Are You an Energy Sponge—or Are You Leaking Energy?
I did a reading for a young woman named Kimberly a while back, who said, “I’m just a total energy sponge!”
She had figured out that she soaked in other people’s energy after she had to start sharing an office with another woman. Although she got on with her well enough, Kimberly noticed that suddenly she was dragging home at the end of every day, completely exhausted.
One day, it dawned on her that the genesis of this exhaustion could be traced to the very first day this woman moved into her office. Then she realized that whenever her office mate had a headache or a fight with her husband, or just a bad day in general, Kimberly ended up her day in even worse shape—just flattened with a mysterious fatigue that she’d never experienced before.
At first she thought she was getting sick. But when her colleague went on vacation for a week, all Kimberly’s energy returned—and on this woman’s first day back at work, Kimberly dragged herself home, exhausted again. The light bulb went on.
Then there was the case of Lisa, who didn’t absorb energy; she leaked it. She told me the story of her past week, which she said had been “disaster after disaster!”
Lisa’s 7-year-old son went to karate class once a week, where the teacher had an extremely strict and critical teaching style. He often spoke unkindly to the kids and was even rude to the parents. A week ago, he’d been particularly hard on her son and made him cry. As she saw her son come running out with tears streaming down his face and heard his story, she fell into a rage. She hated that man!
That night, she seethed with anger as she stuffed her son’s karate uniform into the washing machine, just anticipating having to take him to next week’s class. Half an hour later, the washing machine broke down and flooded the laundry room floor.
A few days later, she had to stop by the karate school to pay the monthly bill, and as she walked down the hallway to the office, she felt her blood pressure rising as the emotions swelled up yet again. When she returned to her parking spot, it went up even more as she discovered she had a flat tire!
And that evening, her head pounded as she cooked dinner, so upset about the karate teacher, the washing machine, the flat tire. Could it be that all that toxic emotion in her system was mixed into the stew as she stirred it? Because that night, the whole family ended up with food poisoning.
You affect, and are affected by, the energy around you.
Lisa was leaking energy in the form of anger and hatred, a huge energetic charge that was broadcast from her system, affecting everyone and everything around her. Sure, it could just be a coincidence that, as soon as she got so upset, things started going haywire around her, but I’ve seen this happen far too many times to think it was just chance.
We’re all affected by, and affecting, the world around us all the time. Kimberly’s system was stressed by the energy of her office mate. Lisa’s negative feelings disturbed the energy all around her.
It all comes down to boundaries.
Even though the stories of these two women seem totally different, they both come down to the same thing: energetic boundaries.
Kimberly didn’t know how to manage her boundaries, which meant that she ended up absorbing other people’s energy. Lisa’s weak boundaries meant that she spread her negativity all around her wherever she went.
There’s really not much language in our culture for a conversation about energy and boundaries. It’s not something that’s generally acknowledged or understood. But even so, it seems like more and more people are becoming sensitive to energy and looking for answers about how to create healthier energetic boundaries so they’re not so affected by the people around them.
And for many of us, as we do our inner work, we become aware of the ways we’re carrying the weight of past experiences, the charge we hold around our old pain or difficulties, and how that may be affecting our current experience.
Lisa may be an extreme example, but we can all unconsciously broadcast stressed energy and that can negatively affect our lives.
Clearing helps you create boundaries.
This is why I’m so devoted to teaching energy clearing. Because when you learn clearing, one of the most important skills you get is how to create healthy energetic boundaries, so you never again have to take on someone else’s stress.
And clearing is also a way to retrain your system so that you no longer get swept away by your negative feelings and create problems as a result.
This article was originally published on Jean's website.
Jean Haner has worked in the field of subtle energy for 30 years and is the author of Clear Home, Clear Heart.
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