not only for myself, but also for my community. It gives me a secret, strategic advantage in life… like a power play.

In this corner of my newsletter, I share my latest moments of play— an essential part of my self-defense practice:

• Continuing to read and digest The Queen’s Path by Dr. Stacey Simmons (stacey simmons). Dr. Stacey Simmons left a career in animation and visual effects to pursue a PhD in psychology and become a clinical psychologist who loves working with creatives. Through her research, Simmons has discovered an alternative archetype to the “hero’s journey” — The Queen’s Path. Anyone living or writing about women’s lived experience will love this book.

• Walking through fresh snow. There’s nothing like making fresh tracks in a soft, quiet, blanket of white.

• Seeing holiday lights at Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. Stepping into the green houses felt like a reprieve from the cold, dry air.

• Making this Moroccan lentil stew from Phoebe Lapine. The warm spices in this recipe are exactly what my body wants during cold, dark days.

• Slipping on warm socks, slippers, a soft sweater, and a scarf when it’s cold outside. Leaning into my body’s desire to hibernate this winter feels glorious.

• Seeing Zootopia 2 in theaters with my husband. We are big fans of the first Zootopia. (I think Flash is my favorite character.) This sequel did not disappoint!

• Receiving snail mail from Tiffany J Marie, a thoughtful writer and ceramics artist who sends quarterly packages to her mail club. Receiving her gifts in the mail is pure delight!

• Reading this article in The Cut about Rama Duwaji. What an inspiring, brilliant, badass woman in this world. Reading about Rama’s story and vision inspires me to commit and recommit to my creative practice without apology.

• Watching Taylor Swift’s The End of an Era docuseries. I regret never buying a ticket to see The Eras Tour. Some unhelpful voice in my head told me it was “uncool” to be a Taylor Swift fan. But I love her music. And I admire her as a person, especially as a leader. I feel grateful I can watch and rewatch the recording of the concert anytime!

• Reading December’s Bad Bitch Book Club book of the month, Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein. As an older sister I’m finding so much resonance in this story about sisters, Mia and Cricket Lowe.

• Watching I’m Tim, a documentary about the man who was Avicii. Tim’s music defined so many moments of my college and young professional life. Learning more about his musical genius and his hurt at the hands of the music industry makes me appreciate and honor his music that much more.

Where are you finding play and positive energy? Leave a comment or send me a DM, and I’ll add it to the POWERS Play section of my next newsletter!

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For more content, you can also follow me on Instagram: @ carolynfallert