Friendships and Energy

I have been thinking a lot this week about friendships that I have gained recently, and about friendships that I have acquired over the years through various activities and events that go on through my life. I have found friends through work, church, high school, college, my church women's organization and through family acquaintances. Friends are extremely important to my growth in life. I am the kind of person who feeds off of other people's energy. If someone whom I am around is feeling negatively, I feel their feelings and I will either try to distance myself from them, or if it is someone whom I care about I will do all that I know how, to help them feel better, and become more positive. 

I love being around happy, positive people, because their happiness tends to rub off on me and I love to be happy. My grandmother told me yesterday, when I visited with her for a little bit, that I am always happy. I thought to myself for a minute, and decided that I always want to be really happy, and if I am around the right people I can be. Now I do have those days where it is difficult for me to be happy, and I feel like I will bite people's heads off, but maybe that happens when I am not around enough positivity to feel happy. I need that food (haha), the happy food, that is called good energy, I think. 

I don't know very much about the energy that lives in all of us, aside from the fact that when people have lots of good energy, it shows through their eyes. Often times if there is enough good energy in someone they glow. Which I think is why when women are pregnant, they glow... because of that constant good energy that it takes to grow a fetus inside their bodies. When there is a lack of good energy, sometimes people can become dark in their eyes and even clouded. Which is how, I think their actions can reflect that energy that they have in them, because they become clouded and their judgment lacks good energy. 

I was curious about why it is that I feed off of others energies, because I know that not everyone is affected by others in such a way. So I looked it up :) (Uncle Bryan, you are right, I love "googling" things haha) I found this interesting article that someone wrote about becoming emotionally drained by other people's energy, written by Judith Orloff, MD. It tells about how this writer, as a young girl would become drained from other people's negative energy. She said that, "Unsuspectingly, I was a gigantic sponge, absorbing the energy of people around me." She later realized that she had what is called intuitive empathy. Which is, "the ability to sense what's going on in others both emotionally and physically as it it were happening to [you]."

This "intuitive empathy," I believe is what I experience as well. It can be very difficult sometimes, because I'll be around one of my friends and they will get a text message off to the side of our conversation, and not say anything about it, but it will upset them somehow. I will automatically feel their energy and get upset and not realize the reasoning behind it. Sometimes I will notice that they are not the same as they were a moment ago, and I will be able to help them, other times I have to leave, and I end up feeling horrible the rest of that day. 

The article explains how sometimes when she is out in a group of people, and there is a lot of energy fields that she intersects, she can become overloaded and her "aspect of intuition is the most neglected and misunderstood." So she too, experiences the lack of realizing why she starts feeling all of these emotions and can't handle being there. 

This is an interesting realization, I suppose that I have been empathic to other people's energy for a long time. Perhaps that is why I can help those around me, if I try hard to notice when the feelings are coming from someone else, instead of myself. Perhaps I should become a life coach or something, so that I can help people as much as possible. Right now, I can use this gift to help my family members, and maybe improve my relationships with them. 

Thank you for reading my realization for the day :D I would love to read your comments. Perhaps you are empathic as well and you don't realize it yourself. Have a wonderful Sunday!