Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sarah Dear. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Sarah , thank you so much for joining us today. There are so many topics we could discuss, but perhaps one of the most relevant is empathy because it’s at the core of great leadership and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your empathy?
Empathy starts with really learning how to listen. Not just to hear, but to understand where someone is coming from. I think a great starting point for understanding empathy is that everyone has their own reality and their own unique experience, even if we’re sharing a moment together.
Cultivating empathy requires that we get curious about what someone else is experiencing, and learn how to make room or hold space for their reality as it co-exists with our own. I happen to be an empath, which takes empathy to a truly embodied level, in which I can feel in my own body what others are feeling.
Like most empaths, my ability developed in early childhood in response to uncertainty and trauma. I don’t remember ever not being able to feel other people’s emotional states as if they were my own. This was hugely confusing as a child, but allowed me to detect danger. I grew up surrounded by addiction and unpredictable mental illness, which made threat assessment a necessity for my survival. My nervous system is literally wired to feel the feelings of others.
I also come from a long line of intuitives. So not only can I feel other people’s feelings, I can also hear their thoughts and receive information in various ways.
These abilities made me deeply attuned to suffering, injustice, and to the pain we all carry in silence as a child and I struggled to make sense of how much I could feel and sense. I would try to turn it off and on, but found that it would often spike around certain people and no amount of dial turning seemed to really work. As an adult, I experienced a lot of generalized anxiety and did a lot of self-medicating to cope.
I didn’t know that the anxiety was the result of not exercising boundaries until I moved out of Los Angeles and into the foothills of Santa Barbara where I am surrounded by nature. It was then that my nervous system seemed to spontaneously relax. I began feeling an intense urge to find support to help me navigate and use my gifts intentionally. Once I started learning some sustainable skills, my entire life changed.
I always felt like I had to compartmentalize these seemingly disparate parts of myself, but with training and cultivation, I learned how to integrate my abilities and use them in every aspect of my life. Now they are a huge part of my creativity and the foundation for how I work with people.
I’ve learned how to only take what I think of as “a little sip” of the emotional resonance someone is carrying so my own system doesn’t get overwhelmed. I take just enough of a sample to meet them where they are, which allows me to support them and myself at the same time.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’ve been building brands and supporting women entrepreneurs for 15 years now as a brand strategist, copy director, storyteller, and creativity coach. Being able to tap into the inner states and hidden dreams of my clients is a real asset. I often hear, “It’s like you can read my mind! You took ideas I’ve never shared with anyone and made them come to life.” And this is precisely what I do.
People often get stuck only being able to see what’s happening right now. Or they get fixated on what’s wrong while losing sight of what they truly desire. Or they let what happened in the past dictate what is possible today. My gifts allow me to tap into the vulnerable dreams that folks are often afraid to voice, or to identify the self-defeating patterns that prevent growth.
It lights me up to see how naming the unspoken can instantly generate relief and hope. By bringing these things out into the open, so much possibility becomes available. Looking beyond limits and into the horizon of one’s dreams isn’t so much about strategic steps (though they do come into play) as it is the risk of really listening to and owning a deep longing. All my clients really need is someone who believes their dream is possible.
Over time, I’ve come to realize that I am like a bridge – between where someone is now and where they long to go. I am comfortable in liminal spaces and know how to be with the discomfort of change. I know how to honor endings. I offer the people I serve an opportunity to walk together through the darkest places in order to reach a new way of being and develop the confidence to maintain it.
Is there anything you’ve recently done or worked on that you’re especially excited about?
In the past year, I finally did something for myself that I’ve been dreaming about for decades and finished working on a collection of lineage poems. They answer a deep longing and insatiable curiosity I’ve always carried to untangle the mysteries in those histories.
The creative process was interesting because a poem would come and then for weeks I would pause and just let its material wash over and through me. It became apparent that what I was doing was metabolizing the unresolved grief and trauma of those who came before me for healing. I think being an empath made this possible.
The birth of my daughter, followed closely by the death of my mother, were the catalysts for this daunting journey. Part time travel, part anthropology, part meaning making, these poems really embody my effort to pass along the wisdom of my lineage to my only child so she doesn’t have to go scratching around in the dirt trying to figure it all out like I did.
