Do you often have the experience that when you’re around other people, maybe even your family or spouse, that you feel drained and tired and it’s like they’re sucking the life out of you? Is there a way to prevent that or combat that? Can you actually become so stable that other people’s energy can no longer effect you? Watch today’s video and find out!

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Transcript

Hey my happy shiny puppies in training, this is Melody Fletcher, author of Deliberate Receiving, and today I have a burning question from Awesome Dudettes, who says:

“By happenstance (hah!), I found an early blog post of yours, about your realization that it was only exhausting/annoying to be around other people if you were expending energy keeping up a mask. It really rang a bell for me.

As I’ve been reading your blog and book and listening to your calls, I’ve noticed that I get more shaken up/exhausted/feeling physically and emotionally bad from being around other people when I don’t really want to be (or at least that’s how I interpret it now.)

Anyway, I’m hoping that you might be willing to do an update of that post with things you’ve learned since then. It’s hard for me to understand what it would mean to be authentic and mask-dropping around others; I don’t really see the masks I have up in certain situations (like with my spouse), but I’m sure I do, and that’s what’s causing feelings of wanting to hermit it up.

Anyway, as I understand what you’re teaching, it feels like being real with yourself about where you are is a major element of feeling more aligned. I would love a post on how to stay authentic with others so you can be with others and still feel good instead of retreating. Hope that makes sense!”

Well Awesome Dudette, it makes perfect sense and you’ve given (which is so often the case) the answer in your question. So, let me point it out to you! The key here is: Why are you forcing yourself to spend time with people when you don’t want to? That’s the mask you’re wearing!

The blog post that you are referring to is one that I wrote in 2011, so it’s been five years since I wrote it. The concept hasn’t really been updated much, but my language has updated; so let me give you the new language on this.

Setting boundaries and honoring yourself

The mask that you are wearing when you are with other people is the one that says: How they feel, or your obligation to them, or insert another reason here for keeping yourself in the room when you don’t want to be – is more important than how you feel. Nowadays, though, I would probably talk less about masks and talk more about boundaries and honoring yourself. If you are staying in the room when you don’t want to, that draining feeling you are having is telling you that you don’t really want to be there. But in that moment, you are prioritizing something else above yourself, and that is going to cut the energy flow; and you will feel less energy.

I can hear the question brewing from someone out there or many someones out there who are saying, “So what is the answer?”  If you are an introvert, or you don’t enjoy being around other people, does that mean that you will never ever be around other people again? Does that mean you have to become a total hermit and just be in your little cave and be a total loner? Does it mean you’re never going to have a relationship again?  No of course not!

It’s all about being a match to someone

Here’s the thing: Not all people are the same!! Not all people have the same vibration. Sometimes, certain people are going to be a match to you and sometimes they’re not. Or I should say, they’re going to be a match to how you want to feel, a match to your high vibration, and sometimes not. Certain people are never going to be a match to that, and other people are going to be a match to that a lot of the time. So instead of thinking of people as one entity, that you either want to engage with or not, understand that there is a big differentiation between certain people and other people. Some people might be a lot more draining to you than others.

When I work with an introvert, for example, without fail, one of the things that we undercover first is that they don’t actually have any problem being around people, when those people are fun for them to be around. They have a problem, they feel like an introvert and they have all those introverting symptoms come up, when they are forcing themselves to be around people they don’t want to be around, or don’t want to be around in that moment.

It is kind of easy to see that when you are forcing yourself to be around your stupid colleagues who you don’t really like at all, and they are all negative and whatever (insert your own negative adjectives here).  It’s a little bit more subtle when you’re actually talking about somebody that you love, like your spouse, your children, your family or your best friend. How do you say no to spending time with them? Shouldn’t you want to spend every waking moment that you can with them, because you love them? No! That’s a limiting belief! Just because you love somebody, do you then have to behave in a certain way? Do you have to spend time with them all the time? And if you don’t want to sometimes, is there’s something wrong with you? That’s just a cockamamey, limiting belief!

What if it’s totally ok to sometimes say, “Hey I love you, but right now I would rather be by myself”? And what if you can attract a version of your partner who is totally ok with that?

