 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
|||
 |
 |
|
||||
 |
|
|||||
 |
|
|||||
 |
 |
 |
|
|||
Dr. Mesich is
no longer available to personally answer emails. Please refer to the
FAQ for answers to common
questions.
Dr. Mesich is
no longer available to personally answer emails. Please refer to the
FAQ for answers to common
questions.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[ Presented here with permission from The Edge, the premier source of news and information on personal growth, integrative healing and global transformation in the Upper Midwest. www.edgenews.com ] Ever get a headache unexpectedly while wandering through a crowded shopping mall? Or how about unexplained feelings of sorrow with no way to explain why you might be feeling so sad? Kyra Mesich, Ph.D., a psychologist in Minneapolis, has self-published The Sensitive Person's Survival Guide, a fascinating look at why many people are affected by the emotions and energy fields of other people, and how the effects of such sensitivities can be reduced wihout prescription drugs. Dr. Mesich's book, which has won the prestigious Innovation Award from the Small Publishers Association of North America, will be the topic of a free lecture and book signing at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, at Present Moment Herbs & Books, 36th and Grand Avenue South, in Minneapolis. The author has a doctoral degree in clinical psychology and had been working as a traditional psychologist. Prior to writing the book, she had no intention of moving into alternative health, or doing anything different with her life. She had always been interested in alternative healing, but in her work with institutions and hospitals and universities, alternative therapies were not accepted. So, her self-education on alternative healing continued behind closed doors -- at home. She didn't know that circumstances soon would change her life in unexpected ways. "Some very inexplicable occurrences began happening to me," she said in an interview with The EDGE. "One event really stuck out and made me have to notice what was happening," she said. "A young man whom I was seeing in my practice suffered from frequent depression. I would see him on and off and hadn't seen him for a while. One night, I was suddenly overtaken by a very severe depression, which was highly unusual for me. The characteristics of it were not typical thoughts or emotions that I would have. I had thoughts such as, 'I'm such a failure.' I was feeling a very deep, dark, empty feeling. The way it suddenly hit me and the way that it was so strong really took me off guard. "Being a psychologist, of course, I understand emotions. I knew what to do when a person is not feeling up to par. You try to examine where did this come from, why am I feeling this way? You try to analyze it, take it apart, relax, and get back to your center. That night, it just wasn't possible for me to do that. I could not make sense of it, so I went to sleep in tears. I was pretty baffled as to what was happening. I had no reason in my life at that time to feel so depressed. I got up the next day, was feeling better, but still shaken, and so I had to go into work. I had a full day's worth of clients, and on that day, this particular young man asked to be fit in. My secretary fit him in on my lunch time. "When he came in, he began describing in detail a depressive episode he had experienced the night before. As he began describing it, I'm sure my mouth fell open, because I realized he was describing in exact detail the depressive episode that I had experienced. I couldn't deny it. I couldn't just push it away and say, 'That's just a coincidence,' because it explained every unusual thought that was not typical to my personality. It explained the exact time and sudden onset of it, the character of it, everything about it. So I had to accept that that was the cause, that I was literally feeling this young man's feelings at the time that he was feeling them. "Once you have an experience like that, it changes your world. It opens you up to entirely new possibilities. You have to look more closely at it and wonder, “Has this happened to me before and is it going to happen to me again?"
Do
you think many people who have this experience sometimes don't have that
immediate connection with where it is coming from? Kyra Mesich: Absolutely. I was very fortunate to be a psychologist, because that is one of the very few situations where you sit with a person and they will honestly tell you everything that they are feeling. So I had all the data from my experience and I had all the data from his experience, and I could look at them together and say, "Wow! There is nothing that is different here!" But if it's a co-worker or a friend, you often don't know what is really going on with them. If that young man had not come in for his session that day, I wouldn't have known. If he had come in a couple of days later, it wouldn't have been so present in my mind and I probably wouldn't have noticed it. I think there are a lot of factors that can make people not realize they are having empathic experiences.
