Are You an Empath? How to Tell and Protect Your Energy

Have you ever walked into a room and felt overwhelmed by emotions without understanding why? Have you ever gone to the grocery store and started having thoughts that didn’t quite make sense to you? Have you ever gone to an event such as a concert and felt overwhelmed by the number of people in the space?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you might be an empath, and you might be sensitive to the energies around you.

Understanding Empaths and Energy

In this video, I explore the concept of being an empath and how to tell the difference between what is yours and what is not yours. I also share ways to create energetic boundaries.

In my upcoming book, The Divine Within: Healing Ourselves to Heal the World, which will be released on November 4, 2025, I explore the idea of the collective unconscious or the field that unifies us all. In quantum physics, this is called the quantum field. In many spiritual traditions, it’s called the divine realm. It doesn’t matter what your belief system is—what matters is whether or not you are having these experiences of feeling overwhelmed in public spaces.

If you are, it’s possible that you might be absorbing energies or thought forms that are not yours.

Where These Energies Come From

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), a psychological theory developed by Richard Schwartz, individuals can have “unattached burdens” or “legacy burdens.” These are essentially thought forms or belief systems that belong to your culture or your society, or to other people, and you can take them on as if they’re yours—even though they’re not.

Carl Jung called this field of awareness the collective unconscious. He believed this is where archetypes reside, and he taught tools for discerning what is yours and what is not. Many spiritual traditions call this “energy work,” where you’re taught how to keep your energy field clean.

How to Know What’s Yours

The way to know whether something is yours is to get curious about it. You might ask yourself, “I’m feeling this emotion. Is this part of me?”

If you sense a yes, you’ll want to get curious and ask, “What inside me needs attention? What are my boundaries? What is this about?” Keep asking questions until you have clarity, then give yourself what you need or advocate for that need in the external world.

If you sense a no, or if you feel this is not yours, you’ll want to have energetic boundaries. One way to do this is by asking your body, “Is this mine?” If your body moves forward, it’s a yes; if it moves backward, it’s a no.

How to Clear What Isn’t Yours

If you discover the energy is not yours, there are ways to release it:

• Visualize energy being cleared from you.
• Ask archetypal energies—such as archangels, ancestors, God, gods and goddesses, or ascended masters like Buddha, Kwan Yin, or Yeshua—to clear the energy.
• Say, “I am a sovereign being and no energy is welcome in my space that isn’t a part of me.”
• Visualize a shield of light or energy around you.
• Ask the elements—fire, water, air, earth, or light—to dissolve energy that isn’t yours.
• Feel into your energy to notice any disharmony and release it.

There are many ways to explore this. In my book, I teach more tools about how to discern and clear energy that isn’t yours.

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for reading. If you found this information helpful, you might consider subscribing to my YouTube channel or signing up for my newsletter. There are freebies available, and my book will soon be available for pre-order.

Sending you deep love and appreciation.