There's Nothing Romantic About Energy Vampires

Psychic Vampires steal energy from others rather than blood. You have probably been the victim of a psychic vampire, for most of us have experienced encounters with certain people that drain us.

Far from being an evil schemer, the psychic vampire is usually a weak person whose own ability to generate energy is impaired or underdeveloped. The practice of tapping others' energy is detrimental to the vampire's growth over the long run.

Psychologist Joe Slate, PhD. writes about this phenomenon in Psychic Vampires. Slate has studied psychic vampirism at Athens State University in Alabama. Though the name sounds dramatic, the practice of psychic vampirism is very common. Slate discovered through questionnaires that a significant number of people admit being energized by interactions with others. It is the energy dynamic that comes with certain psychological dynamics such as codependence.

Most surprising to me is Slate's discovery that many energy vampire attacks are deliberate and that the person coopting another's energy often had imagery of an energetic channel connecting them to the host's energy. This is consistent with what is experienced by those who can perceive energy and the shamanic belief in energetic cords between people.

Slate's Kirlian photos of human energy fields showed the effects of psychic vampirism on the victim and the vampire. If you think you are a victim of this kind of energy theft, you can take steps to protect your energy. Do not be too afraid, for energy vampires are not all that powerful once you know what you are dealing with. They steal energy from a position of weakness.

Garlic is not much use against the psychic vampire, but strengthening the energy field is of great advantage. This can be done by simple intention. As with most energy work, it is very easy, but may require some practice for good results.

Simply imagine your aura or energy field around your body like a cocoon of light. If you intend to see it intuitively, this mental picture will show you areas of weakness, but if you find this difficult, simply imagine you are strengthening your energy field.

Picture your energy field around your body an imagine it expanding when you take a breath and contracting when you exhale. Imagine energy circulating in this field. Increase the speed at which this energy circulates until it is fairly brisk and feels comfortable. Your intention actually moves your energy, so if you begin to feel that it is moving uncomfortably quickly or slowly simply imagine it circulating at a speed that feels good to you.

Imagine your energy extending around your body in a consistent field about 2 feet larger than the physical body. Imagine energy circulating and filling in any blank or broken spots and creating a strong field. Do this practice daily for five or ten minutes morning and night and see if you notice an improvement in your energy levels throughout the day. Dynamic energy does not easily allow other people's intrusions.

It can help to picture an outer boundary of bright light around the energy field if you feel the need for further protection. If you are in a relationship with an energy vampire, you may want to see an energy healer to help you bolster and conserve your energy.

Define Your Boundaries

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Good relationships involve people respecting each other's individuality. This involves honoring one another's boundaries. Personal boundaries are physical, mental and emotional.

When someone stands too close to you, you feel uncomfortable. Your definition of "too close" is likely to be different for different people and probably varies a little from day to day. The amount of personal space you require to feel comfortable is an energetic boundary. Those who can perceive auras or energy fields can tell how much space an individual needs by how much space that person's energy takes up.

By using your intention, you can reinforce this personal energy boundary. Try simply being aware of your energy boundary. It is around your body at about the distance you would expect a stranger to keep. If you are around people who do not respect your boundaries, try planting an imaginary hedge outside your personal boundaries. This hedge should have beautiful flowers (it should be a friendly way of saying "respect my space.") and roots that reach down into the center of the earth. This hedge will catch any energy of trespass and neutralize it.

Mental and emotional boundaries are the limits of what an individual considers to be acceptable behavior. Where do you draw the line about how people treat you? Generally, you should set your limits where you are comfortable. If you are uncomfortable when someone tells an off color joke, then that should be something people refrain from doing in your company.

People with healthy boundaries will take themselves out of situations in which others trespass their limits, or they will politely request that others honor their boundaries. Those who are used to having their boundaries trespassed are more likely to allow the behavior and tolerate their own discomfort. If your boundaries are not healthy, you may need to practice setting them where you will be comfortable.

Healthy boundaries might keep out such behavior as people yelling at you or telling you how you should think. They might limit what sort of language others use in your presence.

Talane Miedaner sees healthy boundaries as critical to attracting the things you want in life. In her book, The Secret Laws of Attraction she presents especially good advice for setting healthy boundaries, and urges readers to set them as broadly as possible.

How do you know when you have set your boundaries too wide? When you keep out people you want close to you, you may have set your boundaries too wide. Or, you may need new friends if those people make you uncomfortable!