And
then this experience repeated itself for you? Mesich: Right. At the time, I thought maybe it was a fluke occurrence, maybe something that I should be aware of, but it wouldn't happen again. I didn't want it to, because I found it very disturbing. Over the rest of the time I worked in that office, I had very similar experiences over and over again. I would find myself taking a walk and, all of a sudden, a wash of anxiety would come over me. That's not my personality. I don't generally feel anxious. So I would say, "Well, OK, this feels terrible, this is probably not coming from me, I hope, so I am going to be aware when I go into work tomorrow of who I see. Inevitably, these experiences would relate to someone else. Over time, the instances became a little bit more second nature to me, a little bit less scary, but still it was painful for me, because I was literally feeling these horrible emotions within me. It
drove you out of your job? Mesich: I absolutely realized that I could not function as a traditional psychologist with this happening all the time. It was wearing me down. Every week, I was experiencing very intense emotions that weren't related to my life. I felt compromised as a therapist, because I was trained that it is always very important to maintain boundaries between yourself and your client, and there were no boundaries. I didn't know which client's emotions I would be experiencing. I didn't know when it would happen. It was like really seeing someone from the inside out. I felt I had to get this under control, that I had to understand what was happening. It was being presented to me repeatedly, so I needed to address it. I couldn't work in a regular psychologist's job. Had
you found any research about this affecting other people in your profession? Mesich: The reason I wrote the book is because, no, I did not find anything about it. I had been at a loss for quite a while, and I found myself going to books about psychic phenomena and new age, alternative health topics, because there was absolutely nothing about this in any kind of traditional psychological or psychiatric material. Things didn't feel right until I began reading more about psychic phenomena. Would
it be your guess that these experiences probably happen a lot in your
profession? Mesich: It doesn't have to be a guess. I know that it does. Have
you heard of similar experiences from colleagues since writing the book? Mesich: I have heard more through my networking and contacts and obtaining case studies. I have found psychologists and social workers and people in the healing professions who are afraid to come forward and say that this is happening to them, because it doesn't make sense from a scientific, behavioral point of view. You're afraid other professionals are going to come up to you and say, "You're nuts. You are now relieved of duty." So they don't come forward. You
use the terms sensitivity and empathy in your book. How do you define them? Mesich: Let me start by saying that the basis of this book, to me, is the truth about sensitivity, that emotional sensitivity and psychic sensitivity are intertwined. In fact, they really are the same thing. When I use the term emotional sensitivity, I want to make sure people understand what I mean: Those are people who feel emotions very deeply. They would say that they wear their emotions on their sleeve, that they can't shake off emotions, that they are deeply impacted by the emotions around them, and they often feel stimulus overload when they're in a busy, loud, or crowded environment. Psychology is just now beginning to acknowledge that this is a personality style and that it does need to be recognized. But what misses the mark is that from a traditional psychological perspective, there isn't an explanation for sensitivity. It doesn't relate to past childhood experiences. It doesn't seem to relate to any particular neuro-chemical imbalance that we can find. There's no explanation. It just happens for some people. What I found in my research by gathering case studies and speaking with people who had empathic experiences is that sensitive people are having psychic experiences and are feeling other people's emotions. That is the cause of their emotional sensitivity. Empathy, or empathic ability, is a psychic ability but it is in the realm of emotions. It's the ability to sense other people's feelings and other people's moods. In
reading in the past about psychics or mediums, I know that sometimes they would
be called sensitives. Mesich: Exactly. Look up sensitivity in the dictionary and the first definition is someone who is keenly aware of stimuli in the environment. The second definition is someone who has psychic abilities, so it's right in the dictionary. The word is already in our language. Do
