THE EMPATH'S ELIXIR

Debut author and life coach Reese recounts her own experiences as an empath and suggests resources to help people in similar situations achieve strength and balance.

In this guide, she defines an empath as a person who is extremely sensitive to the world around them to the degree that they become easily overwhelmed by external stimuli. People with empathic natures, she notes, may prefer to stay at home and avoid office work. Empaths can also have difficulties in romantic relationships, be prone to information overload, and even be affected by energy emanating from electronics, she asserts. Reese describes aspects of her own life as an empath, which she says included dealing with headaches and anxiety. Biofeedback therapy, she says, helped her learn how to breathe in a meditative way, relax, and sleep. Interestingly, she also notes that, due to her empathic nature, she and her husband tried sleeping in separate bedrooms, which she found worked well for her marriage as a whole. Reese’s personal stories are often engaging, and her decision to include them in this guidebook gives more context to its self-help aspects; the elixir of the title refers to these self-care strategies in aggregate. Some recommendations seem basic and obvious, such as eating healthy food and spending time in nature. The book also offers more specific advice that may be less familiar to many readers, such as taking gamma-aminobutyric acid supplements or using red-light therapy; however, it provides few citations of scientific studies to back up its claims. At times, the work can be repetitive, and readers may find some of its language to be a bit harsh, as in a chapter in which she advises the reader to “give a damn about yourself.” The work might have been stronger if she had included the stories of other empaths; it also doesn’t address appropriate careers for empaths, which could also have been a fruitful area of exploration.

A somewhat uneven self-help work but one that may be helpful for environmentally sensitive people.