If you are a highly sensitive person, you will want to become strong enough to handle all the information that comes to you so that you do not become overloaded, mentally unstable, codependent or ungrounded.

One of the most important abilities you as an empathic person can develop is your ability to establish and maintain clear emotional and psychic boundaries.

As I discussed in my most recent Amazon No. 1 best seller, Unlimited Intuition Now, there are four primary psychic gifts:

• Clairsentience, the gift of psychic feeling
• Clairvoyance, the gift of psychic vision
• Clairaudience, the gift of psychic hearing
• Claircognizance, the gift of prophetic knowing

Although it is possible for you to develop all four gifts, more than likely one psychic gift will come most easily to you because it’s your soul’s primary way of communicating with you.

Here’s how you can develop better boundaries using each psychic gift:

Clairsentience. If you are high in the gift of psychic feeling, you may get confused and not able to tell which exactly are your own feelings and which are the energies and emotions of other people. Because you quite literally pick up the feelings of others, you may have been working hard your whole life to get the people around you to feel OK so that you yourself can feel good. This unconscious habit may have left you feeling exhausted no matter how many vitamins you take, how much yoga, tai chi or qi gong you practice, how many days you take off work, how much sleep you get or how positively you think. If you are high in psychic feeling, here’s how you can develop better psychic boundaries:

• Three times a day get by yourself and ask yourself how YOU feel. For example, if you wake up in the morning feeling happy, calm and optimistic and then a few hours later your mood shifts dramatically, you know it’s not necessarily how YOU feel – you may have picked up the energy and emotions of someone around you. If this is the case, you can usually shake off at least 50 percent of what you feel (whether that be neck pain, anxiety or depression) by affirming, “This is not my stuff.”
• Allow other people to feel however they feel. If you feel overwhelmed by other people’s emotions, cocoon yourself by following the directions on this blog I wrote at this link. You an also visualize your third chakra like a fire hydrant. Visualize water flowing out from your solar plexus pushing energy away from you.
• Affirm, “It’s not my rodeo.” Other people get to feel however they feel. You don’t need to heal, change or relieve their suffering – that’s THEIR job.

It’s my observation that people high in the psychic gift of clairsentience often have the most difficult time with emotional and psychic boundaries.

I explain that if I put my hand on a hot stove, I know that the stove is hot – there’s nothing wrong with my hand so long as I remove it quickly enough not to get burned.

If you are a feeler, your hand feels hot and you assume there’s something wrong with your hand. This can actually become true if you allow yourself to be a psychic sponge and take on the pain and suffering of others. Over time, feelers can quite literally even become physically ill through taking on other people’s energy.

Clairvoyance. If you are high in the gift of psychic vision and don’t have good boundaries, you may easily accept other people’s picture of the world without asking yourself how you actually see the situation. This is how so many young people get sucked into the family business or too readily buy in to how their family sees the way their lives should go – rather than figuring all this out for themselves. If you are high in psychic vision, here’s how you can develop better psychic boundaries:

• Three times a day, ask yourself how you YOU picture things. Like the gift of clairsentience, the gift of clairvoyance is a slower gift. I explain to my clairsentient and clairvoyant clients that speed is just a setting on the washing machine – not necessarily better or worse – but you have to take your time to stop and picture things for yourself as opposed to accepting other people’s hasty judgments and projections. Once you get clear on your own picture, you will be able to tell the difference between how you see things and the way that other people do.
• Recognize that how you see the world is also your gift back to the world. You are here to be you – not anybody else. Give yourself permission to complete your own picture. Other people may tell you that you are crazy or wrong until you create that beautiful picture and they can see it for themselves.
• As you ponder the picture of the life you would like to create, ask yourself how it would FEEL for you to look that way. Many people high in clairvoyance are so focused on appearances that they don’t stop to ask themselves if they actually would feel happy or comfortable in that supposedly perfect picture. If it wouldn’t feel good while also looking good, you know that picture is not actually right for you and you will want to change it in some way.

Clairaudience. If you are high in the gift of psychic hearing, your mind may be so quickly be overloaded by thoughts that you may not be certain if what you hear is your soul guidance, your ego’s fears and projections or the thoughts you have simply picked up from the people around you.

• Three times a day, ask yourself what YOU hear about yourself. Your soul gift of clairaudience comes so quickly that if it takes you longer than 30 seconds to get it, it’s either your ego speaking or you are simply regurgitating other people’s thoughts and opinions.
• Meditate. Although meditation is beneficial for everyone, for people high in clairaudience it’s essential to quiet your mind long enough that your soul guidance can drop in naturally. Your soul guidance drops into the gaps between your thoughts. If you don’t want to sit in formal meditation, get off by yourself, take a walk, wash the dishes or simply sit in silence.
• In conversations with others, take a moment to listen to yourself. It is true that most people are terrible listeners. Focus your attention to what others say then pause and listen to your own guidance. Clairaudience comes in the form of words or vibration and even sometimes music.

Claircognizance. If you are high in the gift of prophetic knowing, your gifts may be so obvious that other people constantly come to you for advice and direction. If you don’t use your claircognizance for yourself, you may feel depleted and not be able to put your finger on why. Your soul guidance is meant to be used for you so don’t give away all your good stuff to other people.

• Three times a day, ask yourself what YOU know about yourself. Like clairaudience, the gift of claircognizance is very, very quick, so if you don’t know the answer within 30 seconds you are actually wrong – that would be your ego talking.
• Take the time to ground yourself regularly. Because the gift of claircognizance comes from the upper chakras, people high in prophetic knowing may easily become disconnected from their bodies. Walk barefoot. Dig in your garden. Exercise. Get a massage. The more well grounded you are in your own body, the easier it will be to handle all the information that comes to you so very very fast. If you don’t take the time to ground you can quite literally at times feel like you have been struck by lightning.
• Because information comes to you so fast, you will have to take time to filter what you receive so as not to disturb the life experience of others. If you do receive information about others, silently ask guidance about whether that information is for your own benefit or for you to share. Sometimes you are simply meant to know without judgment and keep quiet so that other people get to have their own soul experience.

As an empathic person, realize that you may have to work harder than others at maintaining psychic boundaries in order for you to remain physically and emotionally healthy.

What is healing?

Healing happens when you maintain healthy emotional and psychic boundaries.

Are you having trouble maintaining healthy emotional and psychic boundaries? I can help you identify where you are getting stuck and what will work to keep you grounded in your own energy.

To set up an appointment for a medical intuitive reading or healing work, email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or call 678-612-8816. If you are outside the U.S., please call via WhatsApp. I can work with you from anywhere in the world by phone, Skype or Zoom video conference.