What is Emotional Authority in Human Design?
Emotional authority in Human Design refers to a specific type of inner guidance system based on one’s emotions and feelings. It’s one of the several types of “authorities” described in the Human Design system.
For individuals with emotional authority, the best decision-making is based on the clarity that comes from riding out their emotional waves over time, rather than making choices in the heat of the moment. The idea is that those with emotional authority experience a natural emotional cycle, and their truest, most aligned decisions come when they wait for emotional clarity rather than acting on immediate feelings.
Key aspects of emotional authority include:
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Emotional waves:
People with emotional authority experience natural ups and downs in their emotional state.
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Waiting for clarity:
Delay important decisions until you feel a sense of emotional calm or clarity.
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Trusting the process:
Emphasize faith in your emotional journey as a guide to decision-making.
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Not acting on immediate emotions:
Don’t make choices based on fleeting emotional states.
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Patience:
Emotional authority often requires more time for decision-making compared to other authority types.
Emotional Authority in Practice
For our entire lives, we are told to trust our gut when making decisions. We are told to simplify a major life decision by making a Pro/Con list.
But what if you are not meant to make decisions from your gut or your mind?
In Human Design, each person has a unique authority that guides them on how to make decisions. Trusting your true self to access your inner authority ensures that you make the best decisions for you.
Those with emotional authority are always experiencing an emotional wave. One day they are up. The next day they are down. These waves don’t always have a cause and can make them appear, to others, as moody or indecisive. They feel their emotions deeply, and that emotional intensity can be tricky when presented with opportunities. Meeting new people or getting a job offer will activate these emotions and cause someone to react before they’re ready.
The challenge with emotional authority is waiting. You have to wait for the emotional wave to settle before making a decision. Do not give in to pressure to “make up your mind” because you will likely regret it.
The Two Kinds Of Authority
Knowledge of your Human Design type and strategy will allow you to use your authority as a tool to know if an opportunity is right for you. Authority is separated into two categories– Inner and Outer.
Regarding inner authority, Ra Uru Hu said, “What you can trust to make decisions, and it is never the mind.”
Inner authority draws on our internal intelligence. Meaning that when someone with inner authority allows themselves to listen to their body, they have access to all the information they need. The challenge with inner authority is shutting off the mind and tuning out other’s voices. You have inner authority when you have a defined Spleen, Solar Plexus, Sacral, or Ego.
Only 3% of the population has outer authority– Mental Projectors (Orchestrators) and Reflectors (Calibrators). Those with outer authority are here to give others their perspective and knowledge. Mental Projectors can bounce ideas off of other people to get clarity. Reflectors rely on their strategy of waiting for a lunar cycle before making decisions.
Types Of Authority
There are five authority types in Human Design: Sacral, Splenic, Emotional, Self, and Ego.
Authority influences what you need and, sometimes, the timing to use your strategy effectively to help you make decisions. Manifestors (Initiators), Generators (Alchemists), Manifesting Generators (Time Benders) and Projectors (Orchestrators) have authority in their charts. Reflectors Calibrators) are the only type who does not have authority like the rest because they do not have any defined centers. Their process is referred to as Lunar authority, but it is really more like a long waiting period for decisions.
How Do I Find Out If I Have Emotional Authority?
About half of the population has emotional authority. On the body graph, the Emotional Solar Plexus is the large triangle on the far right of your Body Graph. If this triangle is filled in, you have a defined solar plexus center, which gives you emotional authority.
You can get your own, personalized Human Design Chart here.
The Solar Plexus Center and Emotional Authority
The defined Emotional Solar Plexus will be brown. If you are part of the 50 per cent of the population with a defined Emotional Solar Plexus, you always carry emotional energy.
The channels connecting your Emotional Solar Plexus to other centers will determine the kind of emotional waves that you experience. Some of you have only small undulations in your emotional frequency. Others may experience high and low emotional highs, with plateaus in between. With the wavelike nature of emotional energy, it is easy to mistake the melancholy of the low end of the wave for depression.
If you are emotionally defined, depression can become a big problem if you are looking for a reason why you are feeling down. We have a lot of judgment against negative emotions in our culture. But not all negative emotions are destructive. Melancholy, the low end of an emotional wave, is a very important creative energy.
