Invisible dimmer switches are everywhere. They turn down the beams in the most unsuspecting moments- when our light is shining brightly and we are feeling good.
Most of us have had the experience of feeling great, until we run into someone who has an invisible dimmer switch in their pocket. We feel light and happy and then… pow… we are on a downslide.
Every moment of every day our emotional and personal space is impacted, subtly, and often subconsciously, by the energy of people around us. We connect with these vibes in coffee shops, at work or over the phone. Even a person thinking about us affects our energy field, whether near or far.
Do you remember a time you felt great and met a friend who was unhappy, irritable or complaining? Most likely, you felt your own well-being deflate, even if you didn’t exactly realize what was happening at the time. Negative emotions spread like a virus, impacting the energetic field, and decreasing the vibrancy of everyone they infect.
At times everyone needs to blow off steam or have a little gripe fest. Yet, people who chronically offer up behavior that impacts others in a negative way are a nuisance. Who likes to cozy up to a downer or someone with crazy-making behavior anyway?
People who aggravate with their challenging behaviors are people who are hurting. They don’t know how to connect with their internal happiness or connect with others is an intimate way. They’ve become hunters who use their behavior to help them feel better, often at your expense. Whether they are looking for an ability to feel safe, in control, important or alive; people who are hurting scramble to connect with themselves.
Often these behaviors begin as a result of childhood trauma, neglect or extreme life stressors. They arise from a need to survive, and later those same survival patterns create hard-to-deal-with patterns.
You will see these behaviors in the drama queens or kings, chronic victims, controllers, the “me” people, abusers, incessant talkers, bullies, interrogators, gossipers or the emotionally fragile. These behaviors create dense emotional energy.
People with these tendencies are not bad people, yet their habits tend to dishearten everyone around them. If you stay plugged into people with these aggravating energy patterns, you will feel drained; you’ll feel your life force diminish and your own energetic reserves depleted.
We’re all susceptible to people who hook our attention and interact with us in challenging ways. It takes awareness and our life force to deal with them. When our own energy reserves are low-when we’re sick or tired-we’re more susceptible to the dimming affect they provide.
If you scan your current life, who comes to mind that may be an energy drain on you? Do you have people who don’t respect you or your space? Or, people who chronically emotionally abuse you?
Sometimes we take on the negativity of others and feed it to our self.
- A parent criticizes you ~ you judge yourself and feel shame.
- A friend becomes upset when you say no ~ you feel guilty.
- Your partner tells you what to do ~ you feel pressured and resentful.
- A sibling complains about you ~ you believe her and you suffer.
- A colleague gossips incessantly ~ you want to be a “good friend” and join in.
- You live with someone who is chronically angry ~ you blame yourself and feel depressed.
- A colleague chronically stresses about the bad conditions of the world ~ you take that on and worry consumes you.
- A friend is in chronic drama ~ you feel burdened.
It is not that people with energy-draining habits should be judged or shunned for the effect they create- yet, with compassion for their state or plight, you must honor and respect yourself as well. Setting healthy boundaries around negative behavior is an essential and loving action.
Being loyal to yourself in the face of people whose habits bring you down is necessary for your well-being. It requires you learn to speak up, make loving choices and take action to set love- inspired boundaries… that is, You Loving On You!
Healthy boundaries release passivity, reject abuse and support you responding to your life. As you set clear emotional and physical boundaries you are saying what you are willing, or not willing, to accept or tolerate. Boundaries that support life are the Yes’s and No’s spoken from self-respect.
Self-love sets clear and healthy boundaries, and in turn, setting these boundaries creates more love within us.
With love infusing our system, we know how to take care of our needs, feelings, body, heart and safety. Without self-love, our reactions based in fear-waffle, attack, acquiesce, shut down or manipulate to get results.
When healthy boundaries are in place, you trust yourself. You know you can take care of yourself wherever you are and with whomever you contact. You open to new possibilities and expand into more freedom. You feel safe, comfortable and connected in your world and you easily embrace the unknowns of life. When you trust yourself you have a deeper capacity to create true intimacy.
When our energetic field is formed by fear-based survival habits, we tend to go to one of two extremes: we become too concrete or inflexible, or too permeable and flexible. As we take care of our self through setting clear boundaries, we can hold a middle ground of well-being and experience Just Right!
Fine-tune your boundary setting-radar by seeing and sensing an energetic egg about two feet around your physical body. This field emanates an energetic resonance that stems from your thoughts, dreams, emotions, values and beliefs. This is your personal energy, an ethereal cushion of comfort that is yours to experience. It is the life force you cultivate and your most precious commodity. You have the right to choose what you experience in your egg. What will it be? Force, Abuse and Disrespect? Or, Flow, Loving Kindness and Respect?
If you have tendencies to be too concrete, you tend to implement inflexible black and white rules. These rules limit your ability to truly connect and emotional isolation sets in. Others may see you as aloof and distant. The security that allows you to interact with people isn’t available. As isolation becomes familiar, you shut down and retreat into your own safety zone. Here, your world contracts. Reaching out for support and connection is challenging.
If you meet life with weak boundaries, your permeability absorbs energy too easily. You may tend to merge with others, often instantaneously. You may become immediate fast friends, enmeshing through story. Or, as lovers you hop into bed before friendship and common values are established. Without healthy boundaries, you feel confused as to where you begin and end.
You may genuinely love helping others, yet the tendency to give too much of yourself causes you to go against yourself. Excessive care taking and super-responsibility lives here. The real care-taking that needs to be done is within you. Who might you be, if you weren’t available for others all the time? What might you have to attend to if you focused on valuing you, your time and life?
When you value yourself, you send a message to others to value you as well. You teach people how to treat you. As you set love-inspired boundaries you gain an increased ability to be guided by your internal wisdom, that GPS of truth. You stand up for yourself, speak what is true for you and ask for what you need you are saying a big ‘Yes’, a big ‘I Count’ to yourself.
When you recognize any of these symptoms below, you know it is time to adjust your light to the person you are interacting with.
Dimmer-Switch People Affect Your Vitality
- Your mood dampens and your energy drops. You feel agitated or impatient. You lose your own center. You stop listening, shut down and want to get away.
- You don’t feel so good about yourself after you leave their company.
- Be willing to tell the truth, ask for what you want and need. Be willing to walk away any time someone doesn’t respect you or your choices.
Setting loving boundaries that arise from loyalty to yourself doesn’t make you a bad friend or an unkind person. It sets the space for respecting your self, which ultimately increases the respect you have for others. Others may not change or be happy with you when you are clear and direct with them, yet they just might respect you.
Mastering your light switch means having an ability to recognize when people act in ways that dim the field. It means having enough loyalty to yourself to set those boundaries that keep your life force burning brightly. As you learn to hold your own space with people who dim your vibrancy, your own brilliance will shine.