How to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Stress Using Energetic Shielding?

Last year I went to a friend’s apartment and felt it before anyone spoke. The air was thick, as if the argument of the night before was still in the air, on my ribs. My friend smiled, offered me coffee, was normal. However, my shoulders got tight and my mind went fuzzy. I hadn’t had a bad night’s sleep. I had never been in a fight with anybody. I just took in the remnants of the mess, as I do with everything else.

That’s the bit no one mentions when you begin to feel the effects of this. You believe you are getting some pretty good intuition. Then one day you find yourself carrying all of other people’s emotional laundry and you don’t know how to set it down. It’s exhausting.

Stress flows like that. Not in a poetic way. You can hear the fear in someone else’s voice and it’s yours that starts to take a shallow breath. I’ve done it at the grocery store, at family dinners, on crowded trains. No need for talking. Just proximity. If you’re the type of person who can sense the awkwardness in a friendly smile or the sadness in a person who’s trying to hide it, it doesn’t take long for it to turn into a burden. It begins to seem like a curse.

The Stress of Carrying Stress That Isn’t Yours

I had been mulling over the idea of being more open for a long time. This is what many of the books and teachers advocate. Open mind, open heart, open channel. Sounds good in theory. In reality it left me in shambles. I would leave a coffee shop after hearing a couple argue and be on edge the rest of the day, wondering why my nervous system was on overdrive after drinking coffee. I guess I’d been sitting there absorbing their chaos. No filter. No boundaries. The front door was unlocked and the place was as open as a door in a shady area, and the guy was an idiot.

It is not spiritual maturity to be open with no discrimination. It’s simply being porous. But porous people pay for it. You speak to a person who appears to be fine, and leave with a foggy brain and drained out, although the words were pleasant enough. That’s not random. Energy sticks. It transfers. There are some talks that hone you. Others leave behind a strange aftertaste, such as smoke on your clothes after a bar you didn’t even want to go to.

I have seen friends who don’t absorb much sail, go through the same situations untouched. They remain calm as I slowly unwind. A portion of it is wired in. There are some of us who are more sensitive. What you want to call it, strong feelers, strong intuitive hits. But a larger portion, at least for me, was the fact that you had to read the emotional weather every day in your house. Who’s going to blow? What’s the vibe just now? You get used to scanning before you even realize you’re doing it. This survival strategy doesn’t disappear with age. It’s simply a spiritual costume and it’s called empathy.

The problem is that it does not help the other person to relieve their stress. It only doubles the weight. You don’t heal anything by taking it on. You’re in double jeopardy. I had to find that out the hard way after many sleepless nights reliving conversations that weren’t my own.

Why I began shielding before the damage was done

What does work? Shielding. Some people imagine a force field glowing around the body. Some people just focus on what being attentive to what’s happening in their energy body. It’s easy to say, easy to do. Attention moves energy. It is your purpose that makes it. Your system reacts quicker than you can imagine.

We wait too long most of us. We protect ourselves once we are hurt. After the draining talk, after the family gathering that sucked the life out of us. That’s backwards. It’s as if you put a band aid on your feet after you stepped on broken glass. The actual change occurs when you do it first. Prior to entering the room. Before the meeting. In the lead up to the hard talk. Preventative, not reactive.

Engage in dialogue with your own energy like you mean it!

This is what I do now, in a nutshell. I pause for 30 seconds. Let my feet touch the earth, my spine be straight, my breath be moving. We sensitive folks are half in and half out of our bodies half the time, so it’s important to bring us back to the here and now. Then I think of the earth giving me a steady energy, filling me. Not due to any mystical symbolism, but because it works. It resolves the disjointed sense.

I then extend a shield about an arm’s length out from me. The texture varies from day to day. At times it is as thick as glass. Sometimes reflective. Warm and dense at times like old gold. I am a very straightforward person: only good things come in. All other things go around. Sounds basic. However, it is a difference when it is said with authority. We have never talked to our energy as we mean to talk to it.

