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Who I Serve

I serve Empaths, Highly Sensitive Persons & those with chronic illnesses, as well as those who think they might be Highly Sensitive Persons or Empaths. We all have difficult sensitivities &/or chronic illnesses, & we all need help with them, at some point or other. Whether you’ve recently been diagnosed or discovered you’re an Empath &/or Highly Sensitive Person, if you simply suspect you’re a Highly Sensitive Person, an Empath, or if you’ve known for a long time about your sensitivities &/or chronic illnesses, we all can all improve our lives & perspectives.

I offer my clients services I believe will be the most helpful in transforming themselves, their perspectives & their lives. Then I tailor those services to those with chronic illnesses & sensitivities to increase their potency of those services. And then I further tailor each reading, coaching session & program to each client’s specific needs & difficulties. However, what I offer goes far beyond tarot readings, tarot coaching & life coaching sessions…

I do what I do so you can:

  • Have a guide who has personal experience with chronic illnesses & sensitivities,
  • Get ethical commitments & spiritual integrity from that guide,
  • Gain validation of your struggles — because your story matters…every tangled thread of it,
  • Get education & information about your condition(s),
  • Acquire a safe space that encourages you to be you,
  • Have a mirror that reflects yourself back to you,
  • See the magick that is already inside you,
  • Help develop a supportive community through my Discord server’s support group, The Phoenix Odyssey,
  • Have access to tools for insight, reflection & transformation through tarot & coaching,
  • Obtain sympathetic counseling, practical clarity & meaningful reflection — for when you’re ready to move forward with purpose,
  • Receive as much humor as you & I can conjure & as much joy as we can create,
  • See how to cope more healthily with the exhaustion, overwhelm & pain that come with sensitivities & chronic illnesses,
  • See that you are not alone in this unfolding,
  • Grasp all the wisdom already inside you with warmth & recognition,
  • Have services that are safe spaces for insight — spaces where your story is seen, heard & reimagined,
  • Turn that insight into aligned actions with deeply personal coaching & readings to assist your reconnection, realignment & rise from your ashes,
  • Obtain messages & guidance that meet you where you are — wherever that happens to be,
  • Find clarity with your sensitivities, chronic illnesses & life,
  • Learn what you can control & what you can’t,
  • Secure a holistic approach to healing,
  • Know that there are no quick or easy answers, but that you’ll learn to be at peace with yourself & your condition(s),
  • Coerce your alignment into outweighing your fear,
  • See the wisdom of your experiences,
  • Realize how softness is also strength,
  • Know that there’s no wrong way to feel,
  • Learn how to trust your intuition, manage your energy & boundaries, & reframe your condition(s) as teaching tools & even gifts,
  • Perceive that there is room for optimism & hope,
  • Feel empowered to be the you you want to be & live the life you want to live,
  • Feel deeply seen, heard & empowered — one soulful, detailed session at a time,
  • Sense the vision of what The Aviary is & will become.

Problems I Help You Solve

Problematic & difficult illnesses & sensitivities are just that…problematic & difficult. And that’s often on a good day.

There are so many aspects of having chronic illness &/or sensitivities that are challenging, I couldn’t dream of listing them all here. These are, at times, seemingly impossible conditions to live with for all those reasons. And it might be surprising how similar the challenges are for those with sensitivities & for those with chronic illnesses. Here are but a few:

Chronic Illness:

  • Many of your friends & family don’t understand, much less strangers,
  • All the physical symptoms, not limited to fatigue, pain & the symptoms you get from your specific illness,
  • The mental health toll illness takes,
  • The emotional difficulties that illnesses cause, like depression & anxiety,
  • The mental stress & strain that can come with illness, including pain, fogginess & exhaustion,
  • The spiritual pain of feeling disconnected & cursed due to your illnesses,
  • The practical issues of managing energy & setting healthy boundaries,
  • The frustration of having an illness you didn’t choose & can’t control.

