How To Take Care Of Yourself Emotionally By Understanding Energy

All of us bump up against each other energetically. Each of us has our own agenda, things we want to do in our lives. You may experience someone’s agenda bumping up against your desires.

This creates resistance for you when it comes to reaching your goals, especially if you don’t know how to take care of yourself emotionally.

This resistance is part of life and why taking care of yourself emotionally and understanding energy is so important. Our auras — the energy fields around us — can contract and become, in a sense, dented.

We can feel out of balance, lethargic, depressed, and confused.

Understanding energy dynamics and healthy energetic boundaries is extremely important when taking care of yourself, emotionally. Knowing how to establish healthy boundaries is one of the ways to do it.

Healthy Boundaries

Establishing healthy boundaries require self-awareness. Having a sense of self-esteem is also important because it gives you the strength and will to set healthy boundaries in the first place. Doing so is a building block to greater self-esteem.

With greater self-esteem, your interactions become life-enhancing instead of life-depleting. You are able to energetically protect yourself and not inappropriately take on other people’s problems or issues as your own.

Awareness of your inner world, your feelings, and your needs create an energetic boundary. 

Expressing and communicating your needs to others in a productive and heart-centered way is an important part of knowing how you take care of yourself emotionally and keep your energy field strong.

When you keep your energy field strong, you don’t get pulled into something that’s not in your highest good. You’re still loving and supportive. However, you maintain a clear sense of self, not falling prey to becoming a rescuer; being dominated, dominating or controlling others; or being over-emotional, manipulative, or losing yourself in a relationship.

These are the qualities of a dysfunctional relationship that leave you feeling disempowered and drained of energy.

Poor Boundaries

Most women were raised not learning how to take care of themselves emotionally. They are not taught how to keep their energy field intact by setting healthy boundaries. Too often, there are no role models to show them how, and this makes it easy for them to take on other people's energy as their own.

Anatomically, women were designed to bear children. This inherently gives them caretaking and nurturing qualities. Those qualities can leave them vulnerable to becoming co-dependent if they haven’t done the inner work to take care of themselves emotionally and create healthy boundaries in their relationships.

Instead, other people's needs become their needs, and their needs are easily buried.

Have you ever lost yourself in a relationship? Have you ever sacrificed your personal needs for the needs of another to the point that is beyond normal self-sacrifice and care? Have you ever looked to other people's for approval when you really needed to accept yourself?

Imagine what that does to your body’s energy field, let alone your identity and power. It is always good to give to others, but when you don’t take care of your own physical, emotional, and spiritual needs first, you are unable to give to others in a healthy way.

Relationships Are Everything

Relationships are everything. "Aho mitakuye iyasin" is a Lakota Indian term meaning "All my relations."

It acknowledges our inter-connectedness. Healthy relationships are interdependent rather than co-dependent. You can only establish healthy relationships if you know how emotionally care for yourself and energetically protect yourself.

Relationships affect you. Whether you are in a love relationship or not, you are "in a relationship". You are in a relationship with your parents, siblings, and co-workers, to name a few. Most importantly, you are in a relationship with yourself.

If you want to have healthy relationships, it is crucial to have healthy energetic boundaries.

Practicing healthy boundaries enables you to maintain a healthy energy field around your body. You won’t get drained and lose your pep for life.

Victim And Perpetrator

Unhealthy relationships lack the necessary amount of communication, cooperation, and co-creation to make life enjoyable.

Typically, one person supports and even enables another’s addiction or destructive behavior. They become co-dependent. They become the rescuer thinking they are being helpful. They define themselves and their sense of self by being preoccupied with another’s needs over their own.

Co-dependents are often victims. And a victim needs a perpetrator. Energetically, the perpetrator dominates your energy field. Your energy field is contracting and becoming smaller.

If you could see this on an energetic level, you would see a small energy field being overcome by a larger energy field. The larger energy field is not all of that person’s energy. The perpetrator is "taking" your energy.

You can also take on other’s emotions, become over emotional, erratic, or agitated simply because you are connected to someone unable to express their feelings. They have no idea how to take care of themselves emotionally. Energetically, you become the responsible party.

Maintaining Your Bright Energy

Most of us take a shower on a regular basis, if not daily. If you are healthy, you brush your teeth regularly too.

When you take care of yourself emotionally and set healthy boundaries, it is like brushing away the buildup of daily "bummer car" life. It is important to address built up relationship tension.

If you didn’t brush your teeth, you would have tooth decay, bad breath, and gum disease. If you never took a shower, you would have an unpleasant body odor and a layer of grime coating your body. Others might not find it very pleasant to be around you and you probably wouldn’t feel good in your body either.

The same happens if you don’t cleanse your energy field on a regular basis by setting healthy boundaries and taking care of yourself emotionally. Built-up tension, stress, and emotions will cling to your body and energy field.

You can easily become confused and lack clarity in your relationships.

Boundaries Or Barricades

Relationship dynamics can take on different energetic forms.

In a love relationship, this is often the case. As a result, it takes a tremendous amount of self-love, self-nurturing, and healthy boundary-setting to bring your energy field back to its normal and natural bright self.

Establishing healthy boundaries can be challenging, but it is a must in order to keep your body’s energy field bright, live in your truth, and not lose yourself in a relationship.

One of the challenges is determining when a boundary becomes a barricade. What is the balance between self-care and caring for others?

It can be difficult to identify a healthy boundary. It is similar to walking a tightrope. There is a fine line between you and others, especially those close to you because we are interconnected and learn from each other.

That is why an ongoing cultivation of a sense of self is important.

Keeping the integrity of your energy and staying centered requires that you care for it just as you care for your body, your teeth, or your hair.

Try to recognize what happens when your energy shifts downward or contracts due to interactions with others. Take the necessary steps to go inward to discover and acknowledge your needs. Then, voice your truth from your heart and energetically stay centered. This will keep your energy field in a state of integrity. 

As you learn healthy boundaries and are able to get in touch with yourself emotionally, your body’s energy field will expand. You will develop more compassion for yourself and others. Your relationships will improve.

You will experience more joy in your relationships because you have learned not to hold onto uncomfortable emotions and the associated dysfunctional behaviors that bring a relationship down. Your relationships won’t become tainted and toxic. Your energy field will be bright, powerfully invincible, and pure. 

Anna-Thea is an intimacy coach and educator. She teaches women how to set healthy boundaries in their relationships so they can feel more vitally alive. If you would like to find out more about her teachings please visit Leader of Love.

Watch this TED Talk by Lori Moffett about igniting a self-care revolution.

This article was originally published at annathea.org. Reprinted with permission from the author.