Recently, a reader asked me, “If you are in a room and someone is exuding negative energy, how can you avoid being affected by it without leaving the room?”
It’s a spiritual principle that other people are allowed to have their own thoughts, emotions, opinions, feelings and process.
As my tai chi teacher once said, “Other people get to do whatever they want – you just don’t want to be there when it happens!”
Sooner or later we find ourselves in the presence of a person who is having a meltdown. Here are a few suggestions of how to use energy medicine to handle the situation skillfully:
- Visualize a bubble around yourself. Fill the inside of the bubble with golden light – the most healing color. Visualize a mirror on the outside of the bubble. Silently affirm, “Nothing comes in and nothing goes out of my energy field except unconditional love.”
- People who are upset engage in a variety of energetic defenses. They may withdraw. They may send out unspoken barbs. They may radiate frustration, anger and negativity. They may also send out energetic tentacles to suck your energy. Or all the above! Before you can respond appropriately, you have to figure out what the other person is doing.
- If the person is withdrawing, allow the individual to go into their own experience. Allow the energy to pass you by. Don’t try to fix it, engage with it or comment on it. Just allow the person to feel whatever they are feeling.
- If the person is sending unspoken barbs towards you, you have a choice. One choice is to allow the energy to pass you by without responding. Another choice is to speak heart to heart. “How can I best love and support you right now?” is a very good question to ask at times like this. Heart to heart is always a great way to communicate, as we come from true compassion when we speak through our heart.
- If the person is simmering with anger, frustration or negativity, allow the other person to have their own space. Stay in your own center. This is easier to do if you visualize your own hara line – the main energy current in your body – connecting from the earth vertically through you all the way up to God. Stay grounded. Keep breathing and know that emotions are just energy in motion. Just because a person is upset in this moment doesn’t mean they will stay that way forever.
- If the person feels like they are sucking your energy, see if you can feel where they are drawing from in your own mind and body and visualize a screen between yourself and the person.
- If a person lets you know they are feeling wounded, you can reduce their pain and suffering by acknowledging how they are feeling or thinking. Many people are afraid to do so because they think they have to take personal responsibility. This is not the case. “I am sorry you are feeling (whatever emotion they have told you they are feeling). I am sorry you are thinking (whatever they are thinking). That must be really difficult right now.” Let the other person know you understand and care about how they feel or what they think. A good rule of thumb is that women’s deepest needs are for their feelings to be cared about. Men want their thoughts to be respected. When you acknowledge how other people feel and think, you defuse the energy and meet the other person’s basic needs.
- Set your intention not to get drawn into the other person’s drama. A great metaphor for this is to imagine that you are dealing with someone who has fallen into the river. If you fall in the river with them, you can’t be any help and then both of you are struggling. On the other hand, if you stay on the bank, you may be able to throw out a life line and pull them back to shore safely.
- Finally, send the other person love and light. You don’t need to see him or her as broken. In your own mind, see the other person as exactly where they need to be on their spiritual path in this moment. Bless them and bless their path.
Staying neutral while other people are upset is a gift both to yourself and others. When you stay in your own center, they have the opportunity quite literally to synchronize with your own personal heart-mind coherence. That is why learning how to maintain your own inner peace may be one of the greatest gifts you give yourself and the world at large.
Thank U for this article… I So needed this right now! My living partner/SO struggles w/anger issues. He had promised it was dealt with and gone before I came… But it has returned. It is a particularly difficult situation… I can’t figure out where his anger comes from… Except I think he is possibly bipolar.. Undiagnosed. He negatively vortexes in extremes.. I cannot reason with him, he becomes completely unrational. Then, once the energetic storm passes, he wants it to be as if nothing happened.. Won’t talk about it.. Or apologize for the awful things said… It’s not, of course, that he vortexes all the time… Other times he is almost manically happy…
I will try ur techniques next time… Will print this out to remind me…
Thank u again for sharing ur knowledge, gifts and talents…
Would very much like to speak with u about my own degenerating health condition that began shortly after returning here…
Namaste!
Hi Wendy,
Thank you so much for reading my blog!
I am so glad this post was so helpful for you.
A couple of comments:
1. I offer a FREE 15-minute consult. All you have to do is leave a message on my cell 678-612-8816 and I will call you back to discuss what’s going on with you and how I might be able to be of service. I work with clients all over the world by phone and Skype.
2. Men are different from women. Even though we know this, as women we are not actually aware of just how different men are. The No. 1 thing that men want is for their thoughts to be respected. The No. 1 thing that women want is for our feelings to be cared about. Many times we inadvertently make the men in our lives feel angry because as women we are not aware how to communicate with them. Men have the listening part of their brain on the opposite side of the talking part. We have to give them time to complete their message before we start talking. One of the things that I do as a medical intuitive healer is read the cord connections between couples. I can show you where you are connecting well and where there is room for you all to form an even more mutually satisfying relationship.
3. The top three sources of stress in Western civilization are health, money and relationships. I help people clear their issues in all three areas. Even when we deeply love another person, our own unresolved issues can get in the way. Our partners have their own unresolved issues that become like hidden land mines when we interact with them. The more we understand the other person’s hidden issues, the better we are able to live with them in love, peace and understanding.
Hope this helps! Love and light, Catherine Carrigan
Everything you have written is very helpful but saying I am sorry you are feeling that way is not the way to go. Never use I words. use reflection of how the person is feeling instead. When i am upset, I cannot stand people saying to me I am sorry you are feeling this way. Because that is about them not me. saying You’re feeling really upset right now is a much better way of saying and rule 101 in reflective listening.
Hi Anne-Marie, Thank you for your thoughtful comment! There is no substitute for careful, compassionate heart-felt listening when someone we care about is having a difficult time!
Love and light, Catherine Carrigan