Empathicness &/or High Sensitivity:

  • Many of your friends & family don’t understand, much less strangers,
  • All the physical symptoms that can occur, like exhaustion, overwhelm & burnout,
  • The mental health toll being sensitive takes,
  • The emotional difficulties that sensitivities cause, like depression & anxiety,
  • The mental stress & strain that can come with sensitivity, including exhaustion, overwhelm & sensory overload,
  • The spiritual pain of feeling disconnected & cursed due to your sensitivities,
  • The practical issues of managing energy & setting healthy boundaries,
  • The frustration of having sensitivities you didn’t choose & can’t control.

I can guide you in learning to solve these & other problems. Through my lived experience, tarot & coaching, I offer a safe space to feel seen & to reframe your sensitivities &/or chronic illnesses as sources of wisdom, resilience & empowerment. I’m a heart-centered guide offering intuitive, in-depth readings & coaching rooted in empathicness, clarity & real-world insight. But all I can do is guide & help. You must be willing to do the hard work for yourself, as I learned to do (& without a helpful guide). I can & will, however, guide you through that work & help you see these things differently than you do now. And trust me, that work will be entirely worth it! Let me help you soar!

Transformations I Help You Achieve

Throughout my work, I help you make many transformations:

Emotional & Mental:

  • Overwhelm, anxiousness & hopelessness become calm, more grounded & more hopeful.
  • Internalized shame or self-doubt becomes self-acceptance & confidence.
  • Feeling isolated & misunderstood become feeling seen, validated & supported.

Practical & Life Skills:

  • Learning to set & keep healthy boundaries without guilt.
  • Learning to manage energy more effectively so you can avoid burnout.
  • Turning insights into aligned & achievable action steps.

Spiritual & Self-Connection:

  • Feeling disconnected from intuition or higher self becomes developing an ongoing & trusting relationship with your inner wisdom.
  • Finding a sense of peace & spiritual grounding despite your sensitivities &/or chronic illnesses.
  • Reconnecting with meaning, purpose & joy in life.

Community & Belonging:

  • Moving from isolation to community support (through The Phoenix Odyssey).
  • From feeling like you’re the only one to knowing there are others like you who understand.

Perspective & Mindset:

  • Seeing your chronic illnesses &/or sensitivities as curses becomes reframing them as teaching tools & even gifts.
  • Focusing on what you can’t control becomes working on what you can control & letting the rest go.
  • Being stuck in fear or survival mode becomes trusting your intuition, making your own choices & embracing empowerment.

How do I do all these? I start by giving you knowledge & then backing it up with wisdom, expertise & personal experiences. I’ve been studying these conditions for decades. I’ve compiled & recorded so much in that time, which I can teach you. I’ve had a lifetime of experience with what being Empathic, Highly Sensitive & having chronic illnesses are like, as well as learning about them in all their colors & flavors. I’ve learned a lot over that time & I think I have much to offer those like us, especially those who don’t understand their sensitivities &/or illnesses, can’t accept them &/or haven’t found a way to make peace with them.

I provide a safe & non-judgmental space where you feel seen & heard. My ethics reinforce your sense of confidentiality & boundaries, which gives you greater permission to be honest & vulnerable. I use tarot & coaching dialogues to help you access your subconscious & intuition. I help you see key patterns, limiting beliefs & hidden truths that are keeping you stuck. I guide you in reframing your conditions into teaching tools. I help you release shame & self-judgment & replace them with self-acceptance & self-compassion.

I teach you practical strategies for managing energy, setting boundaries, regulating emotions & trusting your intuition. I help you identify aligned action steps to spur your transformations & break them down into achievable parts. I help you start to take back your power by focusing on what you can actually control (your choices, your behavior & the energy you put into things in your life). I help you see that you can make decisions not from fear or pain, but from clarity, intuition & empowerment.

I also hope to help you in guiding others like yourself, even if that’s only in my Discord server’s (The Aviary) Support Group: The Phoenix Odyssey. Assisting others with problems we ourselves experience helps us more than I can begin to tell you! When we help others heal, it helps heal us. Birds of a feather flock together & can help each other learn to spread their wings!

How do you know if your illness is chronic or
if you’re an Empath or Highly Sensitive Person?

