Stop Answering Every Emotional Distress Call — Especially as a Black Empath
There comes a moment in your journey as an empath, especially as a Black empath, when you learn that not every cry is meant for you to answer. Some people call out in distress not for connection, but for access. Not for healing, but for a hit of relief. And if you’re not discerning, you’ll respond out of habit or hope, only to end up depleted, resentful, and unsure of your own worth again.
We carry something. An energetic brand, like the Star of Life on our foreheads. It signals to the world that we know how to hold pain. And too often, people confuse that signal with permission to pour into us. Without asking, offering reciprocity, or caring about the cost. But here’s what I’ve learned:
Empathy is not a hotline. It’s a sacred channel.
It’s not open 24/7. It’s not a badge of honor. It’s not your job to rescue everyone who suddenly remembers you when they’re spiraling.
You must know the difference between:
A soul reaching for your hand, and
A person reaching for your light because they never learned how to sit in the dark.
As a Black empath, this discernment is essential. Too often, our capacity for care gets exploited. Within our families, our friendships, and even the spiritual communities we hoped would feel safer. But empathy is not martyrdom. It’s not martyr marketing either. And it certainly isn’t something to romanticize.
Yes, the world now talks more about empaths. Celebrities claim it shamelessly, neurodivergent communities name it, but they often miss the quiet, gutting truth:
Being an empath doesn’t make you special. It makes you responsible.
It makes you responsible for protecting your energy. It creates responsibility for recognizing when your gift is being mistaken for emotional labor. You are required to be responsible for knowing that the gift isn’t a gift if it keeps leaving you empty.
Lately, I’ve noticed a pattern that deserves more attention, and most black empaths and black spiritual guides won’t name this because of what their clientele actually looks like. Though this pattern of white women seeking out Black empaths, and black spiritual guides in moments of emotional overwhelm, not for mutual connection, but as a kind of unconscious outsourcing of care.
What once looked like physical labor in enslaved populations of generations past now shows up as emotional labor. Where Black women were once called on to nourish and soothe in servitude, while stripped of our own children to care for, we’re now quietly expected to mother others through the emotional discomfort of their own awakening, grief, or reckoning with white privilege.
It’s subtle, but it’s there. And if we don’t name it, we internalize it.
This isn’t about blame. It’s about awareness.
It’s about understanding how historical roles are being energetically re-enacted in spiritual and wellness spaces. The very communal spaces that often claim to be rooted in healing and equity. But when empathy becomes expected rather than earned, when our insight is consumed without context or consent, it leaves us carrying more than our share. Again.
For Black empaths, the result is a kind of spiritual fatigue. The kind of exhaustion that comes not just from the weight of what we hold, but from what we are silently expected to hold.
This is why discernment is not just a boundary—it’s a necessity. Not to close ourselves off, but to ensure that when we do choose to connect, it’s safe, mutual, and rooted in shared humanity, not inherited imbalance.
If you think you’re being gaslit, you probably are.
Recently, I had a long-term client who was unwilling to confront aspects of her identity. This denial was specific to the tension between cultural appropriation and her own longing to belong. She clung tightly to a narrative of being “born of this land,” despite only having access to it through immigration, not birthright masked by ambiguity and a perfect accent. She asserted this identity within a Black, Brown, and Indigenous spiritual space, as if proximity could replace lineage.
It didn’t just feel off. It felt harmful. And when I held up the mirror gently, what followed was familiar. If you are a black spiritual guide, or simply a black woman, you know the drill:
A rush of apologies.
A cry for forgiveness.
And when all else fails, "I love you."
Words that weren’t grounded in accountability, but in discomfort. Words meant to pull me back into care, soothing her instead of standing firm in what I knew to be true.
This is a long-standing dynamic in proximity to white privilege most aggressively with white women. When harm is named, they often respond not with reflection, but with emotional leakage.
Apology becomes performance. “Love” becomes deflection. And we, as Black empaths, are silently dared to hold them accountable and risk the consequences.
Because we know what happens when we don’t. The conversation turns for the worse. We’re accused of being too harsh, or they highlight their fear. We are suddenly no longer empathic but unkind. We are guilty of breaking the peace.
But what about the peace that gets broken inside us?
So now I pay attention to my inner cues for when not to answer the emotional distress call:
Do I feel safe, grounded, and clear in their presence, or do I feel myself shrinking or second-guessing?
Am I being asked to witness, or to emotionally babysit someone’s discomfort?
Are they reaching for connection or for control, dressed up as closeness?
Is there space for me to speak honestly, or is their fragility the loudest presence in the room?
Am I allowed to feel the fullness of my own boundaries without being guilted or spiritually shamed?
Discernment is not a wall, it’s always been a filter. And it protects your gift from being misused, misread, or misunderstood.
As Black empaths, we are not emotional regulators for anyone unwilling to sit with their own complexity. We are not here to mother those who refuse to grow. We are not midwives for false identity.
Empathy must be rooted in truth. And if it isn’t, it becomes something else entirely: a performance, a transaction, or a trap.
And let me be clear, this dynamic isn’t limited to white women.
I’ve also witnessed it among Black women who’ve been shaped by academia, who carry a kind of intellectual elitism that distances them from both spiritual depth and cultural accountability. Often untethered from religious traditions but not yet rooted in any meaningful spiritual practice, they seek entry points into sacred Black spaces, but do so with a kind of detached critique that feels eerily familiar.
Recently, a Black woman approached me for information about the Akashic Records. I explained how they work, how they’re accessed, what they can reveal, and the spiritual integrity required to engage with them. But instead of seeking to understand, she met the offering with condescension. She insisted it “wasn’t for her,” not in the sense of intuitive mismatch, but from a place of dismissal, like she was too advanced or too rational to entertain such things.
I gently offered that it’s not that it wasn’t “for her,” but that there’s a way to approach this kind of work, a seeking that is rooted in reverence, not skepticism.
Her response?
“I know you’re an empath… you just want to help people, right?”
It was nauseating.
Not because of the words, but because of the energy. The subtle reduction of my work to some helper archetype. The implicit assumption that my care exists for the taking. It reminded me of how often white women receive preferential treatment in these spaces but this time, it was mirrored back through someone who looked like me.
That’s the danger of disembodied intellect and borrowed language, it can mimic the same systems of harm, even when the face is different.
Too many Black women have been so thoroughly conditioned by Eurocentric thinking and institutional validation that they show up in Black spiritual spaces posturing with superiority, while still craving the very connection they once disavowed. They’ve separated themselves from Blackness in every way except the one they can’t scrub off.
And when they come seeking healing or insight, what they’re really seeking is power. Not presence. Not practice. Just access.
This is why discernment isn’t bitterness, it’s protection. It’s not about closing the door on people.
It’s about refusing to leave it wide open for energy that feels entitled to your gift but unwilling to honor its sacredness.
Real reciprocity doesn’t posture.
It listens.
It leans in with humility.
It doesn't seek access for the sake of ego, identity crises, or emotional outsourcing—but for the sake of healing that is mutual, embodied, and intentional.
To be a Black empath in these times is to carry a spiritual frequency that is often misunderstood and misused. But it is not our job to keep overextending ourselves to be understood. It is our right to preserve our clarity.
We are not martyrs or emotional mules. And we are not here to mother those still unwilling to re-parent themselves. Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is not answer the call. Not because we don’t care, but because we finally do—about ourselves, too.
If this stirred something in you, it’s time to stop carrying it alone. Book a session or follow my deeper musings on Substack, your clarity might be closer than you think.