If you end up in this article, most likely you are a coach who feels overwhelmed. You love what you do: helping people and seeing the brightness in your client’s eyes when they have an aha moment or achieve their goal.
But somehow, you feel so tired of dealing with clients. You don’t understand why you feel this way. Because you love what you do.
This article will explain to you why you feel that way. The hint is nothing wrong with you! You just need some change once you understand more about your personality.
Let’s get started with the first question.
Are you an empath?
Does it sound familiar to you?
- You are being called “too sensitive” by people around you.
- Somehow you get others’ emotions before they say a word.
- You love to have deep conversations with your loved ones.
- “If you cry, I’ll cry with you.” This is the theme in your life.
- Surrounded by people drains your energy. The worst part is you can sense others’ fake smiles and it makes you sick.
- You need a lot of time alone to recharge.
If your answer to these traits is yes, you might be an empath.
“Recognizing that you’re an empath is the first step in taking charge of your emotions instead of drowning in them,”
Dr. Orloff
Once you begin to understand your empathic nature, you can learn to take better care of yourself.
Dr. Judith Orloff is the author of The Empath’s Survival Guide. You grab this book to learn more about being an empath.
But for the time being, let’s continue our conversation.
What’s Empath?
An empath is a person who can feel other people’s emotions just like that. It’s like being able to pick up other’s people’s emotion and feel it inside you.
Being an empath can be difficult if you can’t manage your feeling. Especially when you are a coach, your job requires you to hear your client’s challenges and give them the advice to move forward.
If you can’t define which are others’ emotions and which are yours, it can be so exhausting.
The good news is, that you can make your empath trait your superpower. While others find it difficult to understand others’ feelings, you can pick it up in one second.
If you can use your empath ability to understand your clients thus you can negotiate and give them what they need, imagine what a good coach you are. Your clients will love you. Your business will thrive. And your heart will be full of fulfillment.
Once you own your empathetic tendency, it will be your biggest asset in your life.
Why does Empath become a good coach?
Let’s start from the beginning. How did you end up being a coach? Because you love to help people? Do people come to you for advice and find it helpful?
The idea of making money while doing good to others light your heart like no other.
No wonder the empath side of you loves being a coach. Because you have your best interest at heart. And that’s what a coach is all about.
But why secretly do you feel tired of your clients?
Here’s why: because you gave everything to your client and never recharged yourself.
Let me explain:
- If you are a coach yet an empath, you give all your resources to help your client. Your attention, emotion, and expertise.
- You even feel your client’s problem inside you. When they fail, you feel their disappointment.
- When your clients succeed, you get over the heels.
That’s a lot of emotional roller coaster. Even for non-empath people. Moreover for you as an empath. That’s why when you do this to too many clients for too long you get drained.
- You are human like the rest of the mortals.
- You give too much and receive nothing back.
- You don’t allow yourself to receive something back to be precise.
It’s like keep pouring water from the jug without refilling the jug.
It’s impossible to sustain.
So, as I said before, there is nothing wrong with you. You are a terrific coach. And your clients need you. Because you up-level their life in what you do.
All you need is some specific empath-friendly self-care. So you can recharge and show up for your tribe and do good to others.
How to Survive As A Coach if You are an Empath?
Just like everything, we start from the mindset. As an empath, you need to learn to receive from others. But the most challenging part is to let yourself accept the love you have for yourself.
Self-care for empath coaches can be divided into 2 categories. The mindset and physical self-care.
Let’s start with the mindset part.
Mindset
1. Deep breathing
Every time you feel overwhelmed in your day, practice deep breathing. This is how you should do it:
- Sit comfortably. Focus your gaze on one point or close your eyes.
- Put your hand on your heart and stomach.
- Take a deep breath from your nose. Feel your stomach expand.
- Hold your breath for a few seconds.
- Release your breath through your mouth. Feel your stomach shrink.
Do it a couple of times. Feel your body slowly calm down and your heartbeat slows down. Take your time and enjoy this practice. This is your ultimate me-time.
Once you get yourself together again you can continue with your day.
2. Gratefulness
If you win your morning you will win your day. That’s why if you wake up and feel sucked for no reason, you might feel sucked all day.
To avoid this, every time you wake up in the morning, do a gratefulness ritual. Ask yourself:
What am I grateful for today?
Mention 3-5 things you feel grateful for today. Be specific. Don’t just say: I am grateful for my family.
Said something specific like I’m grateful for my child’s smile. It always lights my day. I am grateful for my husband who always makes me laugh.
It sounds so cheesy. But it works!
It only takes you about 5 minutes. But the effect is huge. It trains your brain to focus on the positive thing at the beginning of the day. This set the tone for the whole day.
Even if bad things happen later in the day, at least you know you have something to be grateful for today.
Remember, You can’t feel depressed and grateful at the same time.
3. Compassion
Empathy works like energy. The more you use your energy it will drain. So does empathy.
The problem is if you are an empath you tend to access your empathy to deal with anything in your life. That’s why the more you expose to a lot of things to deal with you feel drained.
You can make a slight change to avoid it. Change your empathy to compassion.
Compassion is you understand how others feel.
Empathy is you feel how others feel.
Do you see the difference here?
Compassion is not as deep as empathy. Because not everything deserves your empath. If you change your response from 100% empathy to let’s say 75% compassion and 25% empathy you will feel lighter inside.
4. Forgiveness
Do you often feel you don’t do enough?
“If only I do better maybe …“
If you said that kind of thing to yourself, hear me out.
You are just a human. Don’t be too harsh to yourself.
But we both know it’s easier said than done. That’s why you need to do a forgiveness ritual to forgive yourself.
