Into The Work: Therapy For Empaths And Seekers

How Sensitive Souls Can Navigate a Chaotic World Without Burning Out

Michelle Poverman

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0:00 | 20:05

In times of collective chaos, many sensitive souls feel torn between wanting to speak out and desperately needing peace.

If you’re an empath, intuitive, or spiritually conscious woman, you may be noticing that staying engaged with the world feels emotionally exhausting — even when your heart cares deeply.

In this episode, we explore how sensitive nervous systems experience the world differently, why constant exposure to suffering can lead to burnout, and how living in “against” energy keeps us stuck in fight-or-flight.

You’ll hear a gentle reframe that allows you to stay compassionate without carrying the weight of the world, including the power of shifting from what you’re against to what you’re truly for.

This conversation is an invitation to care deeply while staying anchored, grounded, and connected to your inner center.

In this episode, we explore:

  • The difference between witnessing pain and absorbing it
  • The energetic cost of living in “against” energy
  • How shifting toward what you’re for restores clarity and peace
  • Why going inward, prayer, and intention are forms of active leadership
  • Permission to protect your nervous system without guilt

This episode is especially for those who want to be a force for good in the world — without losing themselves in the process.

If this resonated, take a breath, soften your shoulders, and let this be a reminder: you don’t have to carry everything to make a difference.