you think people who are sensitive are born sensitive? Mesich: Absolutely. Everybody is born with empathic ability. When you are a baby, you don't have the intellectual capacity to communicate verbally. In reality, the only ability to communicate that you have is empathic -- your receptiveness to feelings and your ability to convey feelings. We're all born with that ability. We develop our intellectual communication as we grow up. What I found in researching this is that some people are naturally born with a very strong empathic ability, whereas other people are born with an average empathic ability. Those who are born with the average ability start to lose their empathic ability as the intellectual communication and intellectual education takes over in their lives. They'll still have some empathic experiences, but they're very easily explained away or ignored. People who are born with a very strong empathic ability are bombarded with emotions all their lives. It becomes more and more confusing as they grow up, because it makes less and less sense -- and their empathic ability becomes a little bit more distorted. It's just like any other sense that would be bombarded all the time. It becomes painful. You
make a connection with the kids diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Mesich: I am still in the process of finishing up my research on the basic connection, but without a doubt, some children respond to their psychic sensitivity by being overwhelmed by it. These children are going to have a very revved-up nervous system, because they are taking in a lot of input all the time. In addition to all of the regular intellectual input, in addition to watching television and in addition to going to school, they are also receiving psychic information and empathic information all the time. It's more than their little nervous systems can deal with, so it does end up making them seem spastic and like they can't concentrate. We wonder what it is that these kids are so overwhelmed by, what is wrong with them? Well, they are trying to deal with all this information, empathic and intellectual, that they have taken in over the course of the day. School can be really tough for children because of this. They are in a room with 30 other kids. If they are empathically sensitive, they might be experiencing 31 moods, including the teacher's. No wonder they can't concentrate! Or
if you are highly sensitive, maybe everybody in the whole school building! Mesich: Exactly. For kids, it's can be overwhelming, and they have no words to put to it. It's confusing. I've
heard it described in terms that perhaps these kids are opened up to a lot of
other channels, receiving information from who knows where. Mesich: Right. And it really isn't that unusual. I want people to understand that empathic sensitivity really is not spooky or unusual. It is an ability we are born with. But because our society has such a focus on intellectual communication, we just don't talk about it. We don't get the chance as we are growing up to develop the psychic ability and learn how to control it. It's that simple. It's a matter of ignorance and lack of education about this empathic ability. How
do you know if what you are feeling are your own issues or somebody else's? Mesich: That's a very important question. There are certain signs that can let you know that this is probably empathy and not just your own emotions. The key words are sudden, foreign and chronic. If a feeling comes on suddenly or out of the blue and does not seem to be due to something in your own life, that’s a big sign that your may be empathically sensing someone else’s emotions. Another way to realize that something is probably empathic and not your own emotions is if the feeling lingers there, no matter what you do to try to ‘solve’ the problem. You might say, "Oh, well, maybe this is about my job, and I know there are some changes I need to make." So you go and you make those changes at work, you start making other improvements in your life, you seek counseling, and you start exercising, but the inexplicable feelings remain there. Our traditional medical model is going to say, "Well, you have a neuro-chemical imbalance and that's the cause of chronic emotional problems." I have found that this misses the mark. What caused the neuro-chemical imbalance in the first place? It can be explained by empathic ability. If you are an emotionally sensitive person, your nervous system may be overwhelmed because you have all these other emotions and influences bombarding your nervous system. Another approach is more ethereal, but it's to get in touch with your own feelings and say, "Does this feel like me? Is this something I would normally feel, or does this somehow feel foreign?" From my experience, although it was a little more extreme, I never had feelings of failure. When I suddenly had this depressive episode where I was feeling like such a failure -- although at the time I had no reason to think that I was experiencing someone else's emotions -- it still made me stop and say, "Whoa! I have never felt this before." That's another sign that it's not your own issues. You have to let the feelings tell you the truth. If you intellectually sit and think about this, you will think in circles, and you’ll confuse yourself. You have to trust your own emotional truth.