I don’t consider myself an extrovert, and I know that seems strange to many of you, because here I am yelling into the camera and waving my arms about, so how am I not an extrovert?! I’m actually an omnivert, meaning sometimes I’m an extrovert and sometimes I’m an introvert. Sometimes I retreat into my bubble and I don’t want to have anything to do with other people, and sometimes I am the life of the party and I enjoy nothing more than being in a big crowd of people or being on the stage.

It’s ok to want to spend time by yourself

I have all kinds of aspects to me and so do you. It’s ok to honor all the aspects, which means sometimes you want to be around people and sometimes you don’t. The best way to figure out which is which, is going in the moment by how you feel. It is all about becoming aware and honoring yourself and saying, in this moment you would rather go and sit on the couch and read a book by yourself, or you would rather go outside and take a walk by yourself. It’s ok to say you don’t want to be around other humans right now. The degree to which you give yourself permission to do that, is the degree to which these types of situations are going to gravitate out of your reality. If you are having a lots experiences right now where people annoy the crap out of you, or who are draining you, or it feels like they are sucking the life out of you, it’s only because you are still very willing to prioritize either how they feel above how you feel, or you have some kind of obligation (you love them, therefore you have to do this). When you stop doing that, then those situations will shift, and you often get a lot less kick back from the people around you.

The Universe will always mirror back to you what you are willing to put up with.

Remember that; tattoo it on yourself somewhere, or put it on a post-it and stick it up where you can see it.

Bottom Line

These things can be kind of subtle, but what you have going on is some limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck, where you are forcing yourself to stay in situations that you really don’t want to be in. And of course that’s draining! Because it’s resisting the energy of your joy and resisting the flow of energy of who you really are. Therefore, you’re going to feel a dip in your energy.

I hope that made sense and has answered your question.

For this week, this is Melody Fletcher author of Deliberate Receiving: Finally, the Universe Makes Some Freakin’ Sense! If you haven’t read it yet, go and check it out!

This has been this week’s Q&A, and I’ll see you next week. Bye!

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  • Melody,

    Why is it that if I feel vulnerable, that someone will invariably violate my boundaries (usually in a very nasty, hurtful way)? It’s like these people are robots and they just “obey” my vibration. Don’t they have a mind of their own? It’s these very same people who are particularly pleasant to me when my vibe changes to positive. Do they have any of their own will or they just do whatever my vibe dictates?? I hate these people!

    Thanks.

    • People have to treat you however you are a match to. If you’re not a match to being treated well, they can’t treat you well. It’s impossible. And if you’re not a match to having your boundaries violated, then people won’t be able to violate your boundaries. It’s impossible.

      It’s not about free will, it’s just that they have to treat you however you are a vibrational match to.

      • If the other person treats me well or poorly based on my vibration, that means the other person has no free will. Doesn’t make sense.

        I think it must work like this – other people only react if they have no boundaries, so they don’t know what’s their thoughts and what’s mine.

        • I don’t think that’s true at all. No matter how many “boundaries” the person had, they still couldn’t, as Abraham puts it, buck your current. They couldn’t treat you in a way that wasn’t a match to you.

          It’s not that they don’t have free will, it’s just that you are lining up with a version of them who are going to act in that way.

        • Hey CJ,

          It’s not that people are always being controlled by your vibration. It’s that many of the people that you are around already match your vibration and therefore reflect it back to you. As Brandon said, even if you have someone with a higher vibration come into the picture, those who are lower can’t understand them, may even be angered or frustrated by them.
          And yes, just like you, other people’s vibrations vary all the time. So one day someone can be great and treat you well, and the next they may not. But they can only do that when you both have a matching vibration. So on a bad day, you vibrate with ‘no boundaries’ and their vibration will be a match and they will invade your boundaries, push all the right buttons to piss you off or make you feel bad. Those people who don’t match that ‘no boundaries’ vibration won’t be I around you.
          Hope this helps a bit!

  • I have a hot unrelated question!
    I understand that people who aren’t in vibrational vicinity of us can’t resonate with us and hear us, and that some people will never be able to, in this current physical life of theirs.

