I had been to therapy for years and had been told I was an empath, but I didn't realize what that really meant. 

It means more than you are absorbing other people's emotions, illnesses, and energy. 

It's not just an inconvenience. 

It completely destroys your life. Having this energetic exchange happen regularly in your relationships distorts your relationships. 

There is no other way around it. 

Here is how it played out in my marriage and began to make my marriage suffer. 

I remember this day vividly still. My husband and I have amazing conversations together and enjoy spending time together so we had this beautiful habit of going on trails together. 

One Saturday, we were walking a trail and I was filled with so many positive emotions.

I had been working on my trauma and was beginning to feel safe and happy when all of a sudden he reached for my hand. The second he touched my hand, a dark cloud loomed over me and I felt depressed. 

Grief and extreme pain overwhelmed me. 

The reality is that this had been happening for a long time in my life, but the stark contrast of that day is what made me realize this was occurring. Prior to that it would have been hard for me to notice because I was already depressed so if I were to feel even more depressed it just meant I was having a bad day. 

This isn't where it stopped though. I began to notice that I was waking up fatigued in the mornings. I had no energy within me. That was because I was giving my life force energy to my husband while we slept at night in bed together. 

I didn't know what to do anymore. I literally couldn't be around my husband without feeling discomfort in my own body and of course that spilled out into how we interacted with each other.

I had absorbed so much of other people's anger and other emotions that I began to genuinely feel hatred inside. I hated people and I hated my husband. 

All of this anger welled up inside of me and I would vomit verbal diarrhea on my husband daily. 

Our joyous walks turned into fighting matches. 

And he just wanted his wife back. He had no idea what was going on with me. 

Once I realized what was going on, I began to do the work that needed to be done to undo all of this and it isn't easy. 

There are no tricks to stopping this cycle. The only way to get out of it was to go through the subconscious beliefs I had that were causing me to absorb other people's energy. 

There are a few core beliefs that allow this to happen. Here they are:

1) I don't deserve love. 

2) I am not worthy of goodness. 

These beliefs energetically send out the message to the world that everyone else is more important than you are so they are able to steal your energy and due to your beliefs you also willingly subconsciously self sacrifice all the time absorbing other people's ailments, maladies, and negative emotions in exchange for your healthy energy. 

The underlying reason for this is the belief that if you do this you will finally be able to receive love. You will finally be loved. 

But unfortunately that never happens. 

So instead what happened is that I became increasingly emotionally unstable and easily triggered and as time progressed incredibly ill. 

And I felt like a complete failure at life because my relationships were a disaster, but I also couldn't function very well in life anymore due to this lack of energy. 

I was a mess and it hurt to be stuck in this mess. 

I felt that God was very unfair. I felt that God wasn't supporting me or helping me. 

It was an incredibly dark time in my life that I wouldn't wish upon anyone and I was helpless to change it only because I didn't realize how my energy was contributing to my problems. 

This post is part of a series on Getting Out Of the Fight Make Up Fight Cycle in your marriage. There were many components that were creating this issue. It is a very complex issue. Please click on the links below, if you would like to read the rest of the series. 

If these posts sound like the problem you are currently experiencing in your marriage, I can help. I have helped myself and dozens of women get out of this cycle and I can help you too.  If you're ready to receive help please click the button below to schedule a FREE consultation. In this consultation, I will assess whether I am the right person to help you with your current problem. 

It isn't obvious, but shame is the number one killer of marriages. 

This is because shame keeps you stuck.

When you feel ashamed you don't feel like you're able to ask for help. 

You're too ashamed to tell anyone about what's going wrong in your marriage.

You can't bear the thought of anyone knowing the real you.

You might even be too ashamed to examine the role you're playing in your marriage. 

That is a sure fire way to kill a marriage. 

So you have to start to dismantle the shame by realizing that the issues you're facing are quite normal. 

You're not alone. 

All couples go through hardships in their marriage. 

The difference isn't whether a couple is perfect or not, but how they work toward resolving their issues. 

But shame is a little more covert in how it kills a marriage than just the above. 

Shame also kills a marriage because while you feel ashamed you cannot perceive things clearly. 

So when your husband tells you that "it isn't what you say, but how you say it." 

If you have a good sense of self worth you can hear that and be okay and work with your husband to make changes. 

If your sense of self worth is low and it's making you feel ashamed you will instantly get defensive because if what he is saying is true then that means you are a terrible person.

It isn't your fault that you feel ashamed and it isn't his fault either. 

This shame is coming from a different source usually your childhood. 

And shame is a tricky thing to deal with because it isn't an emotion. Anger, joy, sadness, and despair are all examples of emotions, but shame isn't an emotion. 

It isn't giving you any valuable information. All of the other emotions let you know something you need to know. 

Shame is just a lie that doesn't belong in your life and as such it cannot be processed like emotions can. It needs to be energetically released. That's the only way to get rid of it once and for all. 

So how do you start seeing a change now? Notice that shame is working in your marriage. Bring awareness to how it's making you feel and how it's making you respond to your partner. 

Once you have this awareness you can choose to respond differently. 