(The Educational Portion of our program)

What makes an illness chronic?

Technically, an illness becomes chronic when its symptoms last at least one year & require ongoing medical care &/or limit daily activities. (If this sounds like you or might be you, please choose my free Internal/External Recharger Quiz when you sign up with The Aviary)

So, how are chronic illnesses different from other illnesses? When an illness has been an issue for you for at least a year & you must continue to get medical care &/or your daily activities are limited, illness takes a different course. Especially for those whose chronic illness will (likely) be lifelong…

When you know illness will be temporary, you can look to a possible future without that illness or its difficulties. When that illness is chronic, & especially when it’s life-long, it gets a lot harder to picture a future without it, or to imagine that someone will come up with a treatment (if there currently isn’t one) or a cure (if there are only treatments) in your lifetime.

Don’t get me wrong; illness is complex & a hardship. Period. But when that illness is chronic, it takes on different challenges & hardships…especially when you get a diagnosis at a young age! Finding out that you’ll theoretically always have that illness makes childhood, growing up & adulthood more arduous & problematic. So don’t let anyone minimize your feelings about your chronic illness…even you!

In the US, 60% of people have at least one chronic illness; in the entire world, it’s 33% of all adults. If you’d like more information or book recommendations, please email me at raven@intotheaviary.com!

What is an Empath?

Have you been told you “feel too much” most or all of your life? Can you sense information from nature or other people (either human people or other animal people)? Can you sense things about others’ emotions, physical states, life paths &/or thoughts? Do you tend to “absorb” this energy you sense from others? Do you sometimes question if these emotions, thoughts or other “feelings” you’ve sensed are yours or someone else’s? Can you predict the weather without consulting an app? Do you instinctively know how to use substances like herbs, essential oils or flower essences? Any of these things can mean you’re an Empath, & you aren’t alone! (If you aren’t 100% sure if this is you, or if you want to be sure what type of Empath you are, please choose my free Empath Quiz when you sign up with The Aviary).

Some believe that Empaths are a type of Highly Sensitive Person. I see them as two different types of people, though one can be the other. Empaths, in short, can sense physical, mental, emotional, spiritual &/or natural stimuli from other people or animals, &/or from nature. (There are other ways to break down the different types of Empaths, but this system seems the most accurate.) Most people think that empaths can only sense the emotions of others, but there can be so much more to it.

There are six main types of Empaths, according to author, intuitive & healer Cindi Dale:

  • Physical Empaths can sense others’ physical pain, their exertions & what another’s senses are telling them,
  • Mental Empaths can get pictures, words or other non-visual cues based on another’s thoughts,
  • Emotional Empaths sense others’ emotional states, moods & feelings,
  • Spiritual Empaths often know others’ life paths, their morals or spiritual beliefs,
  • Natural Empaths have an innate sense of natural phenomena like weather, of the uses of things like essential oils or herbs, or can sense the emotions, needs &/or pain of non-human animals,
  • Shamanic Empaths are Empaths who possess, to some degree or other, all the forms of empathicness (non-Empaths have empathy, so Empaths have empathicness…at least that’s my word) & often possess some psychic gifts as well (though all of us have clairsentience, which I’ll explain in a few paragraphs).

And all Empaths tend to have similar characteristics or “personality traits”. We often:

  • Are sensitive & prone to absorbing what we sense from others,
  • Are introverted, or internal rechargers as I call them, so we prefer one-on-one interactions to larger groups,
  • Have greater potential for burnout due to the intensity of the emotions we experience from even everyday occurrences,
  • Need a great deal of alone time to prevent overwhelm, recharge & process what we sense from others,
  • Read people well, & we perceive & discern subtleties from others, often understanding their underlying motivations & emotions,
  • Are great & attentive listeners, & we instinctively provide safe spaces for others to share & be vulnerable,
  • Struggle with setting & enforcing healthy boundaries, often because we place others’ needs above our own,
  • Can become easily overwhelmed by intense intimate relationships, to the point of avoiding them, & often unconsciously prioritize
    the needs of our partners over our own,
  • Are easily overwhelmed by situations, places or people that give us a lot of stimulating sensory input.

