What do I do when a loved one is suffering? How do I have empathy if I’m getting a divorce or losing my job? If my family treats me unfairly? Or if I’m emotionally overwhelmed or in chronic pain?
If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, I’ve written The Genius of Empathy for you. It also includes a beautiful foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
In the book, I present empathy as a healing force that helps you overcome obstacles in your life with dignity, grace, and power. As a psychiatrist and empath, I draw from my insights and present techniques from my own life and from the healing journeys of my clients, students, and readers. As I say in the book, “Empathy softens the struggle, quiets the unkind voices, and lets you befriend yourself again.”
Empathy doesn’t mean being “on call” 24 hours a day for those in need. Empaths can often wear an invisible sign that says, “I can help you.” However, if you want to heal yourself, have better relationships, and contribute to healing our tumultuous world, you must learn how to set healthy boundaries and observe, not absorb, the energy of others.
To start taking a more proactive role in how much empathy you give others at any one time, I suggest that you keep in mind the following “rights.” They will help you maintain a healthy mindset and prevent or lessen any empathy overwhelm that might arise:
I have the right to say a loving, positive “no” or “no, thank-you.”
I have the right to set limits with how long I listen to people’s problems.
I have the right to rest and not be always available to everyone.
I have the right to quiet peacefulness in my home and in my heart.
Practice: Take a Sound Break to Repair Yourself
Plan periods of quiet to recover from our noisy, fast-paced world. This helps calm your nervous system and your mind, an act of self-empathy.
It’s rejuvenating to schedule at least five minutes of quiet or, even better, complete silence for an hour or more where no one can intrude. As I do, hang a Do Not Disturb sign on your office or bedroom door. During this reset period, you’ve officially escaped from the world. You’re free of demands and noxious sounds. You may also get noise canceling earbuds to block out noise.
If too much quiet is unsettling, go for a walk in a local park or a peaceful neighborhood to decompress from excessive sound stimulation. Simply focus on putting one foot in front of the other, which is called mindful walking. Nothing to do. Nothing to be. Move slowly and refrain from talking. If thoughts come, keep refocusing on your breath, each inhalation and exhalation. Just letting life settle will regenerate your body and empathic heart.
Embracing your empathy does require courage. It can feel scary. If you’re ready to discover its healing power, I would be honored to be your guide to helping you in overcoming your fears and obstacles, and enhancing this essential skill for long-term change.
Though many of us have never met, I feel connected to you. Connection is what fuels life. While empathy is what allows you to find peace. With both, we can make sense of this world together.
Digital Audio
Ignite empathy as a superpower for personal healing, deeper relationships, and more potent work in the world. New York Times bestselling author Dr. Judith Orloff draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and energy medicine to show us how to access our sensitivities, soothe our nervous systems, and embody our most fierce and authentic selves.
Judith Orloff, MD, is a leading voice in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, empathy, and intuitive development. A member of the UCLA Psychiatric Clinical Staff, her bestselling books include The Empath’s Survival Guide, Thriving as an Empath, Emotional Freedom, Positive Energy, Dr. Judith Orloff’s Guide to Intuitive Healing, Second Sight, and The Genius of Empathy. She specializes in treating empaths and sensitive people in her private practice. Find more inspiration at Dr. Orloff’s website, drjudithorloff.com.
When we think about those special traits or abilities we consider to be “superpowers,” empathy isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. In fact, empathy is often seen as a weakness, not a strength. Through her bestselling books and her work training new psychiatrists, Dr. Judith Orloff is helping to change the narrative around empathy. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Orloff about her new book, The Genius of Empathy, and how we can each begin to cultivate an empathic style that supports a thriving life.
Tune in now for their conversation on how empathy opens the heart and fosters healing, the beauty of self-empathy and how it differs from self-compassion, empathy overwhelm, the four styles of empathy and how to identify your own, boundary-setting tools for empaths, the empathy spectrum, empathy deficiency disorders, trauma and empathy, letting go of resentment and helping it let go of you, empathic attunement, the practice of shielding, transmitting empathic love to people and places in need, observing without absorbing, and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
What do I do when a loved one is suffering? How do I have empathy if I’m getting a divorce or losing my job? If my family treats me unfairly? Or if I’m emotionally overwhelmed or in chronic pain?
If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, I’ve written The Genius of Empathy for you. It also includes a beautiful foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
In the book, I present empathy as a healing force that helps you overcome obstacles in your life with dignity, grace, and power. As a psychiatrist and empath, I draw from my insights and present techniques from my own life and from the healing journeys of my clients, students, and readers. As I say in the book, “Empathy softens the struggle, quiets the unkind voices, and lets you befriend yourself again.”