Boundaries: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

We are generally led to believe that closeness or oneness are characteristics of a good relationship. According to spiritual teachings, we are all one.

But in order to have healthy relationships in this world, nothing beats a definite boundary. We may be all one, but I still need to respect you as an individual with your own thoughts, needs, motivations, feelings. If I assume you agree with all that I believe because we are all one, you are likely to be offended.

In fact, it is the projection of one's self onto another and failure to recognize that person's individuality that constitutes abuse. In her book about emotional abuse, Controlling People, communications expert Patrician Evans discusses the dynamics of this projection of thoughts and feeligns onto another individual.

Most of us grew up with adults violating out boundaries to some degree. They often did so for good reasons; to keep us safe, teach us to behave in socially acceptable ways, or to run a household efficiently. As a result, many of us, as we grow up, have to sort out what we really think and feel from what our others told us to think.

Some parental boundary violations are less benign. "That didn't hurt!" "You have nothing to cry about." and similar statements deny us our individual thoughts and feelings.

Energetically, repeated boundary violations result in us carrying the energy of other people's thoughts and feelings around with us. You can identify this energy mentally by looking for beliefs that make you feel uncomfortable. Beliefs from your true self come with a feeling of peace and "rightness." Other people's projections do not.

For example, when I think, "I have no business being an actress," I feel a comfortable faith that it is the truth. When my friend has this thought, she gets a stomach ache. She is a good actress. But, she is hearing one of her parents' pronouncements made because they wanted to protect her from a career in which it is tough to succeed.

When a spouse says, "You're just trying to make me angry." Their partner knows that is the last thing he or she intended, but also wonders why he or she is perceived that way. This sort of boundary violation is crazy-making.

Take some time to examine your beliefs. Are they all yours?

Come back next week and see how to create better boundaries.

Are You Visible?

Woudn't it be fun to have an invisibility cloak like Harry Potter? Many of us have learned to be invisible energetically. It is not as dramatic as the invisibility cloak but it can be as useful.* It can also be annoying when we want to catch the waiter's eye or need a Geek Squad member to point out the correct cable.

I actually do show up in photos, as you can see from my profile, but people tend not to see me. Along with a number of my clients and friends, I got into habits of projecting my energy (or not projecting it, really,) that make me unnoticeable.

Young introverts who are not given enough of their own space often learn to put on an energetic invisibility cloak. People who grew up with angry parents or abusive siblings, often learn to blend into the woodwork to survive.

As a child, I discovered that being invisible allowed me to finish a chapter before picking the beans. In middle school, my son did not like all eyes on him, so he learned to be quite unnoticeable so the teacher would call on someone else.

Those who perceive subtle energies see a big difference between those who are visible and those who do not get noticed. There are also very subtle differences in posture between the two. Other people notice, subliminally, the change in the way you project yourself, It is quite easy to change this energy.

Visible people are fully in their bodies. This allows their energy to be bigger and brighter. Other people respond to this energy even though they are not aware that they perceive it.

Try this if you have difficulty getting the salesclerk's attention. Take a breath and become aware of your hands and feet. Then move your attention around to be aware of your entire body all at once.

Feel yourself centered in the core of your body and breathe from your belly, but normally (you don't want to be noticed for hyperventilating.) Just briefly, imagine energy circulating through your entire body and shining around you like a halo. Stand up straight.

I recommend practicing at home a few times before taking your visibility on the road. You should see a big difference right away.

This energy posture is also good when you need to project authority as when meeting with subordinates or asking offspring to take out the trash.

*Dr. Richard Bartlett in his book The Physics of Miracles, suggests that you can learn to become literally invisible, but I have not seriously tried his technique. What I offer here is practical for every day use.

How to Release Feelings

Most of us carry around a lot of repressed feelings. Usually the feelings we repress are not the good ones, either.

Our first tendency when confronting something unpleasant is to phone a friend, turn on the TV, have a beer...do anything except experience the unpleasant feeling.

The trouble with this is that we cannot really repress a feeling. We can ignore it, but it will still pop up at inopportune moments. When trying to drop off to sleep, we remember the unpleasantness. When someone does something to remind us, we overreact.

Ignoring or repressing feelings also takes energy. If we repress a lot of feelings we can tie up a lot of our energy in avoiding them. This is energy we could spend being productive, having fun, getting some exercise, having relationships... And, some of us have a LOT of stuff to repress. It accumulates.