People become fixated on the question of whether or not visualization is “real.” It is of course imagination. So is half of your life. Memory is imagination. Worry is imagination. The narratives you create about yourself are all fantasies. The difference is direction. You’re not just daydreaming. You’re providing your system with unambiguous directions in the language it understands best: symbols.

The Mirror Trick I Keep Coming Back To

I love the mirror approach. I see a reflective surface around my field. Not to return negativity, as if it were a petty curse. It is to prevent what is not mine sticking. Someone pours out his or her stress on me and it rolls off. I remain in the discussion. I still care. I don’t bring the emotional homework home with me, though.

Gold Light Sounds Silly Until You Try It

Another one that feels solid is warm gold light. Not flashy or showy. More like dense, ponderous, weighty sunshine filling me first, then spreading out. It creates order. Stress is hectic and loud. This feels coherent. I don’t know why, but gold is effective for so many people in so many traditions. Order cuts through the static.

Not Every Feeling in Your Body Belongs to You

The signs begin to be noticed when you listen. Fatigue after a short period of time with some individuals. Headaches in crowds. I always return with a massive headache from the theatres after watching a movie. Difficulty breathing when talking loudly. Anxiety that is not related to your own life. Fluctuating moods that disappear when you are further away.

Not all the sensations you experience in your body are yours. It was a moment that altered my life. I can see that someone is afraid and not feel responsible for their fear.

The Shield is not supposed to be a Wall.

The trap is making shielding a wall of protection that is closing everything. I’ve seen people do that. They become protective and lose their ability to connect. No weakness, no true intimacy, only a courteous fortress. It’s not about that. A good shield filters. It allows you to remain open without bleeding in all directions. It’s possible to love people, even if you’re not in love with them. It’s possible to feel things deeply. You simply stop merging.

The Boring Stuff Works Better Than People Think.

Some things get through even if they’re protected. Life is messy. People are messy. So, I clean the field afterwards. Long showers. Salt in the bath. Walking outside. In the sun, perspiring. Sleeping. Not doomscrolling until 2am kind of sleep. The most spiritual thing you can do is sometimes a good meal, water and early to bed. Your soul is in your body. It’s just a way of avoiding with additional steps.

No Amount of Visualization Fixes Bad Boundaries

The sting in the tail: energetic work is unachievable without boundaries in reality. All the gold light you can see, all the rooms you can go to, all the calls you can take, if you keep saying yes when your whole system is screaming no, the shield cracks. Energy follows behavior. It’s the little ugly things that count, not the pretty rituals. Leaving early. Not responding immediately. Disappointing others so as not to be a disappointment to oneself. It’s at those times that the field is actually being built.

Some Days You Still Get Flattened

Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. You practice, set your intention and still feel wrecked. Typically you are already running on a low fuel level. Or there is an old wound that’s like an open window. Or you’re physically exhausted and you’re attempting to spiritualize it. Eat something. Rest. Hydrate. Then try again. There is no separation between the mystical stuff and the ordinary human stuff.

Remaining in a person’s storm without leaving yourself behind.

It was never the intention to be untouchable. That’s a good sound but it’s a lifeless sound. The real thing is to remain yourself when others’ storms are raging. Not swallowing someone’s anger. Seeing fear and not being afraid. Remaining in the water, but not drowning.

It’s not as loud as I thought it would be. Less dramatic. You enter the room, you feel the energy, you call it to yourself and you remain whole. No more “echoing” the loudest voice in the room. That’s a subtle change on the outside. Inside, it is like dropping off bags you’ve been carrying for years.

Understanding the relationship between water and the end of the world.

Sometimes I absorb still. It takes a long time to break old habits. It does occur less, however. When it does, I know what to do. I don’t go into my head and think, “I’m broken, I’m too sensitive. I only see, reset and go. Compassion doesn’t need to be a drowning experience. It’s like standing by a deep pool and knowing where you stop and the water starts. That’s enough.