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Hey, welcome back. We're gonna start today just by saying out loud. If you are feeling tired, not just physically, but maybe even so tired, you are not alone. There is a lot happening in the world right now. Violence everywhere, chaos, injustice, noise. It's a lot. And for those of us who are sensitive, empathic, deeply, feeling humans. It can feel impossible to know how to stay openhearted without completely burning out. Many of you have shared with me that you want to speak out, you want to care, you want to express how much you care, and you want to stand for something meaningful, and at the same time, you are desperately craving peace. If you have felt torn between those two things, this episode is for you. If you have felt both. I wanna scream from the rooftops, and also I wanna hide under my covers for a week. This episode is for you so there is something to say about the fact that I think sensitive people, I think we burn out faster than others. Sensitive people don't just observe pain. We experience it. And I think this is true for everybody, but I think it's particularly true for us, empaths, for us sensitive types, your nervous system, it takes in the tone of what's being said, it takes in the energy around what you're watching, the emotional content of what you're watching, and then your own emotional response to it is all entwined in that it's not just information and when you scroll, watch, read, or engage constantly. Your body doesn't know the difference between witnessing something and actually being incited. And then you look at the comments, right? The comments are crazy people like I, I I have, when you get into the comments and you're on social media and you're scrolling through stuff, the. The amount of hatred, and I mean I, you just don't wanna know that exists in the world as a sensitive type. You wanna believe that everybody is good and yes, maybe even these good people are just behaving terribly badly. But I am really so sick and tired of the divide, and it is so exhausting, and I'm sure you feel the same way. Because we really do care a lot, and this is why we feel so exhausted and overwhelmed right now, even if your own personal life is relatively stable. And I want to say this clearly, awareness does not require our absorption. And most of us don't understand the difference, and you don't have to carry suffering in your body in order to care about it. You can care about the suffering that's happening, and then make sure that you don't continue to carry that suffering in your own body. You do not have to stay flooded in order to stay compassionate. So if you've been feeling really depleted, foggy, emotionally heavy, it doesn't mean that you are, you know. Too weak or too sensitive. It just means that, yes, you're sensitive, but you've probably been doing too much and you probably need some boundaries. I myself am somebody I was just telling my group that I meet with about this. I mean, I am somebody that from a very young age, when I was little, I was. So viscerally against injustice, like if people were being bullied, I just couldn't tolerate it like I would get involved. I remember being young and I think I was like seven when I went up to the neighborhood bullies and gave them a, you know, my fist up in their face. 'cause they were bullying my older brother. And I said, you know, I'm gonna give you a knuckle sandwich if you don't stop bullying my brother now. That is runs through me, right? So I watch injustice. Things like seeing bad things happen to people is just, I mean, it does eat at my soul, like it feels so incredibly, overwhelmingly bad. And that said, if I live in that against energy, and this is a very important layer here that's really important to name, okay. Living in this against energy, a lot of what we're being asked to hold right now does live in against energy. We have been divided. Right. We are divided in half as a country here in America. We, when you get on social media, it takes you to path A or B, right? The, the, the algorithms alone are set to divide us. There's everything everywhere is so divisive. You know, we have a government that is calling us names and making people the enemy that don't agree with them, and we are divided. And so. It's really important for you to understand the cost of living in against energy, being against the other side, or being against, all of it, and we are going to be against violence. We're gonna be against injustice. We're gonna be against harm. And let me be clear, wanting change is not wrong. Speaking out is not wrong. Protesting not wrong, but for sensitive systems. Staying in against energy for too long, I'm telling you, it comes at a cost against energy. Keeps the nervous system activated, it keeps the body braced. You know, like it we're. We're not safe in our bodies when this is happening. It keeps us in fight or flight. And as for empaths, this can quietly turn into self abandonment where you know, you might notice you feeling obligated to engage because what kind of person are you if you're not right? You are starting to feel guilt when you pull back. Maybe you feel exhaustion, masked as caring deeply. You don't need to prove your compassion by staying dysregulated though. Okay? So you've nothing to prove and you don't have to stay in. This against energy all the time, and it's really important for your health, for your wellbeing, for your impact, because your vibration matters here on this planet. Your love matters, your ability to actually steer us all towards healing. Comes from a place of expansion, not constriction. So we need to shift you from against energy into what you're for energy, okay? And so here's the reframe that changes everything. So instead of asking, what am I against, I want you to think, think about what am I for? And we see this out there too. I want you to start liking everything you see that's got, it's for peace, it's for safety, it's for human dignity, it's for love, it's for healing, and I want you to just start filling yourself up with what you are for. And when you anchor into what you are for your energy shifts, everything changes. Your body can be in safety while you're actually out there. Making a difference. And so this is where prayer comes in. This is where intention comes in. This is where higher, uh, vibrational love becomes an active force, not a passive one. And I do fully believe that we have research that shows us the power of prayer. The power of this higher vibrational love on our planet going inward is not avoidance. It's alignment and when you connect with what you're for. Instead of only fighting for what you're against your nervous system, it can soften and your impact can deepen. I believe that we are all a bunch of healers here. You know, if you're listening to this, you have an inner healer. If you're not actively out in the world, I think you're actively out in the world healing. You just haven't labeled it yet, perhaps, or you just know that you are whatever you're doing, if you have a business right now and it feels heavy and it's hard to put it out there, if you're having a hard time showing up in certain ways in certain areas of your life, I want to give you permission. I want to give you permission right now. To log off. You have permission to pray instead of post, or even better yet, go ahead and post your prayer. You have permission to care about consuming everything. You have permission to rest without guilt. It's so important that you release the guilt right now. You don't need the onslaught of any other negativity or any other. Critical evaluation junk that you're gonna do with yourself right now. You're allowed to protect your peace and love this world deeply simultaneously. Okay? You can protect your peace and love this world so deeply and love those people that you are seeing get hurt and seeing the chaos and the madness and