Regardless of your Human Design type, you have emotional authority if you have a defined Emotional Solar Plexus. Your emotional waves are crucial to your process because you can make a clear decision when the emotion passes. Waiting for the right emotional state before taking action will keep you from leaping into emotional decisions and regretting them later.
The Generator (Alchemist) With Emotional Authority
In addition to a defined solar plexus, Generators have a defined sacral center. A defined Sacral motor means you are designed to wait for things to appear. This can be very difficult because that Sacral energy hums and buzzes and is just longing to do something–just like an initial emotional reaction wants to say “Yes!”
Sacral beings are very busy people. They are designed to be “doing.” The Sacral Center is all about waiting and responding to whatever shows up in your world. Think about this, how many times have miraculous and unexpected things happened to you out of the blue? Sacral energy works best if you learn to wait for the right thing to show up and then respond to it.
Be sure to allow your emotional wave to pass before you respond to these miraculous opportunities.
As a Generator with emotional authority, you are designed to respond to life with your powerful emotional waves guiding the way. Your energy is here to be used in response to what life brings you, but your decisions should be filtered through your unique emotional wisdom.
You should approach the world as follows:
- Respond, don’t initiate: Wait for life to present opportunities to you. Your role is to respond to what comes your way, not to force things to happen.
- Listen to your gut response: When something comes into your field, notice your initial gut reaction. This is your Generator response telling you whether it’s something to pursue or not.
- Ride the emotional wave: Even if your gut says yes, don’t jump in immediately. Your emotional authority requires you to wait. Let yourself experience the full range of emotions about the opportunity or decision.
- Be patient: Your emotional clarity may take hours, days, or even weeks to arrive. Don’t rush this process. Your best decisions come when you’ve allowed your emotions to settle.
- Notice the calm: The right choice will feel calm and clear when your emotional wave has run its course. This is your signal to move forward.
- Use your energy wisely: Once you’ve made a decision, throw yourself into it fully. Your Generator energy is potent when correctly applied.
- Honor your need for rest: Despite your strong energy, remember to rest and recharge. Your energy is sustainable when you balance action with rest.
- Trust your emotions: Your feelings aren’t something to be overcome or ignored. They are your guidance system. Learn to trust and work with them.
- Communicate your process: Let others know that you need time to make decisions. It’s okay to say, “I need to sleep on it” or “I’ll let you know in a few days.”
- Embrace the journey: Your life is meant to be a series of responses, each leading you to the next. Trust this process and enjoy the ride.
Remember, your emotional authority is a gift. By allowing yourself to fully experience and move through your emotions before making decisions, you align yourself with your truest path and tap into your deepest wisdom.
The Manifestor (Initiator) With Emotional Authority
Emotional Manifestors are in this world to create, transform, and impact those around them. Manifestors are the only Human Design type that can take action immediately. If you are an emotionally defined Manifestor, it is vital that you wait for emotional clarity before you act. If you take action before your emotional wave has passed you, those around you will experience chaos.
The Manifestors strategy of informing those around them will ensure that the emotional Manifestor is not perceived as suspicious or too intense. When you reach emotional clarity on a decision, do not allow others to get in the way. It is in your design to let them know that you are doing what you will do. They can either join in and help, or they need to get out of the way.
As a Manifestor with emotional authority, you have a unique combination of initiating energy and emotional guidance. Your role is to initiate and inform, but your emotional authority adds an important layer to your decision-making process. Here’s how you should approach the world:
- Initiate, but with patience: Your Manifestor energy urges you to start things, but your emotional authority asks you to wait for clarity before acting.
- Trust your impulses, then wait: When you feel an impulse to initiate something, acknowledge it. Then, allow your emotional wave to run its course before deciding to act.
- Inform others: As a Manifestor, it’s crucial to inform those who will be impacted by your actions. This helps reduce resistance to your initiatives.
- Ride the emotional wave: Let yourself experience the full range of emotions about your ideas or potential actions. This might take hours, days, or even weeks.
- Notice the calm: The right moment to act will come when you feel emotionally clear and calm about your decision.
- Act decisively: Once you have emotional clarity, act on your impulses with confidence. Your Manifestor energy is powerful when aligned with your emotional wisdom.