(For more traits of Empaths, see “Is It Always This Way for Sensitives?”)

I happen to be what Dale calls a Shamanic Empath; I can sense energies from other beings, including non-human animals, & nature. I’ve even seen auras as long as I can remember, though I experience three different types of energy with auras, where most only see color. I was lucky that, when I was a child & would tell my mom that someone was purple or blue, she knew what I was seeing & that I wasn’t crazy.

Like many Shamanic Empaths, I also seem to have several “psychic” abilities. (I still don’t claim to be psychic for the purposes of my work.) All Empaths possess clairsentience to some extent, & Shamanic Empaths usually have at least one other “clair” as well.

So, what are these “clairs”? There are eight general psychic abilities of which I am aware:

  • Clairvoyance: “clear seeing” or the ability to perceive impressions, information &/or events that couldn’t otherwise be known
    through visions, mental images &/or other visual messages that no one else sees,
  • Clairaudience: “clear hearing” or the ability to perceive impressions, information &/or events that couldn’t otherwise be known
    through sounds, voices, music &/or auditory messages that no one else hears,
  • Clairsentience: “clear feeling” or the ability to perceive impressions, information &/or events that couldn’t otherwise be known
    through energies, emotions &/or physical sensations that no one else feels,
  • Claircognizance: “clear knowing” or the ability to perceive impressions, information &/or events that couldn’t otherwise be known
    through a clear & sudden knowing &/or insight that no one else has received (like an extreme form of intuition),
  • Clairgustance: “clear tasting” or the ability to perceive impressions, information &/or events that couldn’t otherwise be known
    through flavors &/or tastes of substances you haven’t ingested & that no one else tastes,
  • Clairolfaction: “clear smelling” or the ability to perceive impressions, information &/or events that couldn’t otherwise be known
    through smells, odors, aromas &/or fragrances that are not physically present & that no one else smells,
  • Clairtangency: “clear touching” or the ability to perceive impressions, information &/or events that couldn’t otherwise be known
    through holding or touching objects that no one else knows when they touch them (can also be called psychometry),
  • Clairkinesthesia: “clear movement” or the ability to perceive impressions, information &/or events that couldn’t otherwise be known
    through physical sensations, energy &/or vibrations experienced in the body that no one else experiences (some Highly Sensitive People
    have this ability at least & to some extent).

If you’re interested in discovering if you possess any of these abilities, particularly as a Shamanic Empath, I recommend conducting further research to find out. You can work on increasing any abilities you were naturally gifted with through hard work & practice. It’s even possible to gain abilities you weren’t naturally gifted with, with a lot of hard work & practice. And be patient with yourself, especially at first; you’ll make slow progress, at least for a while.

At most, 10% of the population could be Empaths, but I suspect it’s significantly lower in the United States. If you’d like more information or book recommendations, please email us at raven@intotheaviary.com!

What is a Highly Sensitive Person?

Have you often been called “too sensitive” most or all of your life? Do you seem to process & react to stimuli & other information differently than most people? Do you sense things that others don’t seem to notice? Do you get overstimulated easily? Do you often feel like that first deer that raises its ears because it senses danger when no one else has even looked up? Then you could be a Highly Sensitive Person, & you’re not alone! (If you aren’t 100% sure this is you, or if you don’t know what you’re sensitive to, please choose my free Highly Sensitive Person Quiz when you sign up with The Aviary).

Psychologist Elaine Aron coined the term “Highly Sensitive Person”, & being one gives us strengths & challenges. Highly Sensitive People have sensitive nervous systems & are aware of subtleties in their environment that others aren’t. They are more easily overwhelmed in highly stimulating environments, such as crowded places or those with excessive stimulation. Often, Dr. Aron states, Highly Sensitive People can suffer from “sensory processing sensitivity”. Sensory processing sensitivity is, essentially, a personality trait that is characterized by a greater depth of information processing, which increases emotional reactivity & heightens awareness of environmental subtleties. This leads to Highly Sensitive People being sensitive to various types of energies.

