[00:00:00] Can you walk into a room and almost instantly feel the emotional temperature? You notice when somebody's upset before they've even said a word. You sense tension, you can pick up a mood, and you know when something just feels off. People often describe you as intuitive, empathic, sensitive, and they're probably right.
The Attuner has an extraordinary gift, and that gift can also sometimes be our greatest challenge. Hi, I'm Nicki Kuurman, and welcome to this week's episode of the Practical Mystic podcast. Over the last few weeks, I've been introducing you to what I call the four alignment patterns, default patterns that we fall back to when we're under stress, overwhelmed, or just emotionally drained.
We've talked about the anchor, the one who carries everything, and the seeker who's always searching for information [00:01:00] outside of themselves. And today, I want to introduce you to the Attuner, the pattern that I know in myself, and I see every single week in most of my clients. And before I explain more about the Attuner, I want you to think about: how do you feel when you walk away from a conversation with some people?
Do you feel completely exhausted? Not because anything difficult happened, but because you've spent the entire conversation tuned in to the other person. How they're feeling, their needs, whether they're upset, whether they need comforting or reassurance. How comfortable were they? Did I say the right thing?
Do they even still like me? When we are tuned in so acutely to other people's needs, emotions, and feelings, we start to lose track of how I feel. Many women come [00:02:00] into my clinic and say to me, "I don't even know how I feel anymore." And as strange as it sounds, how could we not h- know how we feel? As we talk, it starts to become obvious.
They know exactly how their partner feels, how their children feel, their parents, their boss, their colleagues, their best friend. They can describe everyone's emotional world with incredible detail. And then I ask, "Well, how are you?" There's often a long pause, not because they don't want to answer, because they genuinely don't know.
The Attuner learns something very clever somewhere along the way in their life. It became safer to pay attention to everyone else than it did to pay attention to themselves. Maybe you grew up with an unpredictable household. Maybe people were very emotional around [00:03:00] you or erratic. Maybe somebody else's mood determined if the house felt safe or not.
Maybe you became really good at reading the room, good at smoothing things over, knowing when to run and hide or when it was safe to be around people. You're very good at keeping the peace, negotiating. These skills are intelligent. They protected you. They helped you navigate the world, and because they've worked, you keep trusting them.
The challenge is what protects us as children can quietly disconnect us as adults. Because after years of paying attention to everyone else, you can lose the sound of your own voice. Not physically, internally. You stop asking, "What do I want? What do I need? What feels right for me?" [00:04:00] Instead, you ask, "What would make everyone else happy?
What will keep the peace? What will avoid disappointing someone?" Without even realizing it, your inner compass slowly begins pointing outwards. There's been many times in my life when I have been more focused on everybody else than myself, when it hasn't been safe to be fully me. It's one of the things that I am constantly tuning back into my own needs.
Because one of the things that I notice in myself and clients is that Attuners often ask for permission. Permission to rest, permission to say no. "Is it okay if I don't go?" Permission to leave a relationship, permission to change jobs, permission to disappoint someone, although they never really want to, and permission to [00:05:00] choose themselves feels so selfish.
It feels so hard to choose. And every time they ask their friends, their close ones, "Is it okay if I just have a little bit of this for me?" I quietly wonder, when did I hand someone else the authority over my own life? Because somewhere along the way, the Attuners stopped trusting their own inner knowing, not because it disappeared, but because everyone else's voice became louder.
The problem isn't that you can't hear people. It's not even that you can't hear your own guides or guidance from your spirit team. It's that you've stopped hearing your true self. There's nothing wrong with empathy. In fact, it's beautiful. Compassion is beautiful. Sensitivity is a wonderful trait to have.
The world desperately needs more people who can see and understand each other. [00:06:00] But empathy without boundaries eventually becomes exhaustion Compassion without self-compassion becomes depletion. And listening to everyone else without listening to yourself becomes self-abandonment. One of my favourite questions to ask a client is, what would you choose if nobody else had an opinion on it?
It's such a simple question, and it brings so much tears and pain and stress initially because under all the noise, they do usually know, but they don't dare voice it. They've known for quite some time what they really want. They just haven't felt safe enough to even listen to it, let alone act on it. The Attuner can often be very overwhelmed at a party, [00:07:00] even if they're hosting the party, because they're tuned into, is everybody okay?
Is everyone getting along? Did I upset anyone? Have I done enough? Should I be doing more? Should I be making more connections? Has everybody got a drink? Has everyone got food? Their attention is scanning the room constantly. And then one day they realize, "Hey, am I okay? Do I need a drink? Do I need something to eat?
Is it safe for me to relax now?"
Oftentimes the answer is not really. They're hyper-alert to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. When we're constantly asking how everyone else is and not asking ourselves, this is incongruence with our generosity and our capacity for love not being reflected because we don't have that capacity of love for [00:08:00] ourselves.
You'll often hear me say things like, "Don't leave yourself." Wherever you go, whoever you're with, whatever conversation that you're having, stay with yourself. Have one eye in on you and one eye out on them. Notice your breathing. Notice your body. Are your shoulders tense? Is your stomach contracting? Notice when your heart is expanding and full.
Your body is constantly communicating with you how you feel. The question is: are you listening? The invitation to the Attuner isn't to stop caring. Please don't stop caring. The world needs your kindness, your warmth, your intuition, your capacity for love, the ability to create connection and bring people together.
The invitation is simply this: can you include yourself in the circle of [00:09:00] compassion? Can you stand in circle with everyone around you equal of your love and attention? Can your needs matter, too? Can your feelings have a seat at your table? Can your voice be just as important as everybody else's? Because that's not selfish, that's self-care.
Maybe this week, instead of asking, "What does everyone else need from me?" Try asking, "What do I need from me?" Not from your partner, not from your children, not from your friends, from yourself. Because one of the greatest acts of remembering who we are is that we are remembering our voices deserve to be heard.
I want you to remember that the Attuner isn't broken. They are beautifully connected. We're simply helping that [00:10:00] connection come home and ground itself in your heart. Because when you stay connected to yourself, you don't lose your ability to care for others. You simply stop disappearing when you do. When you connect to yourself, you'll find you have even more capacity for love because you're not trying to fill from an empty cup.
Next week, I'll explore the final alignment pattern, the guardian, the one who has become so good at protecting themselves, they struggle to receive the very thing that they are looking for. If you're curious about which alignment pattern you are, there's a free two-minute quiz that I'll link below for you to have an explore of what is your default pattern.
You might see a little bit of yourself in each of the patterns, but there'll be one that you default more to than others. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you're listening or watching, please like, subscribe, and follow on your favourite platform to get [00:11:00] notified when the next episode is up.
Until then, stay with yourself, listen to your own voice, and remember to come home to you. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you next week.