the craziness that's happening right now. I mean, it is literally like an assault on our nervous systems. I mean, there personally, I've needed to take a a, a step back. And I just wanna welcome you to do that. Now have I been doing other things? I have. I have taken other steps. I have made phone calls, I've done things that feel an alignment for me, that I'm actually trying to do something with this, with my voice. And at the same time, I'm giving myself full on permission. To care without completely consuming. And then there are days I just get caught up and I consume you guys like, I mean, I'm just like, I have to check social media for work, or I have messages and notifications and I'm like, oh, if I just go in there looking for something, it's 20 minutes later, I come up and I'm like, oh my God, what did I just witness? That was horrifying. And of course, you know, there's this other feeling where. We can feel really messed up over the fact that not just what we're witnessing, but knowing with pretty good clarity that we know that not everybody is seeing this, right? Not everybody believes it to be true. And so there's all this other, these other people out there that think this is all fake or whatever, that I, I'm not gonna get into that, but you know what I'm saying? Like we are feeling like I'm witnessing something and. Not everybody knows about it, which also can light a fire in us to feel like we need to do something, we need to fix this. And so then that really calls in our inner fixer and all of us, usually, most of my listeners, have a relationship with being a fixer. And have a healing process that they're in around that, where they don't, they recognize, they, they don't wanna rescue, they don't wanna fix, they have to let go of the areas in which they do not have control, and they need to breathe that energy back and learn what their boundaries are. Right. You, I mean, it's, we've talked about that so much that said. To stand in. I can't fix this. I should do nothing. Doesn't feel good. I mean, either way, really and truly, this is not a time that's going to feel good externally. So we really need to go inside our bodies, inside our lives, and we need to create the feel good ourselves. If you don't, I mean, we can look for the helpers, we can. Connect with other people in it. We can get out there and do good, and we can feel really good about that. There's all the, the prayer, the intentions that you're setting, all of that matters. That's us doing good. You are allowed to protect your peace and care deeply for other people. You're regulated nervous system does. Matter and your grounded presence really matters. The world does not need more exhausted, overwhelmed, spiritually disconnected people. There's enough of 'em. You can see out there. There's a lot of very disconnected people doing not good things, and it, it, our world really needs embodied humans who are anchored in truth, compassion, clarity. But not necessarily I'm gonna be, I'm gonna hate or, uh, be against in a very dark way because that in itself is us adding to the pain of our world right now and there is just gonna be a lot of pain and we have to find a way. Us sensitive healers, we need to find a way to lead with light, to show the light, to highlight the light, to be the light, and to bring in some sense of healing and peace for ourselves right now. Or we don't do anybody any good. We really don't. So I'll leave you with this. I really wanted to come in here to give you full on permission to love yourself, love your life, find your light, reconnect with yourself, as well as hold space with your community with seeing what's happening and to recognize. Really what you're for in it and to align yourself with what you're for and take action in what you're for. Versus living in the against energy that can eat us alive as a therapist, a lot of my clients who I would say have strong archetypal activists in them, um, I'm a bit of a diplomat even though I'm such a strong reaction and I wanna get out and like fight in the streets. Um, I'm also a diplomat and so I, and as empaths, we tend to see all the sides of all the people. We can see humanity through darkness and. I think that for us, it's really important for you to hear this and to experience this permission that I'm giving you here today, and that is to truly lean into yourself right now and what you need. And to trust in the subtlety and the beauty of what it is that you have to offer as an individual. And that might look like something that is, safer to your nervous system than something that keeps you pushing at a rate that does not feel good to your body, your mind, your, your whole self. Sometimes the most powerful thing that a sensitive soul can do is truly staying connected to what they're for, and believing in the good, looking for the good, seeing the good, and helping everybody else see the good. Because to be honest, if our mission. We're to be, to fight the divide and to pull in all those people. With love and understanding that don't understand what's happening, um, or understand it differently in such a way that we feel, um, just feeds the divide, right? If we could get rid of the divide and we could love one another, then the really, truly horrendous people, the really heinous people, they're really disgusting people. Um, white supremacists, fascists, like we've got a lot of people out in the world that are bad. I think their numbers would be smaller, right? They'd be a lot smaller, and I think that's starting to happen. And so however we can bridge, however we can shed our light, however we can open up to. Healing. I think that we can make a difference that way. And so I just wanna allow you to step into what feels right for how you are coded. Right. We come down here, we all are coded for different things. My clients, I was telling you about that, that have these, like, I call them archetypes, right? But they also have these codes. They are truly meant to get out there and. Fight and to argue and to, uh, perform in that way and God bless them. Oh my gosh. Let's cheer them on. And I call those my frontline empaths. I have a, an episode on that that I will put in the show notes so the frontline empaths are those that, that are on the fighting lines, right? They're out there making it, they're out there putting themselves out there doing the fight. And they're still empaths though. They're still holding all the qualities. Then you've got like the next line back, which are nurturing empaths, right? These are like, we are in the middle ground. We are holding space for all these people. We are holding space for the, the front lines. We are, we're doing our work in a very different way. And then I had listed the mystics and those are people who are calling it in and calling it down and, and working from the realms. And so, honestly. I think it's important for you to acknowledge and know what you are coded for. What is it that you are here for? How are you feeling most alive when you think about the role you wanna play in this time in history, this time right now, this time that's happening right now, and how do you wanna show up? What are you coded for? What feels most aligned to you, and I just wanna support that. As long as you are staying in alignment with yourself, with your calling, with your purpose, who you are, some of us are like, you know what, I'm, I'm buckling down in my business and I'm getting out there and I'm helping more people. And that feels really good right now because I feel like I'm, I'm actually. Adding to the parts of their lives that are beautiful and successful and incredible and that's wonderful. So I want you to just really lean into where you feel called right now and what your codes are for it, and to acknowledge who you are and love who you are in it. And that's enough. Alright, so have a beautiful week. I will look forward to talking to you next week. Bye for now.