There are a lot of forgiveness rituals popular in the online world. The point is by forgiving yourself you will clear out your emotion.
This is how you can do your forgiveness ritual:
- Find places where you can be alone and calm.
- Take a deep breath. You can combine this ritual with deep breathing rituals.
- Said to yourself:
- [Your Name], I forgive you for …
- [Your Name], even though you … I still love you and accept you the way you are.
You can say it out loud or just say it in your heart. From my personal experience, it more resonates with your heart if you say it out loud and in your mother tongue.
You can adapt the script based on what you feel at that very moment. There is no right or wrong. The main idea of this ritual is we practice to forgive our self.
That it is ok if you feel you don’t do enough. You already do your best. That’s what counts.
We are our biggest enemy. We said mean things to ourselves. And it drags our self-worth down. That’s why doing a forgiving ritual will clear out negative emotions inside you.
For an empath, this ritual can be so liberating. Knowing that you are not perfect and that’s ok.
5. Affirmation
Have you ever heard, “What follows after the word “I am” will follow you..”
This is what I heard when I learned about affirmation. To tell you the truth, I don’t believe it one bit.
I mean say something random like, “I am rich. I am smart. I am kind. I am beautiful.” What would make any difference in my life?
Well, until I do a little tweak. You need to choose your affirmation word based on your fear.
We all have fear and limiting belief inside us. We know it holds us back from achieving our goal.
Let’s make a simple example. Let’s say you are a coach who keeps wondering if you are doing enough for your client. You wonder if you deserve their hard-earned money.
You can make your affirmation word like:
“I am a good coach.“
“I deserve my client’s money because I help them with everything I have.“
Do you see the difference here? This is not a random word you pick out of nowhere.
This is your word.
Affirmation works like aspirin for your headache. Affirmation heals our limiting beliefs and teaches us to see ourselves from a different perspective.
The more we do it the more we believe it. The more we believe it, the weaker our limiting belief will be.
It feels so awkward in the beginning, but you should keep doing it. After some time you will feel more positive about yourself.
Put all of that 5 mindset self-care in your toolbox. You can use them every time you need them. Play around with the script. Try them all, pick what you like. Find the best combination for you. Then do this self-care religiously.
It should take you 10 minutes a day to recalibrate your mind. To keep your sanity. All you need most is the commitment to make time to do it. Block it in your calendar.
Pick a specific time to do your mindset self-care. Do it every day. Or every weekday. You can do your mindset self-care at the end of your work. Or when you calm yourself down when you’re going to sleep.
You deserve 10 minutes of self-care, don’t you think?
Now let’s dive into physical self-care.
physical self-care
1. Set boundaries
As an empath, I bet you always struggling with boundaries. You do this from the place of love.
If I can do more, I’ll do more. After that… I’ll give some more...
That’s your mindset all day every day. No wonder you feel so drained at the end of the day.
After some time, you even feel tired before you start your day
You feel guilty when you don’t reply to your client right away.
Do you feel familiar?
If you do, set your boundary.
The challenging part of setting boundaries is when you’re about to set them you feel guilt. As an empath, the guilt is almost unbearable.
If an empath wants to set boundaries, they need to change their perspective about the boundaries.
We tend to see boundaries as selfish and neglect someone who needs us. We feel icky and we are the bad guy for setting boundaries for ourselves. This sounds noble but will quickly backfire in your life.
By not setting boundaries, you’re enabling your client’s weakness.
You never let them do the right thing by themself because you don’t allow them to.
Let that sink for a minute.
- Change your perspective. Set your boundaries.
- Let your client learn to take care of themself.
- Allow them to learn even if it is the hard way.
2. Spend time in nature
You can’t feel sad for too long if you are surrounded by nature.
What I mean by nature here is not necessarily going to the forest out of nowhere. You just need to sit quietly in the park. Enjoy the clean air and the tree. It will boost your mood immediately.
Do you want calmness on steroids?
Take off your shoes. Grounding yourself will heal your body. This is a fancy word for saying put your bare food on the ground. Do it for 10-15 minutes every day.
If you don’t feel better after a week I will pay for your next Starbuck coffee.
Spending some time in nature will increase your endorphin and dopamine. Both are known as happiness hormones.
At the same time also lower your cortisol or stress hormone.
Nothing bad came from surrounding yourself with nature.
3. Make a Friend with Your Inner Critic
Do you have a sassy voice inside you that always say bad things about yourself?
Yes! Your sassy alter ego. Some call it an inner critique.
Most people will say we need to ignore the inner critique. But from personal experience, that’s not gonna work.
I mean, that sassy voice is like your twins. It follows you everywhere. Am I, right?
So better than ignoring her, let’s choose to acknowledge her.
This is what I suggest you do:
- Name your inner critique. Mine is Lil Lungs.
- If you like imagination, give this inner critique a form. It wants to exist all the time so give her a chance. Mine looks like a Casper but in lung form.
- Then, every time Lil Lungs say a mean thing to I always acknowledge her.
“Thank you for reminding me. Last time I check I didn’t ask for your opinion. Remember, this is my life. Because I am kind, I let you tag along with me. But you stay in the back seat. I am the one driving my life.“
You can make your own line. The above is an example.
That inner critique will shut her mouth. For sometimes.
We know she will be back again. She always does.
But this time we expect her. And we already have our line to shut her off.
To Wrap Up
There is nothing wrong with being an empath. As a coach, the fact that you are an empath will give you huge advantages to help other people.
All you need to do is find the balance between giving your resources to others and recharging yourself.
If you don’t take care of yourself, you will act like a sponge. You’ll end up cleaning up your client’s messes.
By finding the balance between enforcing your empath power to help others and also taking care of yourself, you will find your empath trait as the biggest asset in your life.
