The Empath’s Journey

It took many years of work for Ritu Kaushal to come up with her book, “The Empath’s Journey”. Says she: “I did the creative writing course at SACAC many years ago during a tentative, hopeful and vulnerable time in my life when I was trying to find my way back to myself as an artist. The course helped me exercise my still-tremulous voice and find many kindred spirits who were attempting the same thing. The wonderful exploratory exercises we did, the opportunity to learn from prolific writers and the feeling of excitement that came from learning about the tools of the craft were all solid steps forward in my own journey as a writer. I would highly recommend the course to anyone looking for a quality offering!” Book Description: Have you been called “too sensitive” all your life and tried to fit yourself inside the box of the “normal”? Do you absorb other people’s feelings like a sponge? Does your acute sensitivity sometimes let toxic people in and makes you into a victim? If yes, you might be an empath, a ‘Highly Sensitive Person’ who is finely tuned in to energy but who can also get overwhelmed because of this tendency to notice details. In this behind-the-scenes look at an empath’s life, we first meet the author at a pivotal point after she has relocated from India to the United States. As she gets inundated with noticing thousands of small differences in a new culture, she finds herself face-to-face with the same old dilemma: Is feeling and noticing so much really such a great thing? Over the next six years, we journey with her as she struggles with questions that every emotional empath has battled with. How do you cut through overwhelm when you feel swamped by noticing subtle details and feelings? How do you set boundaries when you almost feel other people’s emotions in your own body? Is being an empath even a real thing, or is being an empath a mal-adaptation, the same as being codependent? Instead of seeing themselves through the lens of the labels of “too weak” and “too soft”, “The Empath’s Journey”, shows empaths that many of their struggles with being highly sensitive come from the fact that they’ve been taught to treat their sensitivity like a dragon, something to fight against, instead of seeing that this seeming dragon guards their very treasure.