This blogpost will primarily deal with how to clear your own energy after picking up another person’s energy. For most empaths this can happen just going about your day, but for those of us in caring work who do healing, healthcare, massage, therapy, ministry, or life coaching, etc., this can become an even more challenging issue as we work with clients directly and need to stay clear enough to continue our work and keep ourselves healthy without picking up everyone’s ailments and carrying them around.
This is still a learning area for me because as we expand our consciousness, our energy expands too, and we can become increasingly sensitive to more and varied energies thus requiring new learning as to how to continue to stay clear. I see this process as a dance, a two-step, that involves both giving to and receiving from the universe and thus I’ve organized this post around a bunch of two steps.
Here are the lessons I’ve learned in my own process as an empath:
Step One: Set strong positive intentions/affirmations. Your intentions are only as effective as your energy is clear, so keep up with this! This takes practice! Our energy fields are strengthened the more we practice intentions so even if it doesn’t seem to work for you at first, it will work better with repeated effort. Our bodies and energies can hear us and they immediately respond to our thoughts and words even if we can’t detect the changes yet.
For example, I regularly set the intention: “I am staying in my own energy” especially when I’m in group energy or around a person whose energy feels like it’s throwing mine off. At first this didn’t seem to work for me and I then had to go through a process to clear myself, but now just saying this intention/affirmation will immediately clear my fields. I also say the intention/affirmation: “Everything other than Love dissolves in my outer energy fields.” That way, anything that is not for my highest and best will simply not come in.
The key is to be positive and strong. If you say something negative like, “I am staying clear of that person’s yucky energy,” calling it “yucky” carries an attachment/emotional charge that will actually keep the energy around! You have to be strong, too, without anger and attacking energy. If being strong or positive is a challenge for you, this is where you know you’ve got some inner work to do!
Step Two: If the intention/affirmation you say doesn’t work for you, then the energy has attached itself to you/come into you for a reason. I have discovered that there are again two reasons energies might be hanging around.
Reason One: This is not a fun one to realize, but if an energy has come into me then I have allowed it to happen on some level—probably unconscious or at least below full consciousness enough that I need to do some shadow work around why I have allowed it. Our boundaries are our own business and if we are letting other people’s energy in, then we are the ones responsible—but NOT to blame. Blaming and judging ourselves will again only keep the energy around. When you view all energies as teachers and this invading energy as helping you grow stronger in your energy and in your sense of boundaries, then you will lose any need to blame or judge yourself, others, or the energy.
A good question to ask for the shadow work is “How am I benefiting by allowing other people’s energy to be attached to me?” Some possible answers are “I am then seen as a compassionate person and have more friends”; “My business grows through referrals so taking care of people by taking on their energy gains me more referrals”; “I feel more important/valued the more I can take care of others”; “I like the power of knowing what’s going on with other people”; “It keeps me safer”; “The other person is not capable of dealing with their karma, and I am the only one who can handle it”. These are just a few, so look closely here at shadow desires to see why you allow people in and do your inner work to heal your own insecurities and wounds so they are not the driving forces behind your actions and your allowances.
Reason Two: The second main reason I’ve found as to why external energies might come in and stay awhile is because they resonate with something already in me. Therefore, these energies are showing me where I might have some inner integration work to do. Again this is a two-pronged possibility. 1) Either the vibration of the attaching energy matches a vibration in me and thus they are attracted to each other, or 2) the attaching energy balances an out-of-balance energy in me and thus they are attracted to each other. For example, if someone’s anger energy is hanging around in my energy fields I will see this as either I have unresolved anger somewhere in me already that I haven’t resolved OR, I have passivity in me that is split off from some repressed aggressive energy in me and they need to be reconnected to each other in order to be integrated and resolved into the gentle-strength of self-assertion.
On the first possibility of resonance: If it is something that is already in me then I go through the process described in my last blogpost “How to Clear Your Energy in 6 Steps (Or Less)!” (below or here) in order to clear the energy in me so that it doesn’t come in again. If it is the second possibility of resonance, then I go searching for the repressed unseen energy and once found have the two energies (the attracted energy and the repressed energy) assume personalities and dialogue with each other in my mind.
Of course, we are ever learning and growing and so even if the same issue does come back to you, refuse to see it as an Eeyore: “I obviously didn’t learn my lesson. Woe is me.” You did learn whatever lesson you needed to learn at the time for the time being, so instead, if an issue circles back to you, see it as the universe inviting you to learn an even deeper lesson about the energy than you could previously access. Thus, you’ve grown, expanded, and deepened! Hurrah for you!
Being an empath is a fascinating way to be on this earth. I hope these blogposts will give you the tools you need to be your very best self and fulfill your very best destinies!
Next time: Discernment and Judgment—How One is Not Like the Other