Recollect your last fight that was centered around something you were doing. Recall the tension and stress that came up into your body. 

Notice how you responded. How can you respond differently now that you know that you responded the way you did due to shame?

We had been stuck in the same arguments for a long time. Every time I would try to bring it up in a different way and to be careful with the words I used, but we would still end up in a fight. 

Until one day as we were stuck in the same pattern something changed within me. This time I said what I said, but as he responded the way that he did my inner voice said, "He is hearing he isn't enough." 

I said this out loud.  I said, "Are you feeling like you're not enough right now?"

He said, "Yes. I am a man. We are always feeling like we're not enough and when you keep bringing these things up it keeps reminding me that I will never be enough. No matter what I do. I am not enough."

That stung. I wasn't trying to hurt him. I wasn't trying to add to his pain. 

We cannot tip toe around people or know what will rub them the wrong way, but understanding their internal battle helps in bringing in more empathy into the dynamic. 

It brought more awareness around how I could connect more with him prior to having these conversations so I wouldn't poke that wound so hard. 

It had nothing to do with tools or phrases I learned to say so I won't share that here. 

Something inside of me changed when I understood how deeply he felt that he wasn't enough. 

That brought in the empathy for me. In this exercise you will experience the same. 

Take a moment when you're alone and close your eyes. Replay some of the last arguments you've had with your husband. Really feel the argument. Was it led with empathy? Don't judge yourself too harshly. It's hard to lead with empathy when we are frustrated, but bring that awareness. 

As you see the argument unfold notice your body language, notice how you feel inside. Notice the energy you're projecting forward. It isn't about what you're saying. It's about the energy you're bringing in to the conversation. 

Allow what ever insight comes to come forward and jot them down in a journal. 

Please take the time to do the exercise. Don't just read it. 

This is the first step to beginning to see where your blind spots were and how you can change the energy in the relationship. 

Within the energy there are energetic factors causing you to poke at his "I am not enough"  wound and there are energetic factors that are maintaining this wound in your husband.  Both are at play and locking in this cycle in your relationship. 

Both need to be addressed to have this issue resolved for good.  I help my clients with the energetics around their relationships. If you would like to understand how I can help you with this, click on the button below to book a FREE consultation. There is no pressure during the call.  You tell me what your problem is and I will assess if I am able to help you. 

​Before I got married I thought I was set. I had a psychology degree under my belt, had read lots of books on relationships, and my partner and I had gone to counseling together to make sure we had discussed important topics and learned how to communicate more effectively together.  Does this sound familiar?

That was 14 years ago. I wasn't prepared at all for the reality of what was about to happen. 

Despite all of our efforts, after seven years together, we were having the worse fights we have ever had. I began to question whether it was time to divorce. 

And yet something within me new this was fixable and that there was something more to it than us, an unknown X factor. Something was playing games with us. 

If I was honest with myself, I was angry and resentful about things that didn't truly matter and that were completely fixable. 

Once I began to really reflect on it, it didn't make sense. I loved my partner and it shouldn't be this hard. 

I would use the psychology tools I had learned, but we would still argue daily. 

Eventually, it had been going on so long that I felt completely disconnected from my partner. I didn't feel inclined to hug him or show much affection anymore. 

It was nothing big that happened. It reminds me of all of the celebrities. They are always divorcing for irreconcilable differences.  

Because that's what it is. It's the small things that eat away in a marriage. 

One day, I had had enough and I was able to perceive that it wasn't me causing the inner drama, but quite a few ancestors. 

The drama would unfold, but they were not being driven by my own thoughts. My perception of everything my husband said was being altered by the ancestral energy that had been passed down to me. That energy was what was creating the constant friction. 

Everything is energy. Nothing ceases to exist. It is only transformed. Due to this, when ancestors have unprocessed trauma and emotions it stays in their body and it is passed down to their descendants until someone does something about it. 

When I began to do the ancestral healing work, everything began to change. All of a sudden, I was beginning to see my husband as my teammate again rather than my enemy. 

My husband still loved me and wanted to support me, but I hadn't given him the opportunity to. 

All of the fighting had created a huge wedge within us that drove us farther apart.

How do you connect with someone that continues to argue with you?

But when I released those energies that were stirring up the frustration and anger within me, I began to soften. 

I began to be approachable again. 

Of course, it isn't only me who had these issues. After I had begun my work, I helped my husband release some of this clutter too. 

That magnified the work. As we both released these energies from our systems, we began to feel more connected to each other. It brought a profound sense of peace and harmony to our relationship. 

This is one of the energetic components in a relationship that is often overlooked by many methodologies and it is the one that has created the biggest impact in my marriage and in the marriages of my clients. 

I know of no other work that is as vital and that makes as big an impact because we all have energies that have been passed down to us that are not helping us. 

If you honestly look at your own parents and grandparents and how they handled their relationships, it becomes very clear that you are recreating their patterns. It may be showing up slightly differently due to having more resources available to you, but underneath it all, it is those patterns creating the disharmony.

If this has peaked your interest and you would like to learn more you can book a FREE consultation call with me where we can discuss your specific problems further and assess how I can help you.