We talk a lot, in spiritual and faux-spiritual circles, about 'healing energy'. The most common immediate example is someone pouring their heart out into your kitchen table and telling you you have 'such a healing energy' or someone posting on Facebook that they're an empath and they're tired of 'people taking advantage of their healing energy'.
But what do we mean when we say healing energy? How come some people just seem to invite us to share our hearts with them? And how come some of them resent us for that? What about us makes people want to talk to us for hours and verbally process their emotional and mental distress?
I think in a lot of ways people are often talking about two different things. When people complain that they feel taken advantage of, or feel ground down to the bone by others' need, they are thinking of healing energy as being a series of actions: listening to woes; putting your own needs aside to comfort others; helping to rush in and fix the problems plaguing their friends.
It becomes a game of how long you can keep running after other people's demons whilst cramming your own into inadequately small boxes. It's hard and only gets harder with time. It's unsustainable.
The other form of 'healing energy', the one that has strangers walking up to you saying you have it, the one that doesn't drain you, is less about a series of actions and more about a headspace. It's about creating a safe haven within yourself, for both yourself and others.
Sometimes that involves action, like going and cleaning a friend's house while their life falls down around their ears. And sometimes all it is is giving people their human allowance, having patience for them and their troubles, and staying calm. Holding space, and letting compassion rule.
This kind of healing energy doesn't lead to resentment, burnout or loss of self, because it inevitably includes you within it. If you are building compassion and gentleness toward others, and trying to be a safe haven for storm tossed sailors, you will begin to be a safe haven for yourself too. Because this kind of healing involves understanding boundaries and how to set and receive them gratefully and with firm gentleness, and when you can listen to your own needs as much as those of others, you can give all the love, support and gentleness that you can, and you will remember not to run out of it before drinking some yourself.
Remember always to give with an open heart, but don't forget that that includes yourself. Sometimes you have nothing more to give, and that's OK. Sometimes you too will need support. Start with yourself - you may be the safest of harbours for others, and for yourself, but even you are on the sea and sometimes you will need shelter from your storms too.