    However there is one thing that I have been wondering about… Is it possible that some of us could hack/modify LOA one day? Maybe it sounds silly, but I’m seriously asking. I don’t like the idea of me leveling up, and a lot of others not. I know that LOA says “that’s the way it is”, but I’m all turned on to the idea of hacking this LOA “limitation”. I mean, why not, everything can be hacked, right? 🙂

    I’d like to hear opinions on this, I’m really curious.

    • You don’t like the idea that the universe rewards some and punishes the bejesus out of others? Me neither – life’s a fucken bitch. It’s all too convenient to say that everyone can manage to feel good and get needs met, but it’s a lie. Half the population has no education for starters. And of those who are educated, and know how the mind works, many of them struggle to implement LOA successfully.

      How to plan to hack a law of nature? I’ll back you!

    • Z, you can’t “hack” the LOA, because it’s always functioning how it needs to. Really, it’d be a terrible thing if someone got other than what they were a match to. How, then, would you decide who got the great things and who didn’t? Would you restrict it based on deservingness? According to whom? Would you just rather it be arbitrary? Or, is it only limited to those who can “hack” it, which surely isn’t going to be an easy thing to do?

      The system is actually perfect as it is. Trust me, I’ve tried reaching those who aren’t a match to improvement, and, they are deaf to any advice. I even once (okay, several occasions), tried discounting my own coaching services for specific people, so that they could afford to get help. But, I could tell pretty quickly they weren’t a match to that help, and it didn’t work.

      Jesus always said, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” That means, those who are a vibrational match to the wanted, they will get the wanted. But even in his day, as today, most people were unfortunately deaf.

      Today that’s improving a lot, but people are responsible for themselves. And they will all get to that point eventually where they are open to something greater. There’s no rush.

      • Brandon, thank you very much for your response. By “hacking”, I mainly meant a way to be able to make other person remember who they really are, but not by coincidence as it usually happens at rare ocasions, but by design. Like, using something to pierce through the clouds, so a tiny ray of sunshine could just briefly pass through.

        An example would be, someone (like me) with lower vibration would gather people with even lower vibration, lead them to a building, lock all doors, and then someone like Melody would enter the building, and then their vibrations would be by far different from Melody’s, but they wouldn’t be able to escape. Then their layer of limiting beliefs might crack in her presence, and they might actually start remembering who they really are. It’s like bringing ice cubes from Antarctica into a building, and then bring on the lava. Those cubes would stand no chance 😀

        This idea is interesting to me from a scientifical/technological point of view. I have to admit that this idea also probably came from my fears about my life. I don’t want to go from a life with low vibration and no friends, to a life with high vibration and no friends (because they can’t match me). It just feels like in the process, I’m going from low to high vibration, but I’m somehow missing the “friendland”.

        It’s like, I’m going alone from the bottom of the hill, to the top of the mountain, where I’m alone again, and am wondering where other people are. I went higher, but couldn’t find them. And it turns up they are in the cave inside the mountain the whole time, but I couldn’t find a way to them, not at the bottom, nor at the top.

        • Ah, I see, it’s a limiting belief.

          Friends are just a manifestation. If you have a “loneliness” manifestation, that’s what you are currently giving your focus to. You can also give your focus to the “lots of friends” vibration, or however that feels to you.

          There is never a requirement that you are alone for some reason. You have 100% control here. If you currently don’t have friends, you want to take a look at what you are focusing on day-to-day, which feels like “no friends” to you, and then shift that.

          Going along with the hypothetical, if you were to lock a bunch of low-vibrational people into a building and then have a high-vibrational person walk in, those people would actually still not be able to really hear the high-vibrational person. They might indeed be actively hostile towards that person’s message. I’m thinking of Jesus again and the people who despised his message, because they weren’t ready for it. He was able to talk to them, sure, but they couldn’t listen.

          So it’s not a matter of proximity. It’s a matter of them not being able to truly hear the message.

  • An even bigger issue for me though is I need to find a new place to live and work or another way to get money (that does not involve suffering!) I cannot stay with my parents anymore (a lot of pressure to leave, and I don’t want to stay here either) and feel really pressed to find a solution to these issues. I hate looking for jobs though it always feels like crap, and I hate the process of sending resumes to work doing something I would really rather not just to pay to stay alive and exist. I know I probably sound like a spoiled brat, but I’m just sick of putting up with crap I hate and having to always compromise and settle. I wish I didn’t have to work at all and could just have money come to me very easily, but I’m not sure if my belief system would allow that right now.

