When adults accept children for who they are, we help them stay connected to their inner divinity, an enduring source of spiritual direction not reliant on any institution or religion. When children are connected spiritually, they become more resilient and less likely to suffer from depression and addiction as they get older. In The Spiritual Child, Dr. Lisa Miller shares research that shows children with a spiritual connection are 40% less likely to abuse substances and 60% less likely to suffer from depression as teenagers and adults.
We’re all born with a set of core characteristics that affect how we interact with others and our environment, a combination of energetic archetypes that make us unique. Adults may influence children’s behavior (for better or worse) as children often model our actions and repeat our words. However, adults can’t change children’s natural temperaments. Their energetic personalities are their own.
Children’s energetic personalities are often easier to identify than adults’ because they haven’t learned to hide them yet. Children are surrounded by the energy of other people and the culture of their families. They start to receive explicit and implicit messages about themselves and soon pick up on whether the way they are naturally is accepted or found deficient.
When adults are kind, respect a child’s reasonable assertion of boundaries, and communicate love and appreciation, children can grow into themselves safely. They learn to navigate the world and their relationships from a place of appropriate power. Conversely, when adults do not create a supportive environment, the repercussions can cause emotional and physical issues. While this is true for all children, it is especially so for empathic children.
Empathic Children, Boundaries and Survival Skills
Learning how to stay healthy relative to one’s native energetic makeup is the focus of my Energy Ecosystem work with individuals and groups. It’s also a foundation of the Sounds True audio course that I created, Shining Bright Without Burning Out. One energetic archetype I see frequently is the sponge or empath. When children come into the world in a highly empathic state with many energetic “receptors,” they feel the world around them to a heightened degree. While many people have compassion, empaths literally feel what’s happening around them. In addition, empathic children cannot shield themselves from the emotional states of their family members.
Empathic children are more vulnerable to what is communicated to them directly and indirectly than children who don’t possess this heightened state of energetic perception. When adults communicate thoughtlessly to and around empathic children, they can do lasting harm. Highly sensitive children adopt different coping methods, depending on whether their early environments have been supportive or detrimental.
Empathic children growing up in unstable environments often learn camouflage skills; they perceive safety by blending in. They quickly learn how to read danger signals from unpredictable people around them and adjust to avoid drawing negative attention to themselves. In homes where sensitivity was disparaged, these children learn to shut down the receptors that kept them connected to their instincts. As a result, they grow a “thick skin.”
As adults, the pattern often persists. People morph to fit each new situation, relationship, or social group they enter. Adapting to different settings is a helpful skill to use periodically, but changing significantly and frequently is not healthy. The clients I see who use this coping strategy lose touch with themselves. If they were not valued as children, they devalue themselves as adults, the voices of criticism lodged in their psyches.
When children receive the message from parents, teachers, or society that their preferences and personalities are somehow undesirable, they learn to disconnect from what is meaningful to them to fit in. They sacrifice what is true and inspiring to them to be accepted. This may lead to high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety, which research has shown can increase many other physical ailments.
Tending the Whole Child
In additional to psychological interventions, these issues can be tended from the shamanic perspective by addressing the influence of energies that don’t belong and by recovering the client’s natural self from under that thick skin. Removing what doesn’t belong and returning what should be present. Many people don’t see the full effects of how they were treated as children until they are adults. Preferable to addressing these issues in adulthood, however, is creating environments that support our children in loving, respecting, and honoring their whole selves—body, mind, and spirit.
