This is email 11 in the series. If you missed last week’s email, click here.
I love my work. And I love my clients.
Last week, I was speaking to a client about the difference between empathy and compassion.
“If you are empathetic, you are lowering your vibration to meet another person’s. And that is not only detrimental to you, but to the other person. You are being “up in their business,” taking on their stuff, also usually trying to fix them, instead of standing strong and steady in your high vibe.”
“You can still understand and be responsive to the suffering of others,” I added. “But without lowering your own vibe in the meantime. That’s the difference between being compassionate versus being empathetic.”
“So, I’m being pathetic,” my client joked. “I’m lowering myself.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have quite put it that way,” I said. “But, yes, correct. The word ‘pathetic’ is in the word empathetic.”
“On my notepad,” my client said, “I’m writing down empathetic = pathetic. Because I’m not helping anyone out with my massive amounts of sad-ass empathy.”
I snorted with laughter.
“And, so, if I’m compassionate,” my client went on, “I’m being a compass pointing north for them to get back into the right vibration?’
“I love that,” I said to her. “The word ‘compass’ is in the word compassionate. Clever!”
I thought about the session for a long time after it was over. I was brought up Christian. I was brought up to believe that being empathetic towards the suffering of others is virtuous.
And for a long time in my career as a medical intuitive, I worked off “empathy” to read my client’s energy fields. This left me drained, sick, and low-vibing.
It wasn’t until my late 20s that I figured this out … the difference between empathy and compassion.
Being compassionate means you relate to the suffering of others. You listen deeply. You care. But you don’t take on their lowered vibration, or lower yours.
This makes you a beacon of light for others. A lighthouse. The one who calmly holds the light steady, whilst others are out at sea, in treacherous waters, showing them the way to the safe shore.
