Wombtwin survivors carry other people's stuff

Some years ago I began to notice how easy it is to pick up on other people's emotional issues. I found that very useful when I was a counsellor, because after a session with a client I would quite unexpectedly start feeling vulnerable or aggressive or tearful, when there was no particular reason for feeling this way. My training taught me that this is empathy, and the feelings inside me were in fact those of my client. That greatly helped me to understand them.

This happens to me frequently these days when I am talking to wombtwin survivors.

For instance, yesterday I was giving words of encouragement to a wombtwin survivor who has just begun the healing journey. I had to dig very deep to find anything at all positive to say, so deep was their sense of despondency and hopelessness.

Today, I woke up with a deep sense of vulnerability and despair, so deep that I could hardly get out of bed. After a while of inwardly interrogating this feeling, I decided it was not mine. I remembered the conversation with this wombtwin survivor. I gently and lovingly handed the despondent feeling back to where it belonged. Within ten minutes I felt a rising energy. Then I could not remain in bed a minute longer, but was ready for a brand new day, so I got up and wrote this blog.

This is not the first time I have had this happen to me, and it may have happened to you. You may have suddenly and irrationally felt overwhelmed, anxious, vulnerable or filled with pain or paralysing despair. Now this may be because you need healing and have not yet processed those difficult pre-birth impressions. However, intermixed with your feelings may be some feelings that belong to someone you know very well and have been with recently. It's worth developing that inner sense of what is yours and what is theirs, and gently and lovingly hand the feelings back.

I say " lovingly " because it is very important to recognise that this person did not dump their stuff on you : you willingly took it on and owned it as yours, because you thought it would help. This sounds good, but it is how we use other people's pain to keep ourselves hurting. It's this kind of mechanism that lies behind the difficulty some people have in leaving abusive or loveless relationships.

If you are in pain because the one you love is in pain, do try and separate your own pain from the pain of others. You cannot heal the pain of other people, but you can heal your own. Then, healed and strong, you can come to the ones you love in a stronger and better position to give them the help they need to heal their own pain.