- Honor your need for solitude: As a Manifestor, you need time alone to recharge. This is especially important given your emotional authority, which requires introspection.
- Trust your emotions: Your feelings aren’t obstacles; they’re your guidance system. Learn to work with them rather than against them.
- Communicate your process: Let others know that while you have ideas and impulses, you need time to gain emotional clarity before acting.
- Embrace your unique rhythm: Your life is meant to be a series of intentional, emotionally-aligned initiations. Trust this process and find your own pace.
Remember, your combination of Manifestor energy and emotional authority is rare and powerful. By allowing yourself to fully experience your emotions before initiating action, you align your natural ability to make things happen with your deepest inner guidance. This can lead to powerful, transformative actions that are in harmony with your true self and have the potential to impact the world around you significantly.
The Manifesting Generator (Time Bender) With Emotional Authority
Manifesting Generators are a blend of Generators and Manifestors. A Manifesting Generator with emotional authority needs to act the same as a Generator, waiting before they respond, but they must also inform before they act.
Once your emotional wave passes, you need to inform those who will be affected by your decisions. It’s also a good idea to inform others that you need more time to choose.
As a Manifesting Generator with emotional authority, you blend the responsive energy of a Generator with the initiating spark of a Manifestor, all guided by your emotional wisdom. Your approach to life should be dynamic yet patient, allowing your emotions to inform your powerful energy. Here’s how you should navigate the world:
- Respond and initiate with awareness: Your energy allows you to both respond and initiate, but your emotional authority asks you to pause before fully committing.
- Trust your quick responses: Notice your immediate gut reactions to opportunities or ideas. These quick responses are valuable indicators.
- Allow for emotional processing: Even after your initial response, give yourself time to ride the emotional wave before taking significant action.
- Multi-task mindfully: Your ability to handle multiple projects is strong, but ensure each one has passed through your emotional filter.
- Inform others: Like Manifestors, it’s helpful to inform those affected by your actions, reducing potential resistance.
- Recognize emotional clarity: The right time to fully engage is when you feel emotionally clear and calm about a decision or project.
- Engage with full energy: Once emotionally clear, throw yourself into your chosen activities with your characteristic vigor and speed.
- Honor your need for variety: Your energy thrives on diverse experiences, but make sure each new venture aligns with your emotional authority.
- Balance action and rest: Despite your high energy, remember to take breaks. Your emotional clarity often comes during periods of rest.
- Trust your emotional guidance: Your feelings are not obstacles but rather sophisticated navigation tools. Learn to trust and interpret them.
Remember, as a Manifesting Generator with emotional authority, you have a unique gift of rapid response and initiation, tempered by emotional wisdom. By honoring both your quick-moving energy and your need for emotional clarity, you can navigate life with both speed and depth. This combination allows you to engage in multiple fulfilling pursuits while ensuring your actions are aligned with your true self. Embrace this dynamic interplay between your active nature and your emotional guidance system.
The Projector (Orchestrator) With Emotional Authority
Projectors are designed to wait for recognition and invitations. An emotional Projector can get so excited that they have been recognized that they don’t allow their emotional wave to pass before making a decision. Projectors who have not felt recognized are especially vulnerable to making an emotional choice. Remember, if the opportunity that has found you is the best choice, it will wait for you.
As a Projector with emotional authority, you have a unique gift for guiding and directing energy, combined with deep emotional wisdom. Your approach to life should be focused on recognition, invitation, and emotional clarity. Here’s how you should navigate the world:
- Wait for recognition and invitation: Your primary strategy is to wait for others to recognize your gifts and invite you to engage.
- Trust your initial insights: When invited, notice your immediate perceptions about people and systems. These insights are valuable.
- Allow for emotional processing: Even after receiving an invitation, give yourself time to ride the emotional wave before committing.
- Guide with emotional wisdom: Your role is to guide others, but do so only when you have emotional clarity about the situation.
- Conserve and focus your energy: As a Projector, you have limited but penetrating energy. Use it wisely and in alignment with your emotions.
- Recognize emotional clarity: The right time to accept invitations or offer guidance is when you feel emotionally clear and calm.
- Engage deeply when aligned: Once emotionally clear about an invitation, dive in with your full attention and unique perspective.
- Honor your need for rest: Your energy isn’t sustainable like Generators. Take ample time to rest and process your emotions.