Empathy doesn’t mean being “on call” 24 hours a day for those in need. Empaths can often wear an invisible sign that says, “I can help you.” However, if you want to heal yourself, have better relationships, and contribute to healing our tumultuous world, you must learn how to set healthy boundaries and observe, not absorb, the energy of others.
To start taking a more proactive role in how much empathy you give others at any one time, I suggest that you keep in mind the following “rights.” They will help you maintain a healthy mindset and prevent or lessen any empathy overwhelm that might arise:
I have the right to say a loving, positive “no” or “no, thank-you.”
I have the right to set limits with how long I listen to people’s problems.
I have the right to rest and not be always available to everyone.
I have the right to quiet peacefulness in my home and in my heart.
Practice: Take a Sound Break to Repair Yourself
Plan periods of quiet to recover from our noisy, fast-paced world. This helps calm your nervous system and your mind, an act of self-empathy.
It’s rejuvenating to schedule at least five minutes of quiet or, even better, complete silence for an hour or more where no one can intrude. As I do, hang a Do Not Disturb sign on your office or bedroom door. During this reset period, you’ve officially escaped from the world. You’re free of demands and noxious sounds. You may also get noise canceling earbuds to block out noise.
If too much quiet is unsettling, go for a walk in a local park or a peaceful neighborhood to decompress from excessive sound stimulation. Simply focus on putting one foot in front of the other, which is called mindful walking. Nothing to do. Nothing to be. Move slowly and refrain from talking. If thoughts come, keep refocusing on your breath, each inhalation and exhalation. Just letting life settle will regenerate your body and empathic heart.
Embracing your empathy does require courage. It can feel scary. If you’re ready to discover its healing power, I would be honored to be your guide to helping you in overcoming your fears and obstacles, and enhancing this essential skill for long-term change.
Though many of us have never met, I feel connected to you. Connection is what fuels life. While empathy is what allows you to find peace. With both, we can make sense of this world together.
Digital Audio
Ignite empathy as a superpower for personal healing, deeper relationships, and more potent work in the world. New York Times bestselling author Dr. Judith Orloff draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and energy medicine to show us how to access our sensitivities, soothe our nervous systems, and embody our most fierce and authentic selves.
For empaths and sensitive people, the holidays can be extra stressful because they are exposed to more socializing and holiday events. This means interacting with relatives, friends or acquaintances who may be energy vampires. Since empaths are emotional sponges, they tend to absorb other people’s negative energy unless they have a plan to approach the holiday season. Here are some tips from my book: Thriving as an Empath: 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People.
Identify the energy vampires in your life
In your journal, write down the name of five energy vampires in your life that you may encounter over the holiday season. Then, write down what type of energy vampire they are so you know exactly how they drain your energy. For instance, The Criticizer: For instance they might say, “Oh dear, it looks like you’ve put on a few pounds!.” Or the Drama Queen, Controller, Narcissist or Passive Aggressive.
Journal about strategies to use
It’s important to pre-plan the strategies you use with these people. Write these in your journal. For instance, if you’re going to encounter a drama queen/king, tell yourself “I will not ask them how they are doing or look deeply into their eyes to encourage long stories. I will not feed into the drama queen/kings antics.” Map out your strategies so you are prepared.
Set clear boundaries
Boundaries are essential for all empaths and sensitive people to learn. Because we wear invisible signs around our necks saying “I can help you”, people flock from far and wide to tell us their life stories. Thus, it is important to set boundaries with energy vampires, and limit the time you interact with them. If necessary, escape into the bathroom for some quiet time.
No is a complete sentence
When dealing with energy vampires, such as rageaholics, it is important to learn how to say “no” to someone dumping anger on you. As an empath, anger feels toxic to me so I don’t allow it in my vicinity. If you’re going to encounter an angry person who tends to dump, be prepared to say “no” to them and politely excuse yourself to talk to someone else.
Notice your emotional triggers
We tend to be drained if our own unresolved issues are activated. So, it is healthy to examine your emotional triggers so you can’t be drained by people pushing your buttons. For instance, are you triggered by sadness, depression or anxiety? Or when someone tries to control you? Identify your triggers and begin to heal them in your private meditations or with a guide. This self-healing will help you be a more empowered empath!
Judith Orloff, MD, is a leading voice in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, and intuitive development. An assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, her bestselling books include Emotional Freedom, Positive Energy, Dr. Judith Orloff’s Guide to Intuitive Healing, and Second Sight. Find more inspiration at Dr. Orloff’s website drjudithorloff.com.
