The problem you are experiencing is not that you are absorbing other people’s energy. It’s that you’re holding onto it as it passes through, concentrating it into your energy, and solidifying it with your own reactions.

I used to struggle with this.

The problem you are experiencing is not that you are absorbing other people’s energy. It’s that you’re holding onto it as it passes through, concentrating it into your energy, and solidifying it with your own reactions.

Different wavelengths of light are capable of penetrating solid masses to different degrees. Much of the visible light spectrum is reflected or absorbed by our skin, for example, but when you shine a bright light through your hand, you can see a red glow on the other side. Red light passes through our flesh more readily than others for a short distance, but eventually it too gets absorbed.

Infrared light is almost entirely stopped by the first few layers of skin, resulting in the feeling of heat. UV light stops even shorter, but its high energy can cause sunburns, and eventually sometimes lead to cancer, which is why we’re cautioned not to tan too much.

And then you have radiation: x-rays that can penetrate flesh fairly easily but are absorbed readily bone, gamma-rays that for the most part pass through the body, beta, and alpha radiation that barely pass through skin but wreak havoc when absorbed.

And then you have ‘emotion’ – I won’t make any sort of scientific explanation for this phenomenon – but the idea is the same. If we think of emotion and related thoughts/etc as waves of energy, allowing these waves to pass through, especially the more highly-charged the emotion, is much safer than grabbing onto them.

And that’s something I’ve done as an intuitive person and I’ve seen others do. In an effort to be compassionate, or to understand, or to assist, we sense the energy and pull it into our own, as if that will help us know. It is enough to sense it passing through for us to be able to help. Holding on and trying to define or ‘make sense’ of it both distorts and makes it our own. We are no longer present with another person because we are focused on the new challenge we’ve created within ourselves.

So the next time you feel it happening, take a deep breath as the wave begins, and exhale it out at the other end of the wave. Note what you feel, but don’t grab at it.

There are practices, such as tonglen, that deal with this very idea, and some that deal with visualizing transmuting difficult, heavy or ‘negative’ energies, into light, peaceful, ‘positive’ energy, but I’ve found even just recognizing that we don’t HAVE to hold on to the energy that comes through us is extremely helpful.

To recap: It is their energy when you note it passing through. It is your energy when you collect it. And it is your reaction when you respond to it. You don’t need to keep it.

Originally posted on Quora: How do I prevent the absorption of other people’s energy?