  • Perfect timing, I have this very issue right now! My parents want me to go to my step grandmother’s funeral, and I feel really guilty for saying this, but I really do not want to go. (I felt really guilty just typing that.) The reasons why are not because I didn’t love her, but because there are definitely going to be people there I do not want to see, a lot of questions about my life and what I’m doing which I’d really prefer not to answer, and the 14 hour drive there in a cramped car (and it would be an incredible short trip…one full day there, a day and a half driving each way). :/ I feel really selfish in a bad way for not wanting to go. I don’t know how to soothe this so I go or shift something so I don’t have to. It’s a difficult situation and I’m receiving a lot of pressure. I’m an adult, but I’m living with my parents right now and fear what tension may arise in the house if I don’t go.

    • The way your parents react is just a reflection of your own vibration on the subject.

      There’s no need to feel guilty or selfish. Find a way to feel better about that part, then from the higher vibration, see which action feels better / most natural.

      I don’t handle long trips well, especially with people I don’t get along with much. I will tell someone very directly if I don’t want to go on a trip.

    • With this kind of stuff, I often tell myself that what matters is taking the path of least resistance from where I am, not “doing it perfectly”. Like, in some situations, I might end up deciding that it’s a total lower “cost” to me if I do the thing I don’t want to do, if I can’t align my energy in time vs plunging ahead and not doing the thing with my energy not lined up about not doing it. So it’s still not really what I want to do, but it might feel like the least-hassle-y of the options available to me. And then I try to be intentional about recognizing that I’m doing it intentionally.

      (I think it’s fine to not do something you don’t want to do, but sometimes it feels so complicated!)

  • Thanks so much for this insightful post. I’ve been successful in distancing myself from unhealthy and verbally abusive family members who do not respect boundaries. However, as of late, my limiting belief of guilt has been creeping in. (Thanks to my fear of disappointing people) This post came at the perfect time, of course, and gave me the permission I wasn’t giving myself. Much needed reminder to honor myself first.
    Thanks again, I am deeply appreciative for such wonderful insight and affirmation!

  • This post helped me to work out an immense conflict I have been struggling with lately. I always feel so drained when I spend time with my 2 year old daughter- and not because I am chasing after her or constantly attempting to avert near and imminent danger. I am drained because I am trying to be perfect for her. I want to craft the perfect experience for her at all times. I did not even realize I was doing this until now.

    • I have found parenting my primary challenge with having energetic boundaries. My belief that I have no other option but to give what I’m being asked to give is extremely powerful with children (with adults, I’m more able to follow my own instincts.)

      I wrestle with this even as I know that it’s just a belief. It has improved over time (I guess I have a belief that somewhat older kids can be more responsible for their own experiences in short bursts than younger kids) but when my child was younger I often felt like I was on fire. I haven’t worked through it completely.

      • This is so incredibly true for me as well. It can be enormously challenging to wrap your head around the concept that even small children are responsible for their own reality. It challenges one’s belief in LOA because the consequences of being wrong could be quite problematic!

  • So the boundary (bubble, aura) is created by being selfishly focussed on oneself. A continual, re-asking of “what feels good for me?” and then living accordingly.

  • Hi,

    I’ve found that honoring my feelings and doing what suits me is what creates the boundary (energetically). I used to think boundaries were actions, like saying “don’t do that please!”, when in fact the boundary is the energy field which surrounds the body. When the boundary is strong, people don’t cross it. When it’s weak, people appear who will delight in doing you great damage, physically or emotionally.

