A couple weeks ago I was on a call with a group of about 10 people. One woman was asking for feedback on something she has been working on. There was a back and forth between her and another woman who had offered her feedback, when all of a sudden, the woman offering feedback began to raise her voice and tone… even calling her names at one point.
I practically spit out my coffee in shock, thinking I must have misheard her, but sadly, she only got louder and the criticism was completely lacking of any sort of care. I watched as two women went at each other for what felt like too long, but realistically only a minute or two, before I left the call and slammed my laptop closed.
I shook my head in disbelief, closed my eyes, and said, “what the fuck was that?!”
I went to make myself another cup of coffee, ready and eager to shake off whatever the heck that was and start my day over.
The only thing was, I couldn’t shake it.
I kept replaying the hurtful, and harmful, words this woman said over and over again in my head, and I kept wondering what compelled her to speak so critically of another person. I felt suffocated and trapped in a bubble of discomfort. Her words and energy permeated through the very air I was breathing and it consumed me all morning.
At lunch time I started making myself something to eat, noticing myself again replaying the horrific event of the morning, that was in reality less than 5 minutes of my whole day, when I realized…
My energy.
Their energy.
Trapped in my energetic field.
I was getting a crash course in seeing where my energetic boundaries were… or rather the lack of them.
I had let this person and their energy seep into my field, and even my own energy leak and feel into theirs…
This is what energy leaking can look like in real life:
You leave a conversation and replay it for hours.
Someone else’s bad mood becomes your bad mood.
You feel responsible for softening tension that wasn’t yours to manage.
You start crafting imaginary responses to defend someone who isn’t even present.
You feel “off” all day and don’t know why.
And if you identify as an empath, this probably sounds, or feels, familiar.
You can walk into a room and immediately sense who is anxious, or you can tell when someone is disappointed before they even say it.
That sensitivity can be a gift. It helps us understand people. It helps us move through conflict with compassion. It helps us see what is happening beneath the surface.
But many of us were never taught how to feel something without taking it on.
So instead of noticing someone’s energy, we absorb it.
Instead of witnessing someone’s anger, it lands in our body.
Instead of letting someone else hold their own emotions, our nervous system starts trying to process them.
And because our body doesn’t know the difference between their feeling and our feeling, it gets stored inside us.
In our jaw.
In our chest.
In the tight knot in our stomach.
Somewhere along the way, you learned that sensing it meant you were responsible for fixing it. But the truth is that our bodies cannot process what doesn’t belong to us and when our empathy turns into over-identification, it starts to cost us.
It costs us:
Creative energy because instead of writing, building, imagining, you are processing someone else’s mood.
Presence in your own relationships because you are still entangled in a conversation from three hours ago.
Regulated nervous system since your body is constantly bracing for emotional shifts.
Pleasure because it’s hard to feel it when you’re subconsciously scanning for danger.
Clear decision-making because you can’t tell what’s yours and what’s projection.
You start your day grounded, and by noon you are exhausted, and not necessarily from your life, but from carrying what was never yours to carry.
Practice for reclaiming your energy (and clearing what no longer serves you)
We have the gift of feeling, and feeling deeply. We have the gift of alchemy and transmuting one thing into another, but we forget our tools…
Our Guides: Call them in to hold the container
“To my helping spirits and guides of the highest vibration of unconditional love and compassion; To God, Source, The Great Unknown; to my well ancestors, the benevolent ones; Mother Earth, and the Primordial (Cosmic) Mother, please hold me in a sacred, loving container…”
The Elements: Allow the elements to come in and remove all that does not serve you
“Please clear any and all things in my energetic field that is not of me, Clear anything that does not serve my highest and best good, and the highest and best good of all that is…”
Highest Self: Use your free will to call yourself home
“I call back all parts of me that I’ve left across any and all timelines, with different people, places, and things, back to my physical body now…”
Protective shield: Surround yourself with protection
“Please surround my energetic field with a protective, reflective shield, reflecting back any and all projections, spells, curses, evil eyes, directed towards me, consciously or unconsciously, back to its original sender with love to support them on their healing journey.”
Close the container: Tie your practice with gratitude and thanks.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. It is done. And so it is.”
For paid subscribers: you can listen to the voice recording of this protection prayer in the audio of this post.
I do my best to practice this every day, but the reality is that sometimes I forget. When I remember to do this, I notice that my body softens and my thoughts are clear. I stop feeling trapped in something that doesn’t feel like mine, and I return to my work and what brings me joy. I can hear my own intuition and I have my energy back.
And when your energy is returned to you, you are able to respond to your partner without absorbing their emotional rollercoaster of moods. You leave conversations when they become abusive without spiraling for hours after. You know when to lean in and when to step back.
I once had the opportunity to work with a woman who was helping me move some energy that was trapped in my abdomen, and as we moved, breathed, cried with this mass that had balled up in my belly she reminded me of something I want to remind all of us…
“You are not meant to metabolize the pain of the world… in fact, you cannot.”
I want to remind all of us that Mother Earth, the Mother beneath our bones, is here to work with us in this life. That allowing yourself to release and give up what is not yours to her, gives her the nutrients to compost and use the energy to turn it into gold.
I write this to you all on day one of my bleed.
Holding the pain, the grief, the anger, and rage
that the collective is mirroring back to me.
To witness the parts of me that hold these energies.
Not so that I can metabolize the pain of others…
But so I can see where that pain exists within me
so that I can release it to Mother Earth.
Because sovereignty is not about being cold, or detached.
It is about discernment.
It is knowing what belongs to you
and what does not.
May we all learn to feel deeply
without dissolving into what we feel.
May we return what is not ours.
May we call ourselves home.
May we awaken to our sovereignty
and to the love that we already are.
Want to go deeper?
If this resonates… if you know you’ve been carrying energy that isn’t yours, replaying conversations, absorbing moods, scanning rooms for tension, I would love to practice this together.
On Monday, March 9th at 10am PT, we’re gathering for a live inside the Codependency Alchemy community where we’ll practice energetic clearing together and explore what it really means to be empathic without self-abandoning.
If you want support as we clear what is no longer serving you this month, add it to your calendar and come join us live.
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