Are you one of the many people who find yourself overwhelmed in crowds, take on the emotions and/or pain of others as if they were your own, and send out energetic feelers when you walk into a room?  Or do you live with someone like this?

Read on.

When I took a survey recently of my tribe, a whopping 70% said that “taking in other peoples energy” is their biggest challenge. (There were 12 other choices relating to self-care and energy management.)

What Causes This?

There are quite a few reasons why people take on energy that’s not theirs. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but the primary causes I see over and over include:

1. You are a sensitive or empath. It’s your nature to feel deeply; to sense the energy around you; and to take on the emotions and/or pain of others as if they were your own. 
    
2. You grew up as a child of alcoholics or narcissists, or in an environment of abuse. For your survival you learned to send your energetic feelers to discover whether you were safe. This led to a habit, often unconscious, of constantly reading the energy around you, yet not being allowed to maintain your own boundaries. 
    
3. You’re a woman, acculturated to put others first, to deny your own needs, to fill up your dance card with everything but self-care.
    
4. You grew up in a family where tending to vulnerable feelings was not a skill set and probably was discouraged.
    
5. You’re living out an unconscious habit passed down through generations.

It's useful to know the context of your sensitivity so you can notice it sooner and release what you've taken in unnecessarily. It also helps you stop feeling blamed by others and forgive yourself. Then you can get on with protecting your energy field. 

Whatever the cause, your central nervous system processes sensory information more intensely when you are sensitive. Emotional and physical effects of energy on you are very different from the effects on someone who keeps strong boundaries.

The good news is that sensitive people are intuitive, compassionate and kind individuals who are often driven to help others and make the world a better place, and to keep the dream alive for a more thoughtful, caring, humane world. So how do you cherish your gifts and stop taking in other people’s energy?

How Can You Learn to Keep Your Energy Field Clear and Luminous?

We easily forget that we are the controllers of our reality — and that “our reality” is not made up of outside influences, but that it actually consists of our thoughts, beliefs, dreams, and mindset. 

The key is to focus on your power to shift and change. This means replacing old habits with different behavior. These are the five most essential tools I've found it's important to learn, practice, and use daily: 

• Energetic protection Visualize a clear “bubble” of protection, with the intent of letting in what is appropriate to you (like your child’s love) but keeping out what does not belong to you (like mean comments). Every time you create this protection your neurobiological response shifts and you begin to embed the practice. It does take practice!
• Grounding Keep yourself consciously connected with the earth rather than floating out into the ethers to escape the intensity of feelings you experience. There are many ways of doing this, and it’s an essential aspect of Energy Alchemy. 
• Intent Moving with intent sends an energetic vibration into the world. It comes from your whole self—body, mind, spirit, heart, essence—taking into account your weaknesses as well as your strengths, so it doesn’t set you up to fail. A good start would be setting your intent to gracefully release your habit of taking in other's energy!
• Releasing psychic hooks I use this frequently as a way of cleansing my energetic body and getting rid of the hooks that loved ones, and random people, put into me when my boundaries are not strong. It’s too complex to explain here, but I often teach my clients how. If you need help, set up a free consult.  
• Alignment When you align yourself, you are reorganizing, adjusting, and lining up all your parts so you can become resonant internally and externally. Like aligning your tires or your bones, aligning your energy helps you flow. I like to align my three centers—belly, heart, third eye— with white light, for example.

If your boundaries are weak, and your body/brain is filled with other people’s energy, you’ll have a very hard time maintaining joy and light in your life. You need energetic protection!

This means being aware of your own vibration and field of energy, and taking mindful action to keep your energy clear, balanced, and vibrating highly for your optimal well-being. 

When you integrate tools for cleansing and releasing dense, heavy energy into your daily, in-the-moment practice, your life will change. Restoring your joy, vitality, and inner harmony will be so much more possible! You will be able to be a clear channel for energy you want to bring to world.

Meg Beeler—Author, Shamanic Guide, and Spiritual Mentor— helps clients heal soul and spirit, find luminous presence, and move energy to remove blockages through mentoring, training, healing, and ceremony. She is a lifelong explorer of shamanic, animist, and meditative consciousness who practices Earth-centered, nature-based, ancient wisdom ways, and studied Andean mysticism extensively with the Q’ero in Peru. Meg is the creator of Energy AlchemyTM, founder of Earth Caretakers Wisdom School, and author of Weave the Heart of the Universe into Your Life: Aligning with Cosmic Energy. Meg lives on Sonoma Mountain in the San Francisco Bay Area. www.megbeeler.com