One of my major life challenges is How To Not Be Drained Always.
This shows up in work, in relationships, in going to the grocery store without needing a post-produce section nap.
I get drained because I want to help everyone feel better. So I let them in. Way in, energetically speaking. While that’s awwww sweet on some level, I'm ready to officially declare the Amber Buffet closed.
So much about how our energy intermingles and interacts is unconscious. Even for those of us who make it our actual job to know (raises hand), half the time it’s “wait, what the hell just happened?” after coming home from something only able to climb into bed and stare at Queer Eye for three hours straight.
I believe that energy vultures are just trying to survive, the only way they know how. When someone’s been drained their entire life, they will naturally be drawn to energy they can drain, just so they can get through the day. It’s unconscious, until we get a clue and start working on good boundaries.
I’ve been both the drained and the drainee. I’ve been both the vulture and the tasty roadkill.
Vultures are just doing their best to get through life. If you have some tasty energy on offer, they’re going to partake. Like any one of us would if we missed breakfast and Starbucks had banana bread samples sitting out. Obviously you’re going to take it. They wouldn’t offer it if you weren’t supposed to eat it, right? Right.
There’s nothing wrong with being a vulture. Vultures are their own perfect part of the food chain.
But it’s my choice whether or not to let the vultures feast on my carcass.
So I’m declaring again, here and now:
THE AMBER BUFFET IS CLOSED.
Hey, cool, but how do we close the buffet?
Good question.
I’m still working on it.
What I’ve been doing lately is simply paying attention.
When do I need to crawl into bed? When do I just want to watch Netflix and hug a pillow? When do I land face first in a bag of kettle chips? When do my thoughts circle endlessly on something that doesn’t help or doesn’t even feel like me? Those are all signs that my energy has been drained.
What precipitated the poaching? A trigger? A conversation? An internet troll? A social gathering?
Energetic hygiene - clearing, cord-cutting, shielding - is great for empaths and sensitive peeps. But ultimately, the best protection is connecting with your own heart, your own energy, your own light, and blazing it through your own field.
When you’re all wrapped up in your own light, outside intrusions can’t get in nearly as easily.
So I’ve been chanting “I nourish and cherish myself”, putting my hands over my heart whenever possible, paying attention to my breath, being as conscious of my thought patterns as possible, and doing whatever I can to bask in my own goddamn light.
These past six months, I’ve felt so drained that I couldn’t even find my own light. My rib cage was as dark as a haunted house on November 1st. So I finally had to stop everything I was doing and make myself my number one priority - over my business, over helping others, over money, over relationships, over everyone and everything.
ME ME ME.
While this may be a controversial opinion, I highly encourage any and all empaths and sensitive people, especially those who feel drained and overwhelmed, to adopt a ME FIRST policy.
When you’ve been giving so much of yourself for so long, a wild swing in the other direction is often needed. In the ME ME ME direction. When we’ve been offering our love, energy, talent, care, money to anyone and everyone for our whole lives without receiving enough in return (from ourselves, others, or a particularly wretched combination of the two), we need to put our foot down and declare THIS IS THE ME MONTH. (The Me Day, the Me Year, the Me Decade, whatever.)
Then you do whatever you have to do to take care of you.
For me that means writing with big pots of tea, scrubbing my house, going to the beach, quitting the soul-sucking task of selling myself, doing my best to break a sweat everyday, re-reading Harry Potter, taking off my shoes so I can feel the grass between my toes.
Plug yourself in so you can recharge.
Prime re-charging spot. The beach is like the empath genius bar. Just walk up and your connection gets fixed.