Home » Personal growth » The Ultimate ‘Pick Yourself Back Up’ Guide For Empaths

Feeling demotivated and exhausted lately? Get back on track in life with this ‘pick yourself back up’ guide, filled with practical tips on how to increase your overall wellbeing!

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

As a highly sensitive empath, I cannot count the times I overstepped my boundaries. Oftentimes, this behavior resulted in me feeling down, exhausted and overwhelmed. In those moments, I felt like life will never go my way again.

Especially for highly sensitive people and empaths, this feeling is intense. As we feel all the feels deep within our bodies, it is challenging to think positively during these moments.

Perhaps, you may even feel like you want to give up. To change direction and never look back. These are all common feelings that overcome many of us in the challenging times of our lives.

Throughout the years I managed to find ways to get back on track again and feel happy and fulfilled in life. Consequently, I learned to implement ways to adapt my mindset during challenging situations.

In this article, I share my favorite practical tips on how you as an empath can pick yourself back up.

Here’s What You’ll Learn:

What Happens In Your Body When You Feel Defeated?

In order to know how to pick yourself back up, you need to know what happens in your body when you feel defeated.

Oftentimes, feeling defeated involves a combination of different emotions and sensations, which again trigger different reactions in our bodies.

One of the first feelings you may experience when you feel defeated is sadness. A study discovered a clear connection between the emotion sadness and memory. This means that when you think about something sad, your brain communicates with the region of your brain responsible for creating sadness within you.

Once you start feeling sad, your brain increases its production of the brain chemical opioids. These chemicals increase the feeling of disstress in your body and may potentially mess with your immune system, increasing your risk for becoming ill. Long-term sadness will eventually reduce in increased feeling of stress, which brings us to another emotion people who feel defeated struggle with.

Stress origins from feelings of sadness, frustration, anger and nervousness. Consequently, these feelings create a sense of threat within your body.

Therefore, your body sends out a wave of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones make your heart beat faster, tighten your muscles, increase your blood pressure and make you breathe faster. This body reaction triggers your fight-flight-freeze response to flee from the danger at hand. An incredibly unsettling feeling.

When you walk around too long with this stress, you can become mentally and physically ill. Therefore, this emphasizes the importance to work on picking yourself back up.

10 Practical Steps To Pick Yourself Back Up

Now that you know what happens in your body when you feel defeated, it is time to discover some solutions. As a highly sensitive person, empath and entrepreneur, I feel defeated every now and then.

However, I learned that I am in charge of how I feel. Consequently, I apply a specific set of methods to pick myself back up whenever I need to. Below, you will discover my top 10 ‘back on track’ methods to feel happy and fulfilled again.

#1 Declutter Your Mind

The first step towards picking yourself back up, is to start decluttering your mind. Oftentimes, when we feel defeated, our mind is incredibly full. Especially highly sensitive people tend to overthink everything when this happens.

A technique that did wonders for me, was to start decluttering my mind. For instance, when I am walking and I notice my overthinking patterns, I speak my thoughts out loud. First, I express my anxious thought and then I come up with a solution to that thought. Oftentimes, our mind finds peace once there is a solution. Therefore, this technique is incredibly powerful.

It is even more useful to do this as a writing exercise when you have the time. Once you notice all the ‘clutter’ in your mind, grab a piece of paper or your journal and write down all the thoughts. Then write down the solutions to each thought next to it. Most likely, you will notice that you mind is feeling more clear and calm.

Especially if you repeat this exercise regularly, you will notice how you can pick yourself back up easier and go about your day with less overthinking.

If you are looking for a great journal for this purpose, you may want to discover the journal ‘Let That Sht Go: A Journal for Leaving Your Bullsht Behind and Creating a Happy Life.

#2 Create A Well-Being Schedule To Pick Yourself Back Up

As I mentioned, our brain loves solutions. Therefore, when you feel defeated, you can pick yourself back up by creating your own ‘well-being’ schedule.

Oftentimes, our schedule slowly fills itself with to do’s that we actually do not enjoy doing. Especially as empaths and highly sensitive people, we may struggle to set healthy boundaries towards others and overcommit ourselves to please them. We may take on too many chores or neglect our own needs and energy. Therefore, it is wise to analyse your current schedule.

Which activities do you currently do that deprive you of joy or energy? Is there a way to reduce those activities or to make them more fun?

For instance, I strongly dislike doing household chores and they usually cost me a great deal of energy. However, I love listening to podcasts! Consequently, I started to listen to podcasts while cleaning, so I still fill my ‘energy tank’ with positive input while doing something I dislike.

In addition, I as an introvert need more me-time, but I often over-scheduled my agenda with social meetups because I didn’t want to disappoint others. However, I learned to set boundaries for myself by carefully considering who I want to see how often. I realized that my own well-being needs to be maintained first before I should consider others.

Try to schedule your week in a way that works for you. If that means seeing certain people less in order to make more time for yourself, permit yourself to do so! Or if you have to spice up boring tasks to feel more joy while doing them, do so! After all, you cannot pour from an empty cup.

#3 Read Spiritually Uplifting Books

One of the first things I do when I feel defeated and experience the need to pick myself back up, is to read spiritually uplifting books. Oftentimes, they provide the support I need in times of struggle.

For instance, when I faced a difficult year, almost losing our home during a fire, losing a dear friend and quitting my job, I found great comfort in the book ‘The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith’ by Gabrielle Bernstein. Also, the book ‘Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life beyond Your Wildest Dreams’ by the same author is a great spiritually uplifting read.