I also know the collection is not just for me and her, but for anyone who is on the path of lineage healing, and specifically those who are working to heal a Mother Wound. I am now in the process of exploring publishers to help set these poems free to find the people who are looking for them.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Learning to discern what belongs to me and what belongs to others
When I was younger, I had no idea that so much of what I was feeling and thinking actually belonged to the people around me. Mostly it manifested in persistent anxiety, but once I learned that I am an empath, everything really clicked into place. I started asking myself who my feelings and thoughts belong to. When I am picking up unresolved grief in the collective, it has a very particular emotional resonance. I’ve learned to recognize its signature and can very quickly acknowledge it and let it go.
In the beginning of this work, about 90% of my daily experience belonged to others. Now that I know how to do #2 and #3 on this list, I flipped the ratio so that, unless I am intentionally working with someone, I am mostly feeling and experiencing myself, and occasionally allowing in collective material.
2. Embracing boundaries and learning how to maintain them
Boundaries have been absolutely essential to my health and wellbeing. All day, every day I use a tool called The Container that helps me keep a protective boundary around myself. Using this concept helps me stay aware of where I end and others begin to keep my energy clear and vibrant. If I start to feel really uncomfortable in my own skin, begin having repetitive or intrusive thoughts, or experience intense anxiety out of the blue, I know I need to reinforce my container.
3. Seeking out support and training from other empaths, HSPs, and intuitives to learn the critical energetic hygiene tools that keep me grounded and well-resourced
I would never be where I am today without the guidance and support of my teachers, guides, and elders. I trained with Shakti Rising to deepen my gifts and learn energetic hygiene within community with other women. I will forever be in gratitude to Shannon Thompson, may she rest in power, for bringing this work to so many of us. I also spent a year studying with my spiritual teacher, Anne-Marie Charest, who helped me cross the threshold to do my lineage healing work. I learned alongside a death doula as I tended to my mom’s death at home in the last three weeks of her life. And I continually gather with women from around the world in wisdom communities that enrich and deepen my embodiment and feminine leadership. Knowing I am not alone has been such a salve and inspiration.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
Overwhelm usually happens for me when I’m trying to do too much, carry too much, or have unknowingly become entwined with other people’s energies. I have a series of steps that I use that help me restore balance.
1. I pause and take notice of my emotional-mental-physical states
Am I suddenly feeling melancholy, exhausted, resentful, hot under the collar? I stop whatever I’m doing and tune into my interior landscape. I do a quick scan from head to toe and notice what I’m feeling in my body and where it is located. Once I identify what is happening, I say out loud, “I’m experiencing overwhelm right now.” By naming it, I can start to resolve the experience.
2. I identify what I need
Many of the intense feelings that pop up for me in the course of a day are simply asking for my attention. Nine times out of 10, they are indicating an unmet need. It might be that I need a break, some meditation, a little physical activity or movement, a few deep breaths, a glass of water, a good cry, or one of my many energetic cleansing rituals. I listen for the need, thank it for speaking up, and then give it to myself.
3. I spend time in nature
Human energy is really intense and the quickest way to release and realign myself is to go for a walk in nature or simply lay down on the earth. I use my senses to ground myself into the present moment… feeling the planet hold my body, hearing birdsong or the sound of a babbling creek, smelling freshly cut grass, seeing the wind move through the trees, tasting honeysuckle. Doing these things reminds me that I am not separate or alone, but an inextricable part of the entire wild ecosystem of life, no different from a tree or a frog or a flower.
4. I challenge my beliefs
I used to believe that because I have these gifts, it was my responsibility to ease the suffering of others. I have since learned that not only is this not my job, but doing so prevents them from doing their own work, from growing and transforming in the ways that only they can. I think of it now like staying on my side of the street. I can feel, observe, and speak to what I’m picking up from my side of the street, but the rest is up to them. And I’m very clear now that even this dynamic is optional. I don’t have to do it, it’s not always appropriate for me to do it, and so I always Iisten for the critical guidance that tells me to either share or keep quiet.
Our beliefs shape how we experience the world. So why buy into ones that keep us in a state of suffering or stuck in self-defeating patterns when we can actively shape them to allow for more wonder, delight, connection, and abundance? I’ll take the latter every time.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sarahmcgowandear.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmcgowandear/
Image Credits
Rebecca Farmer