The community here at Sounds True wishes you a lovely holiday season! We are happy to collaborate with some of our Sounds True authors to offer you wisdom and practices as we move into this time together; please enjoy this blog series for your holiday season.
To help encourage you and your loved ones to explore new possibilities this holiday season, we’re offering 40% off nearly all of our programs, books, and courses sitewide. May you find the wisdom to light your way.
What if aging isn’t the slow closing of your erotic life, but the doorway into its most alive season?
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Kimberly Ann Johnson—sexological body worker, somatic experiencing practitioner, birth doula, and author of the new Sounds True book Erotic Seasons: Tuning In to the Rhythms of Women’s Sexuality and Spirituality—about what she calls erotic sovereignty, and the sentence that closes her book: the female body is its own spiritual path.
Join Tami and Kimberly to explore:
Erotic sovereignty—your relationship to your own life force, and why it stays with you across every season
Why the goal isn’t a more regulated nervous system, but a more responsive one, and what it means to run more charge
The four erotic seasons—maiden, mother, virgin, crone—and the surprising reason virgin comes after mother
Why hormonal transitions are “wet clay”: golden opportunities for repatterning that our culture teaches us to rush past
Menopause as a death rehearsal, and the life review that arrives decades before we expect it
Hot sex and warm sex—widening the range beyond adrenaline, and learning the language of the pause
“Hormones are gods”: the collective endocrine system, and why living intergenerationally may be the original hormone therapy
Becoming a sexual alchemist—arousal as healing energy, and why care is the whole ethic
Whether you are 25 or 75, Kimberly offers a map for meeting your body’s changes as thresholds rather than losses.
Please note: this episode includes candid discussion of sexual abuse and sexual wounding, including Kimberly Ann Johnson’s own experience.
Listen now, and meet your body as the path. →
This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and it originally aired on Sounds True One.
What if the very thing that wounded you is the source of the medicine you’re here to give?
In this month’s Point of Insight, Tami Simon shares a personal story: minutes before going live with an archetypal astrologer, she was told—correctly, and within seconds—that she carried “the mother of all mother wounds.” That single moment became the culmination of a much longer, gradual unfolding: a lifetime’s worth of “drops,” from a mentor she called the Queen of the Reframe, to an interview with yoga teacher and activist Seane Corn titled “Your Pain Is Your Purpose,” to an email from a business coach whose four simple words reframed everything—your karma is your dharma.
Join Tami as she reflects on:
How a lifelong feeling of not belonging became the soil for a life’s work helping others feel connected
The difference between sudden insight and the slow, gradual “boiling water” of a tipping point
Why real breakthrough requires going all the way through pain, not around it
Joanna Macy’s question—”What breaks your heart?”—and how grief and care become fuel for service
Why “never turn away” may be one of the most important spiritual instructions there is
This is a shorter, solo reflection from Tami—released once a month on the Insights at the Edge feed—on where our deepest wounds and our clearest purpose meet.
Bayo Akomolafe invites us to consider what can happen when urgency gives way to slowing down and healing. His conversation with Tami Simon reflects on sanctuary, grief, ancestry, and finding different ways to meet times of change.
At Sounds True, spiritual wisdom and transformational teachings have been shared since 1985, connecting seekers with respected teachers through books, audio, courses, events, and podcasts.
In this piece, Bayo Akomolafe: Let Us Make Sanctuary and its reflections on sanctuary, slowing down and healing, grief, and ancestry will be discussed.
Key Takeaways:
Sanctuary: Learn how Akomolafe frames sanctuary as a space for reconsidering our relationships with change, grief, and uncertainty.
Ancestry: Consider how ancestral relationships and Yoruba-influenced practices contribute to Akomolafe’s reflections on connection and belonging.
Spiritual Inquiry: Understand how contemplation, activism, historical trauma, and social change intersect throughout the conversation.
Making Sanctuary in Times of Change
Born in Nigeria and shaped by Yoruba teachings as well as Western academia, Bayo Akomolafe brings an unconventional perspective to questions of crisis and social change.
In our conversation, Bayo Akomolafe: Let Us Make Sanctuary, he speaks with Tami Simon about sanctuary as a place where slowing down and healing can happen. Their discussion moves through ancestry, grief, trauma, spiritual contemplation, and the crossroads at which familiar ways of responding may no longer be sufficient.
What Let Us Make Sanctuary Means
Sanctuary, as it emerges in this conversation, is closely connected to the practice of slowing down. Akomolafe challenges the idea that a pause simply helps us recover enough energy to keep moving in the same direction.
Instead, slowing down can create space for deeper inquiry. It gives us an opportunity to question where we are going, what has shaped that direction, and what other possibilities might become visible when forward movement is no longer our only priority.