In addition, learning how to cope as a highly sensitive person with the ‘The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide‘ was a true game changer for me to feel happier in life.

Try to find out what you need right now to feel more spiritually uplifted and discover books about these topics. Your motivation will thank you!

#4 Pick Yourself Back Up With The Right Nutrition

Another powerful method to pick yourself back up after a hurdle, is to have a good look at your nutrition. Oftentimes, when we feel sad, we eat ‘feel good’-food, which actually is not feel good food at all. Chocolate, fries and all other types of junk food are a go to remedy for many of us.

However, this food actually contributes to your misery. Therefore, it is wise to carefully identify what you eat throughout the day. For instance, I chose to consult a hormone nutritionist about my challenges regarding sadness, anxiety and stress. She helped me to adapt my food pattern and eat more food that helps me to produce the right hormones in my body. Real feel good hormones.

Therefore, I highly recommend you to focus on nutrition as soon as possible. It will help you tremendously in your overall well-being. If you’d like to discover more about feel good food, you may want to read the book ‘Happy Foods: Over 100 Mood-Boosting Recipes‘.

#5 Meditate Daily

Daily meditation helps you to remain calm and balanced as an empath and to pick yourself back up quickly. Whenever I do not meditate, I soon start to notice a negative shift in my energy. Somehow, it is easier for others to influence me in that state and I neglect my boundaries more easily.

Mediation has many proven health benefits. For instance, it reduces stress, anxiety and depression. As these are some of the common feelings and sensations you feel when you are defeated, meditation definitely is a good method to try out daily.

Therefore, head over to Youtube, type in ‘guided meditation’ and dive in! There are thousands of free meditations available online to help you to feel better within minutes. Be openminded about it and give it a try. I promise that it will help you, once you make it a routine and believe in it.

#6 Protect Your Energy

Another important method that I do daily before getting started on my day, is to protect my energy. If you are a highly sensitive person or empath, I highly recommend you to do the same.

As you easily absorb the energies and signals from others, it is important for you to protect your own aura. This way, you manage to remain more balanced in daily life. Also, you avoid getting too caught up in the energies of others.

In order to protect your energy, you could visualize a dome around you and repeat the affirmation ‘Only love can enter my aura’. Another powerful way to handle the energies of others, is to return energies to their owners by the end of the day. Visualize how you pull the energies of others out of your body – almost like pulling a plant out of its soil – and gently return these energies to their owners.

In addition, make sure to call back your energy from others. For instance, this guided meditation may help you with that:

#7 Increase Serotonin

When you feel defeated, your levels of serotonin in your body are low. Serotonin is the happiness hormone that stabilizes our feeling of well-being, mood and happiness.

Therefore, it is crucial that you make an effort to increase serotonin. How? There are many ways to increase this hormone, but the easiest ways are nutrition, exercising, exposing yourself to bright light (sunlight), using supplements or getting a massage.

However, please notice that some people genetically produce less serotonin. These are the people who are more prone to experience depression. If you think that this is the case for you, make sure to talk to a professional about this.

#8 Welcome “Negative” Emotions

A wonderful lesson that I learned after reading the book ‘The Greatest Secret’, is that it is better to welcome negative emotions, rather than resisting them.

When you resist negative emotions and try to avoid them by feeling happy instead, you suppress that energy in your body. However, it is better to let energies pass through without resistance. For instance, when you feel sad and on the verge of crying, it is better to let out the tears right away than to avoid crying and store that sad emotion in your body.

Therefore, try to welcome the energies that flow through your body and let them pass through in healthy ways. For example, when you feel angry, you could let out that anger by going for a run or taking a boxing class. Or when you are sad, you could do a little crying session where you listen to sad music. Welcome your emotions, rather than resisting them. This way, they will only be there for a short while, before moving on.

#9 Be Grateful For What You Have

One of the best ways to pick yourself back up is to be grateful for the things already present in your life. Oftentimes, when we feel defeated, we look at everything we do not have. It frustrates us and blocks our energy in negative ways.

Therefore, try to look at what you do have instead. Look at your desirable outcome and think about everything you already have achieved and do have to get where you want to go.

Be truly grateful for everything that you do have. Feel it in your body and try to get into the energy of appreciation. This way, you will attract more of what you want when you get into action to achieve it.

For instance, you can start your daily gratitude practice with the gratitude journal ‘The Five Minute Journal: A Happier You in 5 Minutes a Day’.

#10 Pick Yourself Back Up By Maintaining Your Well-Being

Finally, my best tip to pick yourself back up is to maintain your well-being. Try to make yourself a priority every single day. Instead of practicing self-care when you feel defeated, make it an habit. This way, you will avoid feeling as down and defeated as you feel now.

For instance, I schedule one day a week where I do not plan any commitments towards others. On that day, I focus solely on myself and my own energy, doing things that give me joy.

Also, I try to practice self-care on a daily basis, by implementing many of the activities that I mentioned in this article. This way, I manage to avoid depression and sadness, even when there are situations in my life where this would be a natural reaction.

Good Luck With Picking Yourself Back Up!

I know that it may sound easier said than done to apply these techniques. You may feel resistance because of your earlier life experiences and doubt whether this actually will work for you. Take this from somebody who has struggled with bad anxiety, PTSD and burnout in the past; these techniques do work, if you are consistent with them.

However, if you feel that you need more support in your healing journey, make sure to connect with a health professional to help you in that journey. Therapy and coaching have helped me tremendously in my personal growth journey and I know that it will help you as well.

Good luck with picking yourself back up! You can do it!

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