The Case: 

• Annabelle often feels anxious, overwhelmed and unsettled.
• She was experiencing weird body sensations, panic attacks and unexplained mood swings.
• She visited GPs, psychiatrists, therapists and a rheumatologist but their medications and an autoimmune diagnosis didn’t help solve her problem. 

The Investigation

One of the biggest issues for Annabelle was that she felt like nobody was really hearing her or worse, dismissing her concerns as being all in her head. I’m so glad that she reached out to me because I knew there had to be an underlying issue. 

After our initial 2-hour consultation, I was convinced that her issues weren’t just internal and we had to look at external triggers to get to the root cause. Some of her symptoms reminded me of a conversation I had with Stephanie Roman (episode 21) so I knew talking to her would be the first step in solving this health mystery. Stephanie helps empaths understand their gifts and also manage them. 

What is an Empath?

An empath is someone who feels the vibrational energy around them emotionally and/or physically. An empath will often feel and mirror the emotion, feelings, and energy they encounter.

Many empaths don’t know they’re empaths because they’ve always been sensitive to others emotions and energy so they don’t realize that others don’t have this experience. 

Scientifically, empaths are often referred to as ‘highly sensitive’ which is essentially the same thing.

Empaths can be on a sliding scale meaning some will have minor sensations or emotional responses while others will have significant reactions to external energy.

Most empaths are born empaths but learn to suppress their empathic responses but blocking these responses can build up over time and trigger other issues like autoimmune disease.

How do you Know if You’re an Empath?

Empaths exist on a spectrum so there is a sliding scale of signs that someone might be an empath or have some empathic qualities.  Signs to look for include:

• Anxiety, depression and feelings of isolation
• Alone time is mandatory
• People open up to you easily (like telling you their life story out of the blue) or instantly don’t like you (because you’re mirroring them and that makes them uncomfortable)
• Feeling like your emotions are not in your control
• Taking care of others instead of yourself

One of the most common traits for empaths is the need to decompress. This might look like needing to be alone after being stimulated by excess electronic frequencies such as emotionally energized circumstances, having their senses overstimulated, or being in a really busy place. 

Stephanie points out that many people make the mistake of thinking that all empaths are introverted and while it might be more common, extraverts can also be empaths. 

Common Symptoms of an Empath

Empaths can accumulate stress in their bodies if they don’t know how to release the energy they absorb from others. This extra stress over time can cause a variety of symptoms which can be difficult to attribute to being an empath. 

1. Magnesium Deficiency. Because of the excess stress, highly sensitive individuals can burn their natural magnesium at a much higher rate. This leaves them deficient in magnesium which then lead to symptoms like muscle cramping, charley horses, tingling sensations as well as anxiety, depression, and uncontrolled emotional outburst like suddenly needing to cry for no reason. 
2. Anxiety Attacks. Those who are aware that they are an empath will call these Empath Attacks but they feel very similar to anxiety attacks where you feel over stimulated and unable to process your emotions.
3. Autoimmune Diseases. Some autoimmune diseases can be traced to suppressed or repressed empathic responses causing extreme bodily stress. This stress, over time, can put the immune system into overload and trigger an autoimmune disease such as Crohn’s, IBS and eczema. 
4. Always Feeling Over-stimulated. This symptom can be hard to detect because many empaths have always been over-stimulated so it’s their ‘normal’ or default setting. But they are likely to be further triggered by sensory overload like bright lights, loud noises, or strong scents.
5. Long Recovery. Another symptom of being an empath is that it can take a long time (sometimes a day or more) to get over an overly stimulating situation where others can recover in a minute. 

Diagnosing Empaths

Unfortunately, there is no designated test or quiz that can identify an empath 100%.  Most empaths who become aware of the term can self-diagnose because they feel it in their body.

Treatments and Coping Tools for Empaths

Stephanie says that dealing with being an empath is a journey. There’s no magic pill and everyone experiences it differently so it’s all about trying different things to find what works. She suggests finding a practice that helps to release the energy. This might include meditation, breath work, grounding, running, getting out in nature -- any kind of intentional action can help release the energy. She will even have her clients shake just to get the energy out. 

Stephanie also says that epsom salt baths help which makes sense because it releases magnesium and is also really great for cleansing the liver. 

Quiet, alone time is also an important management tool for empaths. Emotional releases like journaling are also recommended. 

Supplementing with magnesium is what Stephanie recommends as most empaths are depleted in magnesium. 

Mystery Solved

Being an empath is much more common than people realize and it can be a big contributing factor in certain health mysteries (especially if you don’t know you’re an empath!) If you think you’re an empath, remember that being an empath is not a bad thing. In fact, it can be beneficial if you are aware of it and know how to manage it. 

This is exactly how we approached it for Annabelle. I explained to her that she may be an empath. She didn’t know what that meant but after looking at some of the characteristics everything made sense. We talked about using this to her advantage instead of treating it like a negative thing. To do that, we needed to set her up with some strategies to keep her body in balance. 

Next Steps 

First we worked on releasing techniques so that she can release negative energy and emotions when they come up. This is important to keep her physical stress levels low. 

A few of the techniques we used were grounding and stepping into her feelings fully so she could release them. 

We also looked to exercise (hill climbing) while repeating a mantra to extinguish unwanted feelings. Another energy release technique we tried out was screaming into a pillow. 

With these coping skills under her belt, we wanted to see how being an undiagnosed empath had impacted her biochemistry. 

We did a hair test and found that she was low in magnesium and also low in calcium. 

To balance out these levels, I recommended  Magnesium Buffered Chelate,  Calcium Malate Chelate, and ...