{"id":7531,"date":"2015-07-01T22:49:43","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T22:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/?p=2353"},"modified":"2015-07-01T22:49:43","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T22:49:43","slug":"when-self-care-turns-into-self-neglect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/?p=7531","title":{"rendered":"When Self-Care turns into Self-Neglect"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re a highly sensitive empath it can feel good to go off by yourself to a quiet place.\u00a0 Extracting ourselves from other\u2019s energy helps calm us.\u00a0 I teach this \u201cdown time\u201d as a strategy for taking care when life gets overwhelming.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve noticed how overuse of this strategy can send you into the dark murky waters of anxiety.<\/p>\n

What starts out as self-care can easily become self-neglect.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When healthy alone time turns to isolating oneself this strategy can actually make your sensitivity and anxiety worse.\u00a0 There is healthy alone time and then there is unhealthy isolation.<\/p>\n

As a solo-prenuer I had to recognize when it was time to reach out.\u00a0 Working alone day after day even when talking with clients via the phone or Skype can send a person in a downward spiral without other connections.\u00a0 I used to joke about needing to \u201cget off the farm<\/strong>\u201d.\u00a0 As I began to see how I could shut down when not connecting personally with others, I learned a valuable lesson about energy and open hearts.<\/p>\n

Have you ever experienced this?<\/p>\n

You spend time alone and then become more fearful of getting back into the world.<\/p>\n

Staying home alone starts feeling really<\/em> comfortable.\u00a0 You tell yourself things like \u201cI\u2019d rather be alone watching a movie than out with friends\u201d or \u201cI wouldn\u2019t enjoy myself anyway\u201d, and \u201cThey\u2019re not like me\u201d. It\u2019s easy to go from here to all out depression.<\/p>\n

You think this is coming from your sensitivity but I\u2019m here to tell you that\u2019s not the whole story.\u00a0 There\u2019s more going on.<\/span>\u00a0\"Feeling<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The problem is when we go from healthy alone time to isolation we unconsciously close down our hearts<\/em>.\u00a0 When we close down our hearts it allows our ego, aka small self, aka monkey mind to gain control of our thoughts.\u00a0 That monkey is good at making up fearful stories that have no basis in reality. This is never a good thing.<\/p>\n

A closed heart allows fear to take hold of our mind.\u00a0 Our fearful thoughts make us feel separate and different from others.\u00a0 The fearful thoughts begin taking up more space in our heads than thoughts connecting us to others. This in turn causes us to be more fearful of what others think, increasing social anxiety and thus increasing our fear of being with other people. Then when we do venture out with our closed down hearts and fearful thoughts\u2026expecting to have a bad experience because we\u2019re sensitive to energy\u2026 we attract the experience matching our expectations.\u00a0 A vicious cycle ensues where our fear creates more experiences to show us how \u201cright\u201d we are about how difficult it is to be around others.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not diminishing the reality of being energetically sensitive.\u00a0 I\u2019m suggesting when you open your heart and bring yourself out of isolation you\u2019ll create more positive experiences and feel less affected by other energies.<\/p>\n

Sensitive or not, we\u2019re social animals.\u00a0 We need our herd, pack, gander.\u00a0 We\u2019re designed to be with others.\u00a0 As babies, lack of connection has serious health issues because we are wired to connect<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So how can we do this without feeling overwhelmed or fearful?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Begin by shoring up your energy first.\u00a0 Practice the Energy Mastery guided meditation to maintain healthy energy on a daily basis.\u00a0 Take time to generate a feeling of love and gratitude within your energy field and build your energy from this feeling.<\/p>\n

Feeling the energy and emotion of love and gratitude allows you to open your heart<\/em>.\u00a0 (Keeping a daily gratitude journal helps keep the heart open too).<\/p>\n

Reach out to a friend who is supportive and allow that connection to expand the openness of your heart.<\/p>\n

Then Get Off the Farm<\/em> with your heart open.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When you venture out into the world and connect with others from the heart, there is no energy drain.<\/p>\n

With your heart open and your aura filled with loving energy you\u2019re protected.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s your best protection from feeling overwhelmed or drained.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s your best strategy for feeling joy.<\/p>\n

And yes, your heart will close down again, and again, and again.<\/p>\n

And you can open it again, and again and again.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what we\u2019re here for.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

To live as much as possible with an open heart. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re a highly sensitive empath it can feel good to go off by yourself to a quiet place.\u00a0 Extracting ourselves from other\u2019s energy helps calm us.\u00a0 I teach this \u201cdown time\u201d as a strategy for taking care when life gets overwhelming.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve noticed how overuse of this strategy can send you into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry","has-post-thumbnail","gs-1","gs-odd","gs-even","gs-featured-content-entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wendywolfe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}