Are you vulnerable to being affected by others’ negative energy? Learn what to do in the face of your own and others' negative energy.
"How can I avoid other peoples' negative energy?" asked one of my clients.
You can't.
What you can do is learn to lovingly manage it so that it doesn't affect you so much.
Many people have negative energy. They are closed, hard, angry, withdrawn, anxious, stressed, blaming, resentful, irritated, hurt, judgmental and so on. Their negative energy is theirs - it has nothing to do with you, but they may be directing it toward you, just as you might do when you are in your ego wounded self. When people are stuck in their ego wounded selves, they tend to dump their negative energy onto others as a way of dealing with it.
This can happen any time you are with another person or out in public. If you are not aware of it, you can get zapped by someone's negative energy even while shopping at a supermarket. Someone you don't know might glare at you for any number of reasons - jealousy, neediness, or because you remind them of someone they resent. Or you might be the one doing the zapping without realizing it.
More common are negative energy dumps with people you know - your partner, child, parent, boss, co-worker or best friend. You might feel it as a clenching in your stomach or a tightness in your heart. These feelings are letting you know that you have been zapped with negative energy, or that you are dumping negative energy onto others.
The challenge here is two-fold: becoming aware of sending negative energy to others, and becoming aware of negative energy being sent to you. Both of these are handled by the same choice - the choice of compassion.
Compassion is an extremely powerful energy - far more powerful than any negative energy that you can send out or that can be sent to you. Imagine negative energy as a dark room. Imagine compassion as a brilliant light. The moment you turn on a light in a dark room, the darkness is gone. The light is far more powerful than the darkness.
Compassion is like this. Its powerful energy is like a shield of light that can protect you from negative energy. However, the key is that the compassion has to be for yourself first – bringing powerful compassionate energy to your stomach, solar plexus or heart. Then you can open to learning about what this energy is telling you. Instantly, you can know if you are being zapped or if you are zapping. If you are being zapped, you can extend the compassion outward toward the other person, which forms a protective shield of compassion around you. Now the negative energy bounces off, as if it is hitting a bubble. You are inside the compassion bubble, safe from any negative energy.
With practice, you can be in this state even before any negative energy comes your way. When you are consistently operating as a loving and connected adult, connected with your higher self, and consistently bringing through compassion to your feelings, you can reach a point where you are not projecting out negative energy and you don't even feel the zap of another's negative energy. Someone can be sending you negative energy, but it bounces off your compassion bubble without it going into your body at all. You can be aware of the negative energy, and send compassion to the other person, but you are unaffected by it.
We all need to be aware of how profoundly energy can affect us and others. We need to be aware of the energy we are sending out, and we need to be taking loving care of ourselves so that we are not receiving others' negative energy.
You can certainly choose to not spend a lot of time with negative people, but everyone will likely have some negative energy at times. Consistently practicing staying present with your feelings will help you to remain inwardly peaceful in the face of others' negative energy, and will support you staying in a loving adult state so that you are not sending negative energy to others.
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