How I Stopped Absorbing Other People’s Energy and Emotions

“And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anaïs Nin

I used to think something was wrong with me.

I cried at the wrong moments. I felt anxious before a phone call, only to find out the other person was deeply upset. I could walk into a room and instantly sense who was grieving, who was fighting—even if no one said a word.

People called me empathic. Intuitive. But mostly, I felt weird. Overwhelmed. Other. Too much.

I tried everything to make it stop. Therapy helped a little, but only on the surface. I learned the language of trauma, boundaries, and projection—but still, I felt like I was carrying more than just my own stuff.

After about a year with one therapist, she finally said, “It’s not that you anxiously imagine things—you’re honestly always right. That’s a big difference. And I don’t know how to help you.”

The truth was: I wasn’t broken. I was energetically wide open. And no one had ever taught me how to close.

The Moment Everything Clicked

It was years into my wild, seemingly never-ending personal growth journey, and I was sitting on a date.

I wasn’t looking up, but I responded to what I thought was a question the man across from me had asked. When I looked up, his face had gone pale.

“I thought that,” he said. “But I didn’t say it out loud.”

I had done so much inner work. And yet there I was again—caught in a situation I didn’t fully understand. Feeling as though I had done something wrong.

When someone in the same room spoke about grief, it felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. Not metaphorically—my body literally responded. I had no idea where I ended and other people began.

In a moment of late-night desperation, I Googled something like “how to stop reading people’s thoughts.”

I ended up on the phone with a woman I’d found online. She greeted me with, “Whoa, you are wide open, aren’t you?” And then she said the words I didn’t know I’d been waiting for:

“You need to turn this down.”

Turns out, I wasn’t just sensitive. I had no energetic boundaries.

My body, my emotions, my intuition—none of it was contained. I had spent my life walking around like an open door, receiving every gust of feeling and energy that came my way.

It wasn’t empathy. It wasn’t anxiety. It was a lack of containment.

The Difference Between Love and Enmeshment

Growing up, I thought being a good friend, daughter, or partner meant feeling everything other people felt. I was prized for silently predicting the emotions of others in a way that often protected me from harm behind closed doors. If someone I loved was sad, I needed to be sad with them. If they were anxious, I would absorb it and try to fix it. If I thought they could hurt me, I stayed and soothed them—not just to protect myself, but to protect everyone else too.

This orientation toward helping emotionally volatile people didn’t serve me.

When I was young, I thought it was compassion. Later, I thought it was codependence. But it was actually energetic enmeshment.

Over time, I lost track of my own inner compass.

My attraction was confused. My decisions were reactive. My body was tired.

I couldn’t tell what I needed because I was constantly responding to so many streams of information.

The cost wasn’t just emotional exhaustion—it was disconnection from myself.

The Practice That Saved Me

The almost funny thing is the solution was simple.

There are grounding practices intuitive people have used for centuries. I just didn’t have anyone in my life to tell me, “Honey, you can turn that stuff off and use it when you want.”

I often imagine a parallel timeline where I had elders who taught me to close skillfully, rather than using my intuition to tether myself to people who needed to face their own karma—without my intervention.

It began with a simple image.

I imagined a grounding cord from the base of my spine, anchoring me deep into the earth. With every exhale, I released anything that wasn’t mine down into the soil.

Then I called my energy back. I imagined it returning from all the places I had left it—washed through sunlight—like golden threads being rewoven.

Next, I zipped myself up. Literally.

I visualized a golden zipper running up the front of my body, sealing in my energy field. I imagined a soft dome of light around me—just my size. Nothing could come in unless I invited it.

I was still loving, still intuitive, still me.

But now I was also separate. Not shut down—just held.

Grounding and Choosing

Grounding, closure, and choosing when to open and when to put my “closed” sign up are now part of my everyday life. If something feels even slightly off, I know I’m pulling in information that likely isn’t mine to hold.

The truth is, without a container, an agreement, and consent, diving into someone’s emotions, fears, or thoughts isn’t good for me or for them.

Today, using my gifts is something I save for my work.

The world needs sensitive, intuitive people—but not ones who are depleted and lost in other people’s pain.

The most powerful thing you can do for others is stay in your own energy and listen with integrity.

I still feel things deeply. But now I know how to feel from within myself—not from inside someone else’s story.

And that has made all the difference.