  • I like that you’re even addressing those beliefs that tend to go over our heads or that we don’t fully realize or acknowledge (well, I don’t, anyway). I like being by myself most of the time, I haven’t experienced loneliness in years and I don’t have many friends. I know that sounds sad to some people, but I don’t lament over my number of companions. I do love talking though (clearly…), I love sharing ideas and information with the people I’m comfortable with, but there are times when I just kind of feel like, meh, I’d like to be alone right now, or, hmm, I feel like I’ve had my fill of chatting. I’ve felt badly for that, even though I’d know it wasn’t because of them, I just didn’t want to offend anyone… but then again, as you said, when you give yourself permission to do this, when you let yourself know that it’s okay, situations change and people respond differently (because their response and the version of them you experience is based on your vibration, oooooooh!).

    Very recently, my ex, one of my soul buddies, just popped up after a few months of us not speaking. My experiences with him forced me to look at myself and my own beliefs, and they’ve been catalysts for change quite a few times… Talk about having somebody mirror your resistance back to you in blatantly obvious ways. This time though, uh, I didn’t really want that amount of intensity, lol (the couple of days we spent speaking were emotionally draining even though nothing particularly “bad” happened at all). I told him that though I care about him deeply, I needed to be alone and focus on myself, and he seemed fine with it. I’ve never really done that before! That’s one of the few times I ever actually set a boundary and honored my own feelings, which used to be very difficult for me, especially when it came to him. This progress is in part thanks to you, Melody… and my Higher Self… and the Universe… and me, and my best friend, and even him. I hadn’t totally processed the whole thing until later that day, and I thought, “Wait, I did that!?”, yup, it’s time to care deeply about myself too.

  • I cannot thank you enough, Melody, for your ultra timely blog. No matter how happy, shiny, we can be, sometimes, if we don’t continually remember how LOA works, a really difficult situation can temporarily take us out of our high vibration. In my group work, a client recently suddenly dropped out, and your blog has reminded me how this person’s vibration just couldn’t resonate with mine. So it is no wonder they dropped out. Thank you SO! much for this reminder. I’m so grateful to you for continually offering these messages like you do.

  • Thank you Awesome Dudette for asking such a great question and thanks Melody for selecting this subject many of us just love to learning about. We are around others all the time and LOA in relation to other people is something many of us are most confused about.

    Melody, you’re so kind with the sharing of your knowledge and you’re so funny and entertaining to watch.

    Big giant hugs & much love xx

  • This one is hitting many resistance spots for me. I’ve always liked to be by myself, as a young child I loved to play alone, creating things, and I also liked to play with 1 or 2 little friends. But I was always pushed to go play outside, go hang with the other kids, basically, I was “wrong” being the way I was. And it is a pattern that followed all my relationships until recently. Especially around family and romantic relationships because you “have to compromise”, otherwise they’ll suffer and you’re just selfish and egocentric. Time to do some energy clearing now! All in all, thank you Melody for “validating” almost, that it is alright to be our unique selves, and that we can align with self-love and act from that place! <3

  • Hey Melody
    I loved this post. I consider myself introverted but when it comes to things I am passionate about, I can be very demonstrative and passionate. One of the things this post made me think of is my relationship with my husband. I need a lot of alone time and sometimes don’t feel like talking or interacting and it is a great thing that he understands this about me and doesn’t take it personally at all. I also like what you said about people’s vibrations being different. One of the great things about working on our energy is we are often able to align with different versions of people that are more in line with our higher vibration as that vibration is within them somewhere too. I imagine we can’t align with that version of every person we meet but then either we end up not seeing them as much or their behavior doesn’t affect us in the same way.

  • Excellent post! A funny thing happened to me while checking it out: first, I read it. (I tend to believe that I would rather read than watch.) I had some residual questions. Then I watched the video. All of the questions were answered. I would have sworn that the questions were not answered when I read the transcript!

    Recently, in your calls, you’ve been talking about “entrainment”. Do you think (I guess I am answering my own question) that you’re more likely to entrain with vibration when you’re watching a video of someone who’s at a specific “here is the answer” vibration than when you’re reading text of that same answer?

  • I really relate to this. My wife has learned that when I want to be left alone, well, I really want to be left alone. 🙂

    I’ve been getting a lot better lately with just saying I don’t want to do something with other people. Sometimes my mother-in-law will invite us to dinner, and sometimes I’ll be fine with it, and sometimes I really don’t want to do it. And those times I don’t want to, I just tell my wife that I’m going to stay home, and she goes on her own. It works 🙂

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