Knowing how to effectively and quickly protect yourself from energy vampires comes handy for all of us at some point or another. Each day we have a certain amount of energy to go by. When we feel of the balance and also tired then we might become more stressed and also sick. We also lack energy for our daily lives as well as energy for loved ones.
Who is an energy vampire?
Energy vampire (toxic person) is someone who has a long-term low energy and therefore he or she needs to replenish the energy from someone else. Most of the times, they do it unconsciously and unintentionally. You, yourself, might be energy vampire to someone you know without even realizing.
The important thing to keep in mind about energies is that we always pay back whatever we take. It’s also true the other way around, we receive a “positive interest on our energy investment” when we uplift someone.
How to simply read other people’s energies?
Think of someone you love and who is usually positive and nice. How do you feel when you’re at their presence? Light? Happy? Energetic? Positive people have a gift to naturally uplift others. They help you feel better when you lose hope and they inspire you when you want to give up. Positive people give you energy — but in this case of energy abundance which they have — it’s more like sharing and extending positive energy. Positive energy multiplies itself and it returns back to them.
Now think of someone who is complaining and always negative. How do you feel when you interact with them? Not so well? The feeling of unwell in their presence warns you that something is off and their energy has a negative impact on you. They’re lowering your own energy levels and trying to steal energy from you.
The moment you emotionally react to energy vampires, they begin stealing your energy.
Who are energy vampires in your life?
- It’s your best friend who MOST OF THE Time talks about her difficult life and problems. She doesn’t care about you much, the only thing that she wants is you to feel sorry for her and try to uplift her (giving her energy). If you don’t do it, she accuses you of being selfish and not understanding her suffering. She might even stop talking with you completely if she sees that you don’t energetically invest in her drama. Just to be clear, I don’t talk here about situations when your friend is going through a difficult times and she needs your support — sometimes it’s alright and it’s human. But what I refer to is if she is constantly down and she actually doesn’t seek for tangible help but she just wants to complain about her situation.
- It’s a boss who pushes you to the limits and minds if you stand up for yourself. He just wants your energy and obedience so he can do with you whatever he likes. If you set boundaries, he gets upset and makes hard times for you in the company. In the moment when you stand up for yourself, you refuse to give your energy to him and he — as an energy vampire — needs to find another source of energy instead of you.
- It’s a partner who manipulates you to do what he or she wants. Instead of supporting your dreams, he or she pushes you down. When you need to hear that you’re beautiful, he tells you that you have a terrible lipstick. When she wants to “secure” your relationships, she gets pregnant. When you want change in your life, they tell you that it doesn’t make sense and it will not work out.
- It’s a drama queen who always needs attention. She — but it can be also him — enhances even smallest things into extremes. She wants you to react and be emotional because only then you give her your energy. These people like to argue just for the sake of arguing. It doesn’t matter so much what the topic is.
- It’s a victim who always feels like the whole world is against them. These people take everything personally. It doesn’t matter why people did something, they feel like it was directed against them. They can give you 1000 reasons why they have it more difficult than you and why they cannot change it. All of us has been at some point in the position of victim (it’s one of the four archetypes that we all share as Caroline Myss talks about) but if we stay feeling as victims we deprive ourselves of power to change it.
I could continue for a very long time but I want you to get the main idea who energy vampire is. It’s a very real thing and we all encounter them often. Therefore it’s very important to understand the dynamics between you and energy vampire.
How exactly energy vampire steals your energy?
I want to give you a little background about how this dynamics work. In our bodies we have energy centers called chakras (you can read about them in these 2 articles here and here). If chakras are balanced, we have balanced energy, we feel good, and we’re healthy. Yet if one of them doesn’t function properly then we feel the imbalance almost immediately.
If you say things like; today isn’t my day or I feel burdened, then it’s good time to check chakras first. In reality our feelings inform us very well about our energies. We feel energy all the time but the funny thing is that it’s so simple that we think that what we feel is stupid or we’ve made it up.
The energy vampires steal our energy mostly from first three chakras. Your second chakra located below your navel connects you with everyone in your life. It literally creates an energy tunnel between you and the person. When you interact with someone but also think of someone there is an energy exchange between you two through this tunnel.
Ideally, it’s more or less balanced. Your friends help you and uplift you and then you also support them when they need it. However, when it’s more like one way stream (one of you is mostly giving) then you’re very likely just losing your energy.
Guess how many people can you energetically feed before burning out or feeling completely exhausted?
This is the reason why it’s better to have few true friends than hundreds of not so good friends who only takes or gossip about you behind your back. Gossiping and envy part is easy in our times with perfect social accounts. Also your virtual friends can steal energy from you if they’re secretly jealous of you or envious.
If you’ve ever been in disharmonious relationship, you’ve probably felt unhappy, heavy, or perhaps like being caught in a cage. If there is manipulative or controlling energy or if one partner gives more than the other, the relationships cannot last long. At least it cannot be a happy relationship for a long time. One of the partners is literally sucking the energy of another one which makes the other person to lose self-confidence (3rd chakra) and makes them feel like it’s difficult to change the situation. They feel trapped because they’re leaking the energy which they need to change their situation.
Energy vampires take our energy from our chakras. The first chakra corresponds with social norms (you should study this and become this), the second chakra is all about money, work, sexual energies, and personal relationships, and the third chakra which is responsible for our self-confidence and our personal boundaries (inability to say no also leads to energy leakage).
You leak your energy when you have a negative emotional reaction to something.
How to protect yourself from energy vampires?
There is a lot of information about energy protection. I would like to share with you what I personally do and hope it can serve you.
- Learn to say no. When you say no to someone, you literally stop the energy flow between you two. They can only steal energy from you if you agree with it at some level (even unconsciously). Your energy always obeys your orders. Think about moment when you were proud of yourself for saying no to someone. Did you feel more empowered? The reason is that you stopped donating energy to them and instead stopped the flow. Having clear boundaries is very important for creating balanced life. When you say yes and you know that you shouldn’t have, you betray yourself.
- Become aware of your energies. The reason why I’ve written so long article is that I want you to become more aware of your energies. The moment when you know that someone is stealing your energy, you can change it. They cannot do it against your free will but it’s also true that they might have a stronger will so it can take a bit more effort to stop the flow. Yet it all begins with awareness.
- Your energy stays with you. When you feel that you’re leaking your energy, you can put your hands on one of the chakras and simply say in your mind that your energy stays with you. This will give the energy a clear intention to stay with you instead of leaking through the energy tunnel to the other person.
- Love is the strongest energy. Just like in fairy tales, love always wins. If you manage to feel love and get yourself into this highest vibrating energy then no one can affect you. I know that it’s difficult to stay there all the time but you can also feel love for some period of time when you’re consciously dealing with the energy vampire. They don’t want your love so they’ll fall away.
- Cord cutting. You can consciously cut off the energy tunnels — cords — connecting you and the other person. Imagine them right in front of you and envision the cord connecting you. Trust your inner guidance — whichever shape or form it comes to you is the best. And then imagine a big sword (or ax) and cut the cord. Sometimes you may have to repeat this exercise again.
I hope this article helped you to understand the basic energy dynamics. One thing that I wish you take away from this article is that you’re not weird if you feel like someone is stealing your energy — someone probably is doing just that. Listening more to our inner guidance can help us do smarter and healthier choices in life.
Feel free to share this article if it helped so more people can get the benefit as well.
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Originally published at medium.com