I
know from experience that some people who are sensitive can be bombarded in
shopping malls. All of a sudden they get a headache and begin feeling really
bad, and then these feelings are reduced when they leave that area. Mesich: I definitely used to be that way. I hated going to malls and airports, and wild restaurants were just overwhelming to me -- literally painful for me to be there. As an empathic person, you receive all this energy within you, so it's just too much input. But the good thing is that that can be fixed. How
did you fix it? Mesich: Over the course of learning about empathic ability, I made it my job to figure out what you can do about it. First, I experimented with meditation and visual imagery, which is primarily what the psychic books talked about. I found that imagining something like a shielding blue light surrounding you was helpful, but it was not complete. It did not do the job. I continued to experience emotions from clients, and still if I was in a mall for a long time, it would eventually get to me. So, I turned my attention to another approach. I investigated a remedy called flower essences, and I found that amazingly they held the key that was really helpful in resetting and realigning a person's empathic ability so you would not be wide open to receive input from the world all the time. How
do flower essences work? Mesich: Many people confuse flower essences with essential oils. They are not the same thing. Flower essences are similar to homeopathic remedies. There is very little botanical matter in flower-essence preparations. They have no fragrance or taste. They are in the class of vibrational remedies, meaning that the vibration of the plant has been transferred to the liquid in a flower essence infusion. In effect, you are taking in the energetic healing properties of the plant by taking flower essences. In
your book, you describe some flower essences that are effective for
sensitivities. Mesich: The most important one is yarrow. Yarrow has always been used herbally as a very important curing remedy that heals cuts. In ancient times, they would carry yarrow with them into the battlefield because they knew that when they got a wound and put yarrow on it, it would disinfect it and it would heal much more quickly. Yarrow also disinfects your empathic energy field, and it heals those wounds that are there. Some sensitive people say that they feel like their auras must have holes in them. They feel like they have no energetic protection around them, because they are so sensitive. Yarrow will give that back to you. It will heal those breaks that are there and give you a more solid energetic boundary. It's amazing, but it does work. At
the same time, it doesn't diminish your psychic ability. Mesich: It gives you what you need to reset empathic function positively, without taking anything away from you. Did
you explore any other ways that people might help themselves? Mesich: I continued to do research into psychic abilities. Another term for empathic ability is psychic feeling. The third prong in terms of managing your empathic ability or psychic feeling is becoming aware of this ability: getting in touch with it and developing it. First you need to be aware that you are empathic, and then you need something such as flower essences to help you overcome the years of lack of knowledge about it, to help make it less painful. The next step is to be aware that it is not going to go away. Empathic ability is a skill that you have and always will. You've been given the chance and the opportunity to learn to use it as it was meant to be, as you should have been using it your whole life. You will learn how to use it to your benefit over time. Empathic ability is a very beneficial skill. It's a wonderful ability to have once you've overcome our culture’s general denial of any type of psychic ability. Once you can reconnect with your empathic ability, it's a wonderful skill to have. How
would you make best use of it? Mesich: The best use of it is to use it just like intuition. This is a pure sixth sense that you have available to you. So many people are searching about how to develop intuition, but empathic ability really is the same thing. You can tune into it and use it to ask those questions such as, "Can I really trust this person? Should I take this job, am I really going to be happy here?" These are questions that intellectually there is not answer for, but empathically and intuitively, the answers are all there. You
can learn to recognize the feelings you receive after you ask the questions.
Mesich: Absolutely. It takes some time and practice, but it is not as difficult as you might think. It's much easier to learn our empathic communication than all those years in school it took to learn our intellectual communication. Any
final thoughts? Mesich: I would like sensitive people to know that empathic ability is the reason for the perplexing emotions that they feel. Sensitive people often feel that something must be wrong with them. "What is wrong with me? Why am I so emotional and agitated all the time, why do I get depressed, why am I so anxious?" Our lack of knowledge about our empathic ability is the underlying reason. Empathic ability has always been there. We just don't discuss it in our society, but it is time to change that. People are becoming more open to alternative health and new age topics. The resources, such as flower essences, are now widely available. It’s time to accept that there is a reason for our sensitivity, and that this underlying empathic ability is actually an intuitive strength. This knowledge will make a tremendous difference in their lives. Kyra Mesich's self-published The Sensitive Person's Survival Guide is available through secure, online ordering on her website at www.KyraMesich.com, or you can order by phone at 651-735-8880 , or by mail at: P.O. Box 80208, Minneapolis, MN 55408. Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at (651) 578-8969 or e-mail edgelink@aol.com Copyright © 2000 Tim Miejan
|
|
|
