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The path of the empathic creative is a difficult one.

Being highly sensitive, deeply introverted and intensely empathic seems like a gift. But it’s more like a curse when it makes you feel like you don’t want to be an empath at all anymore.

Let’s face it, feeling all the feels, all the time is exhausting. And that’s just your own feelings!

You’re also highly sensitive to other people’s feelings and energy and absorb them like a sponge.

Deep down you know you’re being called to be a creative, but no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you feel like no one sees you.

You lose hope when you feel like you’re just screaming into the void.

You start questioning your life choices, you try doing other things, being some other version of you – yet nothing feels right.

I’m here to tell you that you matter. Your creative work is important and meaningful.

We need you. The world needs you.

I know it seems impossible right now, but there is a way through this. And I’m here to help!

I’ll show you how to sit with the dark side of yourself and swim in the deep of your strong emotions without drowning.

Stick with me and I’ll teach you how to become unshakeably optimistic and transform the pain of being a highly sensitive creative into your source of healing and creativity.

Here, let me tell you about me, and you tell me if this sounds familiar…

My inner life is rich, lively and chaotic.

So rich, lively and chaotic that if I don’t have a tool belt full of tools to manage it, my life quickly spins out of control and I end up crying in the foetal position under a blanket somewhere.

I’m in my head a lot, which means I’m quiet and introspective.

I observe and absorb a lot of information so that I can think about things deeply. This makes me a good listener (sometimes to the point where people think I can read their minds) but it also means I often forget to express myself out loud. To other people. So they all think I’m a weird kind of quiet.

When I think about things – like past conversations and interactions, the way someone said something, the words they used – I’m trying to discern what it means or find some deeper meaning that I missed the first time around. This quite inevitably leads to me juxtaposing everything with my own life and trying to see myself and my own choices from new perspectives.

And yes, spending this much time thinking about stuff makes me a hopeless daydreamer.

It also means that I don’t readily or often reach out to others to connect because I feel like meeting a person just once gives me a lot to think about and – as I said – I take my time digesting it.

I’m also easily drained by social interactions, even when I really enjoy them, and I need a lot of time in between socialising to recover.

If I don’t give myself that time, I’ll get overwhelmed and most likely say something incredibly stupid, which I’ll then spend the next decade regretting (though the other person tends to forget about it in about 10 minutes).

So, learning how to be a better communicator has always been important to me.

And not just communicate with others, also get better at communicating with myself.

Because I easily fall into a negative state of mind and start blaming myself for everything from here to the end of time, if I’m not watching my self-talk and proactively cultivating a profoundly optimistic mindset.

My inner emotional storms are strong, the crests of the waves are high and the falls in between them are terrifying.

Learning how to surf those waves, rather than being drowned by them, has taken a lot of practice.

For a long time, I felt like I was living a charade.

I was masking the things about me that other people found odd, like my quiet demeanour, enjoying spending time alone, being super sensitive to random stuff and experiencing things profoundly.

In some ways, it’s like being a toddler because the veil between me and the world is very thin. I’ve been reduced to tears by putting on ill-fitting pants, I’ve had entire days ruined by skipping a meal and I’ve flown into fully blown hissy fits as an adult because I’ve forced myself to compromise for the sake of trying to please others.

I had no one like me growing up to teach me how to deal with being so deeply tuned to the world around me.

Most people only notice what’s glaringly obvious and right in front of them.

I see a world that is infinitely and intricately interconnected, where a minute change in one place can have large-scale consequences in another.

Where other people experience a gentle breeze, I feel like I’m being battered by galeforce winds. And when I tried to express this to others in the past, I was told I’m being too sensitive, overly dramatic or just plain stupid for caring too much about something so unimportant.

I constructed intricate facades that were designed to hide the traits in me that made me feel ashamed and unaccepted. I spent my days in fear that someone will expose me as a fraud.

Until I learned that there’s a better, more authentic way to live.

So, for a happy life, my recipe includes large amounts of educating myself on myself.

To understand how to make the most of my sensitivity, I spend a lot of time and energy on personal growth. I also craft my environment to support my emotional, physical and mental well-being, eliminating and/or minimising triggers that cause emotional or sensory overwhelm.

Pursuing my creativity is also critical because it allows me wild and unrestrained self-expression, which further deepens my understanding of myself and keeps me from dumping a confused mess that will only prove I’m insane on other people in conversation.

And I make sure that I maintain a connection to this world even – and especially – when losing myself in imaginary worlds becomes incredibly attractive. So, I push myself to be social, online when I need to keep it at arm’s length and reach out to people to connect and gently push myself outside of my comfort zone.

I bet you’d just love to break free from the chains of comparison and self-doubt.

Discover the freedom and power of being you.

The real you, not the version of you that’s been shrunken down to make other people feel more comfortable.

When was the last time you felt good about yourself? Worthy and capable of achieving what you really want in life?

Maybe it’s been so long you cant remember.

In which case let me tell you; embracing that emotional, sensitive side of you is something that should empower you to share your love, your joy and your laughter. It should make you feel fuller for doing it, not leave you drained and exhausted.

Because when you know how to manage your empathy, your whole life becomes a sharing of love and you find that you can afford to give, without ever feeling overwhelmed or like you’re trying to give from a place of emptiness.

My goal is to help you feel alive by design, not by chance.

Learn how to manage your gift of empathy and dive into the deep work required to become profoundly optimistic – you’re gonna need it if you want to survive being an empathic creative.