Whether we have sensory processing sensitivity or not, there are certain primary qualities or characteristics of Highly Sensitive People. We often:

  • Consider & reflect on our decisions before we make a choices, often to the point of indecisiveness & overthinking,
  • Find it challenging to cope with & are more vulnerable to intense emotions & may need additional time to process them,
  • Require additional downtime — time for solitude & quiet — to recharge & recover from overstimulation,
  • Are highly & profoundly reflective on the occurrences in the world & our own experiences, & we seek greater meaning & purpose in them,
  • Are tremendously conscientious, extremely attentive to detail & we strive for consistency in our choices, actions, work & relationships,
  • Avoid the situations, circumstances & people that overstimulate, including violence in films & TV,
  • Have additional challenges: comorbidities like ADHD & Autism, as well as other issues such as anxiety, perfectionism & self-doubt,
  • Experience a larger spectrum of emotional intensity, which means we have more intense emotions & may feel higher highs & lower lows,
  • Have lower tolerances for sensory input, manifesting in ways such as a low pain threshold or the ability to notice subtle differences in people &/or our environment.

(For more traits of Empaths, see “Is It Always This Way for Sensitives?”)

We could comprise up to 15% or 20% of the world’s population, though I think those numbers are likely to be smaller in the United States. If you’d like more information or book recommendations, please email me at raven@intotheaviary.com!

Is it always this way for Sensitives?

Both Highly Sensitive People & Empaths tend to be looked at, at least in Western cultures, as being “too sensitive”, which those cultures see as a negative. In those cultures, we tend to be more like outliers or outcasts. However, in Eastern cultures, that high sensitivity is not only considered positive, but we sensitive types are sought out & prized for friendships & relationships. In truth, there are both positives & negatives to both conditions.

Some positives:

  • We tend to be able to comfort others & know what they’d need to be comfortable,
  • We are deeply & easily moved by art, music & anything else we find beautiful,
  • We have rich & vivid imaginations & inner lives, & are very creative,
  • We have heightened physical senses & are sensitive to what we sense from them, which leads us to have a richer world experience,
  • We have a great deal of compassion & are drawn to helping others, naturally inclined to offer others our support,
  • We are highly intuitive, sometimes so much that we seem to know something is going to happen before it does,
  • We are sensitive to others’ underlying emotions & subtle energies, especially noticing subtleties around their needs & experiences,
  • We have a heightened awareness of stimulation in our environments, & need much peace & time in nature,
  • We process information deeply (not just “notice more”), leading to thoughtful insights & a strong sense of self-awareness,
  • We tend to notice & appreciate subtleties & nuances around us that others often miss,
  • We’re more sensitive to situations, social cues & interactions as well as the experiences of others,
  • We are often found in the healing, caregiving & medical fields because we’re innately suited to them,
  • We are lucky enough to understand (or at least experience) people on a level most never achieve.

Some negatives:

  • We get overwhelmed & overstimulated easily because we process more & deeper, & show more arousal in everyday situations, causing additional stress & overwhelm,
  • Our sensitivity can leave us more vulnerable to certain people & situations, such as “energy vampires” & narcissists,
  • We tend to accept responsibility for things that aren’t ours to take responsibility for,
  • We struggle to know what we need & how to voice those needs once we know them,
  • We feel weighed down by the world’s ugliness — pain, war, cruelty, violence, abuse & any situations where someone or something is harmed,
  • We can feel guilty for setting healthy limits & boundaries, because we’re so sensitive to the needs & experiences of others,
  • We can become confused about where another being ends & we begin, & where we end & they begin,
  • We will sometimes present ourselves differently than we truly are, usually based on what we sense others want or need,
  • We sense things that others can’t, but often, these observations are discounted,
  • We can take on others’ difficult emotions or pain,
  • We process information so deeply that we often overthink everything & have difficulties with making decisions,
  • We get so easily overwhelmed that we need a great deal of alone time away from others.

No matter what the positives or negatives might be, we need to be aware of what we are & what that means.

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