What Should You Do When you Can Sense other People's Negative Emotions?


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Dear Jake,

I have spent the last few years on a spiritual journey and I have explored many of things you discuss in this website. I have recently opened myself up and am really beginning to sense the world around me. The problem is, I don’t know how to turn it off! I feel the positive and negative emotions of people now all the time. How do I get the negative emotions out of my head? I try to let the negative just pass through me, but it still affects me. Help!

Susan

Dear Susan,

This is a problem that I have dealt with for the last few years, and I agree it is not an easy one to deal with. It is especially difficult if you live in the same house with someone who has very chaotic, out of control thoughts or angry thoughts. If you are very sensitive, it creates a static in your mind that is almost always there.

To begin with, you are doing the right thing in regards to letting the thoughts just pass through you. When you try to resist negative energy from someone else, the act of resistance holds the negative energy inside you. Not resisting, and allowing the negative energy from someone else to just pass through you, minimizes the amount of time it stays within your mind and decreases the affect it has on you.

The problem you might be having is that even when a negative energy from someone else just passes through you, even when it just touches your mind for a split second, it can trigger many scripts and patterns in the brief seconds it is inside your mind. The scripts that start running in your mind in response to the negative energy lead you to think about the negative energy. Even though you have allowed the negative energy to pass through you, your thoughts are recreating it within your mind.

It is like standing on a corner and seeing a bright red sports car zoom past you. Even though the car is out of sight, you sit there and think about it, reconstruct it in your imagination, remembering its color, its lines, the way it looked and sounded, etc. So, even though the car is long gone, its image is still in your mind.

Usually, the problem is that the scripts contain some type of subtle judgment of the other person. The patterns associated with this usually include actions that result in a negative reaction to the other person. This is where the real problem lies. If you sense that someone is angry and the script “This is an angry person and I don’t like angry people” pops into your head, and the action “I must avoid this person because they are angry” is your pattern, than you are recreating the negative anger energy that you sensed from this person even though it may have already passed through you.

The solution to this problem is to resist the normal negative scripts and negative patterns that you associate with the situation of being exposed to negative energy from others. What you replace them with is the feeling of love, compassion, and understanding. Once the negative energy passes through you, it is enough to tell yourself that this is a person who needs positive energy from you. Without dwelling on why, you respond with scripts such as “This person needs positive energy, love” and respond with patterns that result in actions such as “I will show kindness to this person”. Notice that you don’t think in our heads something like “This is an angry person so I will respond to them with being calm and loving”, as the moment we think of this person as being angry we are recreating the negative energy and also judging the other person.

Being sensitive enough to feel other people’s negative emotions actually gives you the opportunity to learn how to respond to negative energy from others with positive energy. You can think of it as a type of training exercise that gives you the opportunity to learn how to respond with compassion to the suffering of others.

There are times, though, when responding with positive energy is not the right choice. In the sutras it states that you should avoid people who have no virtue. Compassion, as we described above, should be shown to those who have virtue but who are suffering. Thus, if you feel a wave of negative energy coming from someone and this energy makes it clear that this is a violent person, someone who is not simply suffering but who lacks virtue, you must simply avoid this person and thinking on them.

This does not mean you should create a script in your mind that says “This is a person without virtue and so I should just not think of them and should avoid them” as this is both recreating the negative energy and also judging the person. Thinking this way often results in you actually starting to tune into to the person, to become even more aware of them. The less you think of someone the less you are aware of them. It is better to just simply think “I should not dwell on this person”, try to focus on someone else and create a pattern that leads you to take the action of walking away from them.