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Fear of Other People’s Energy
Unwanted Energy Transfer and the Myth of “Negative Energy”
[Apologies to readers who are not energy healers. The following article gets down in the weeds a bit on a perennial issue for persons involved with hands-on healing work. Thanks! ~Jim]
If there’s one single question, guaranteed to come up in introductory classes on energetic healing work, it’s the one about how to “protect” yourself from other people’s energy. The question has several variations. How do I keep from picking up my partner’s negative energy? If I am depressed or angry when I give a treatment, can I actually do harm? These questions come with the territory in energy healing, even from new students of energy healing who haven’t yet had their hands on all that many people.
Even in those of us who have worked in this field for along time, the question of unwanted energy transfer is a charged one. It shows in the elaborate rituals that some of us have for keeping other people’s energy at bay. This makes energy healers all too easy to caricature — calling down armies of angels and guides to protect them, visualizing shields of impenetrable light between themselves and the other person, and slinging the other person’s energy across the room as if it was a poisonous eel from Hell. In my mind, these rituals reveal a good deal of ambivalence and anxiety about touching and truly connecting with other people.
While questions about possible harmful transference of energy certainly need to be asked, the underlying assumption is that other people’s energy is inherently something to be afraid of. I’d like to present another point of view on this subject.
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Our qualities as a healer flourish when we meet another person in the compassionate space we call healing. At its best, this is a joyous, open-hearted, blessing-filled undertaking. Most often, unresolved fear is what keeps this from being a reality. Obviously, if you are afraid of the person you are about to work with, it is better not to work with them. At the same time, it strikes me as absurd to be involved with healthcare and healing work — which, after all, are about caring and connection — while also being afraid of what contact with the other person might do to us.
