6 Ways To Soothe Your Nervous System When You're Stressed Out

Whether you're an empath who can feel other people's energies and emotions in your own system or a highly sensitive person who picks up easily on stimuli in your environment, other people's energy can make its way under your skin from time to time.

Being an empath means you may bond quickly with others or quickly feel what others are feeling, which can create many lovely, nourishing, intimate experiences. Yet being highly sensitive or an empath (or both) also means you can quickly become overwhelmed or overstimulated by others.

Of course, talk to your health care providers to make sure your vitamin, mineral, blood sugar, and hormone levels are balanced, as well as to rule out any underlying medical issues.

Take a safe walk in nature, read an inspiring book, or get lost in a creative hobby solo. Doing things you enjoy alone will help you anchor into your own energy so you feel less scattered, frazzled, or drained.

Because empaths can feel what's going on around them (including other people's emotions) in their own system, they can forget to prioritize their own experience, getting pulled along by or sucked into everyone else's experience.

Being sensitive can sometimes make people compassionate as well, which can lead to caring so much about others that the sensitive person loses themselves. Don't get crowded out of your own life!

Lowering the physical stimuli in your environment is one of the fastest ways for sensitive people to soothe their systems. If you live alone, this can easily be accomplished by putting on gentle music or nature sounds, snuggling into your softest clothes or bedding, dimming the lights, and putting your phone on silent.

If you live with a roommate, a romantic partner, kids, or several pets, you can create a sanctuary space within your home to retreat to when you need to recover.

In my book Empath Heart: Relationship Strategies for Sensitive People, I explain how some sensitive people have a strong inner healer who can go on rogue healing missions, turning lovers, friends, and co-workers into healing projects.

If this happens, mindfully begin creating healthy space between you and the other person, and remind yourself that you are not responsible for the other person's problems.

Sensitive people like empaths might be naturally wired to tune in to others and feel with them, yet they can learn to witness and observe instead.

Tuning into others, physical spaces, or the collective, and feeling a range of emotions—from positive to challenging—can be very nurturing for a sensitive person who is wired to feel with others.

However, it's not always appropriate or productive, and sometimes it's simply too overwhelming. Practice witnessing and observing others as well by going into your head and getting curious about what people are feeling instead of going into your heart to feel with them.