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!