The solution is simple and it is something most of us know how to do. The solution is to feel the feelings and release them. No matter how bad a feeling is, it is actually easier to feel it than it is to ignore and repress it. And, once we feel the feeling, it tends to dissipate.*

When we were young children, most of us felt our feelings and released them. Later we became aware that certain feelings were problematic. Not only did we learn not to express them, but we tried to avoid even feeling them.

Try this:

Become aware of your body; hands, feet, arms, legs, torso, neck... Be aware of the entire body. The body is where feelings register. Notice if you feel any discomfort in the body. Maybe your neck is tense or you have a twinge of discomfort in your chest. Breathe into the spot that you feel. Relax it and let the feeling dissipate. Repeat this several times with different sensations that you notice.

Next, consider something fairly minor that has been frustrating you. Scan your body and notice what you feel. You likely will notice a pang, a tension, a catch or a pain. Just feel it. See what it's like. Is it sharp? Is it dull? Is it big or small? As you notice things about the feeling, you may find that it has dissipated and you can no longer feel it.

If you can still feel the feeling, you may have picked a frustration that was too major for the above exercise. See if you can release the feeling. You can imagine it flowing out of your body, or you can consciously relax that part of your body until the feeling has let go. When you have let go of one feeling, see if there is another feeling associated with that frustration. If not, go on to another issue and see what feelings you have in reaction to that.

Repeat this for several minutes. Even 10 - 15 minutes of this exercise can leave you feeling lighter and better. The trouble with it is that it seems too simple, but if you persist for 15 minutes for a few days, you will feel much better.

There are entire courses with protocols for feeling and releasing feelings, if you want more of a structured practice with this. The Sedona Method book and course include this and more. In The One Thing Holding You Back, Raphael Cushnir outlines another method.

*If your feelings seem too big and awful to feel, or the feeling exercise does not give you some relief, get professional help. This is not meant to take the place of professional counselling or medical help.

Becoming Conscious of Unconscious Problems

The majority of our thoughts and feelings are outside of our conscious awareness. Sometimes the unconscious stuff creates problems with the way we feel or behave or experience the world.

The trouble with solving an unconscious problem, is that it is... well... unconscious. And unfortunately, it is usually perceived quite clearly by others, though these perceptions are usually not in conscious awareness either. So others may react to you but they most likely are unable to tell you what causes their reaction.

How do you know if you have an unconscious problem? Unconscious problems give themselves away in important ways. Here are some patterns to look for.

Your actions repeatedly get surprising results. For example, you fail against all odds in jobs, relationships or business activities despite taking the correct actions in the appropriate wasy. This happens to everyone sometimes, but when it happens a lot, you could be sabotaging yourself with unconscious expectations to fail.

You sometimes get weird responses from people. Perhaps you say good morning to a colleague and get an angry response - and this is not an isolated case. You sometimes get bizarrely angry responses from various people. Or it could be that you are frequently misunderstood when you think you are being quite clear. You or other people catch you saying something different than you intended to say.

You react in ways you cannot explain. You are hurt by innocuous remarks, or become emotional out of proportion when cut off in traffic. Conversely, you could find you suddenly lack empathy with someone about whom you would normally care. Another form of this is self sabotage; giving out the wrong phone number, being late for important meetings, and so on.

Discomfort for no apparent reason, that follows a pattern can indicate a subconscious problem. If you always get a backache after staying with your in-laws, it may not be the mattress. The stomach ache on Monday can be a reaction to your job - or the stress accumulated over a weekend with a difficult family member. You may simply find that you have a low or grumpy mood you cannot explain when life seems to be going quite well.

The very easiest way to identify unconscious material is to notice the feelings it generates.

Identify a situation in which your behavior or that of others does not seem to make sense. Just notice your body for five or ten minutes as you think about these things and notice what dicomfort arises. What emotions does it make you think of? Can you see a reason why you might feel that way.

For example, you may find you are late to meetings with one particular department head. You pay attention to your feelings and become angry. You realize this person has been subtly disrespectful, or reminds you of an evil babysitter you had, or looks like your ex. There is not much you can do about any of these things. However, becoming conscious of it, you may be able to make the meetings on time now, so you do not get a reputation for tardiness.

Often, identifying the reason for the feeling does not resolve it. Also, feelings travel in packs, like delinquent teenagers, so you may encounter many similar ones. See How to Release Feelings for tips on dealing with the feelings that are triggered by unconscious material.