Slowing Down and Healing in Difficult Times
Urgent circumstances often create pressure to respond immediately. Akomolafe offers another possibility: slowing down and healing can become part of how we meet a crisis rather than something postponed until the crisis has passed.
This kind of slowing asks for attention. It makes room for questions that can be difficult to hear amid constant movement and gives us time to reconsider the paths we have inherited.
Let Us Make Sanctuary Through Slowing Down and Healing
Akomolafe also draws attention to our relationships with those who came before us. The conversation considers the African spiritual practice of pouring drink to the earth as an expression of indebtedness to ancestors and to everything that makes life possible.
From this perspective, sanctuary is relational. Slowing down and healing can involve remembering the connections that hold us and recognizing that our lives do not exist independently of the people, histories, and living world around us.
Finding New Possibilities Through Slowing Down and Healing
The image of standing at a crossroads runs through Akomolafe’s reflections. He suggests that the ground beneath familiar assumptions is shifting, creating conditions in which what once went unsaid may become possible to speak and understand.
Slowing down gives us time to remain with that uncertainty. Rather than rushing toward a familiar answer, we can pay attention to what a changing landscape might reveal.
Bayo Akomolafe on How We Make Sanctuary
Grief also has a meaningful place in Akomolafe’s understanding of sanctuary. His conversation with Simon considers grief in relation to activism, along with the possibility of approaching sites of historical trauma as places for spiritual contemplation and renewed connection with loss and tragedy.
To make sanctuary, then, can mean creating room to stay present with experiences we might otherwise hurry past. Akomolafe’s invitation asks us to consider what becomes possible when we slow down enough to listen, grieve, question our direction, and encounter the world from another place.
Final Thoughts
Bayo Akomolafe’s invitation to make sanctuary encourages us to reconsider our relationship with urgency, grief, and change. Through slowing down and healing, we can create space to listen more deeply, honor our connections, and remain open to possibilities that may emerge when we pause.
Frequently Asked Questions About Bayo Akomolafe: Let Us Make Sanctuary
Who is Bayo Akomolafe?
Bayo Akomolafe is a thinker, writer, speaker, and trained clinical psychologist whose work engages questions of social change, spirituality, community, and the ways people respond to challenging circumstances.
Who speaks with Bayo Akomolafe in Let Us Make Sanctuary?
Bayo Akomolafe speaks with Sounds True founder Tami Simon. Their conversation brings his ideas into a reflective exchange centered on sanctuary, change, grief, and spiritual inquiry.
What traditions influence Bayo Akomolafe’s perspective?
Akomolafe’s perspective is informed in part by Yoruba teachings and his Nigerian background, alongside his experience with Western academic thought. These influences contribute to his distinctive approach to spirituality and social questions.
What role does ancestry play in Bayo Akomolafe’s teachings?
Ancestry provides a way to consider our relationship with those who came before us. Akomolafe speaks about practices that acknowledge indebtedness to ancestors and the many relationships that make our lives possible.
How does Bayo Akomolafe connect spirituality and activism?
Akomolafe considers how spiritual contemplation can inform our relationship with activism. Rather than treating inner reflection and collective concerns as entirely separate, his perspective creates room for them to meet.
Why does Bayo Akomolafe discuss historical trauma?
Historical trauma offers an opportunity to consider how places marked by suffering might be approached differently. Akomolafe reflects on visiting such sites as spaces for contemplation and engagement with histories of loss.
What is the significance of the crossroads in Akomolafe’s thinking?
The crossroads represents a place where established directions may become uncertain and different possibilities can emerge. It provides a useful image for considering periods of cultural and personal transition.
How does Let Us Make Sanctuary approach interconnectedness?
The conversation recognizes that individual lives are shaped by relationships, histories, ancestors, communities, and the living world. This perspective invites a broader understanding of how people belong to one another and their surroundings.
Is Let Us Make Sanctuary intended only for experienced spiritual practitioners?
No. The conversation can speak to both longtime spiritual seekers and people who are newly curious about contemplative ideas. Sounds True shares teachings in an accessible, heart-led way for people at different points in their learning journeys.
Where can I listen to Bayo Akomolafe: Let Us Make Sanctuary?
You can listen to the full Bayo Akomolafe: Let Us Make Sanctuary podcast conversation through Sounds True.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant, and intuitive healer. She is the author of six books, including Skill in Action and Finding Refuge. Amy Burtaine is a leadership coach and racial equity trainer. With Robin DiAngelo, she is the coauthor of The Facilitator’s Guide for White Affinity Groups. For more, visit https://www.michellecjohnson.com/wisdom-of-the-hive.