- Cultivate self-awareness: Your emotional authority asks you to be deeply attuned to your inner landscape. Embrace this introspective journey.
- Trust the timing of invitations: Align your acceptance of invitations with your emotional clarity, even if it means waiting.
Remember, as a Projector with emotional authority, you have a profound gift for seeing into others and systems, coupled with deep emotional intelligence. Your role is not to work constantly or initiate, but to wait for the right invitations and guide from a place of emotional wisdom.
By honoring both your Projector nature (waiting for invitation and recognition) and your emotional authority (waiting for emotional clarity), you can offer your insights and guidance in a way that’s deeply aligned and impactful. This combination allows you to navigate life with a unique blend of perceptiveness and emotional depth, offering invaluable wisdom to those who recognize and invite your gifts.
Embrace the power of patience in both waiting for invitations and allowing your emotions to guide you. Your greatest fulfillment and success come when you’re recognized for who you truly are and can share your wisdom from a place of genuine emotional alignment.
Working With Children Who Have Emotional Authority
From birth, we are conditioned to the world around us. We learn what is appropriate and expected, and how to behave to fit into the culture we are born into. Children act on instinct and are born following their designs. Unfortunately, they begin to suppress their true selves to fit in during their early years.
Imagine a world where every parent is aware of how their children are designed so they can allow them to live their whole lives as their true selves.
Emotionally defined children are up and down. They are reactive to both the good and the bad. These children will scream, “I hate you!” because in the moment, they do. They will scream when excited because they are truly, deeply excited. The intensity of the emotional waves can be very challenging for adults around them, especially when they have not learned how to handle emotions healthily.
Growing up with emotional authority leads many children to suppress their emotions. They are rewarded for being happy but punished when they are angry. The biggest gift you can give to an emotionally defined child is to allow them the space and tools to experience their emotions. If they are angry, teach them ways to express anger that is not destructive. If they are sad, offer extra hugs and snuggles. If they want to talk, let them talk and do not try to make them talk when they wish to remain silent.
For those with Emotional Authority, there is no truth in the moment, and children will not have clarity until their wave passes. All children struggle to understand time, and emotional children need time the most. They must learn that time will help them get what they want.
These emotional children will see a new toy that they like and want it immediately. They will become angry when they are told no because they are in the midst of their emotional wave. Teaching emotional children to wait or, at least, to “sleep on it” will allow them the time they need. You will be surprised how many emotionally defined kids will wake up the next day, forgetting about the toy that caught their attention.
Working With Loved Ones With Emotional Authority
Loving someone with emotional authority can have its ups and downs- just like their emotional waves. When someone experiences intense emotional waves, those around them are going to experience the waves as well. Before you get swept up in your loved one’s emotions, remember that they often have no control over their emotional wave. When they feel low there may not be a direct cause, and we can’t cheer up those who are at the low end of their emotional wave. We can allow them to sit in their feelings and experience their ups and downs as they come.
The greatest gift that you can give is the gift of time. Emotional authority requires time to make decisions, and those who have it are often pressured to make decisions before they are ready. Allow them to periodically check in with their authority and verbally process their thinking as they reach clarity.
Tips To Work With Your Own Emotional Authority
How many times have you made a quick decision and had it backfire? Maybe you broke up with someone who made you mad or quit your job because you just knew that another job offer was better. There are probably other opportunities that have come along that you look back and think, ohhh I certainly dodged a bullet there.
If you have Emotional Authority, you can probably think of plenty of examples where a decision made in the moment didn’t turn out so well. Give yourself the gift of time and understand you always need time to make decisions, and the larger the opportunity- the more time you might need. If the opportunity is right for you, it will wait.
Remember to be kind to yourself. You are designed to experience emotions, and there is nothing wrong with you for feeling how you feel. When you are over the moon excited or when you are down in the dumps sad, you are living your design.
Note: The names in brackets above are the Quantum Human Design (QHD) names for these Types. QHD helps us to reframe the ‘Not Self’ or conditioned self in Human Design to explore the potential of the deconditioned self and to live more in alignment with our inner truth.
If you want to learn more about how to read your Human Design Chart, you might like this post
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Curious about the difference between Human Design and Quantum Human Design? Karen Curry Parker explains it in this video:
