People Pleasing and Energetic Boundaries

Have you ever felt like someone was throwing energy at you?

A few weeks ago I was standing in a studio that I do some part time work for.

A customer came in to take a class but was unable to get in due to it being at max capacity.

Visibly annoyed, she began to guilt trip the studio support person that had been helping her, telling her that it was her fault that she drove all the way there and didn’t get in, which is/was factually incorrect.

From an energetic stand point, this is what we call “throwing energy”; a (usually) subconscious behavior that comes from someone’s unmet need trying to get met.

A lot of times this isn’t a conscious behavior but it is very real and if you’re highly sensitive / an empath with poor energetic boundaries, it can be felt and easily absorbed.

I watched as this usually grounded and well-informed person, whose also highly sensitive, absorb the energy being thrown at her from the customer and go immediately into people pleasing mode.

She began apologizing profusely, taking the blame and offering her things to try to appease this person.

I watched her third chakra (chakra for boundaries) collapse as she took blow after energetic blow from this person.

Eventually the disgruntled customer left and I stared at the studio staff person who looked visibly shaken and was bracing herself against the wall.

I asked her “what just happened there?”

She replied that she didn’t know and felt sideswiped; that she felt so guilty about the customer’s experience and that she felt like she blacked out a little bit and started doing things she normally wouldn’t do.

I asked her if she thought this guilt energy she was feeling was actually hers or if she thought it actually belonged to the customer?

She thought about it for a moment and replied that she didn’t actually think it was her own.

I asked her if she wanted an energetic replay of what I had just seen happen and she nodded.

I told her what I saw happen was this:

• Customer had an unmet need that was trying to get met (get into the class and have her annoyance soothed)

• Customer started projecting (throwing) that energy onto my co-worker

• Co-worker, without energetic boundaries, absorbed that energy as her own into her 3rd chakra (center for boundaries)

• The customer’s energy, incongruent with her own, began to dysregulate her into a fawn/people pleasing stress response

• This response caused her to take actions that matched the other person’s needs vs. her own energetic blueprint​

I asked my co-worker, who looked frozen and was barely able to speak, where she felt that energy right now in her body when she thought about that interaction and she pointed to her throat.

I asked her if she was ok to do a little bit of energy work and she nodded again.

I led her through a short energetic hygiene process (feel free to use):

• Locate where she felt the energy or the sensation in her body

• Physically tap on the location, which was her throat

• Breathe into the sensation while tapping

• Visualize a cord going from the center of the earth all the way up to her throat

• With each tap, send the energy that wasn’t hers out of her throat and down the cord back to the earth

• Repeat “what’s yours is yours, what’s mine is mine”

• Call back her own energy from the interaction

• Imagine her energy coming through a golden filter, removing any energetic debris before coming back into her system

We repeated this for about 2-3 minutes and when she opened her eyes it was as though her life force had come back and that’s because it had.

She was shocked at the difference she felt and as she started to think back on the situation, she couldn’t believe the way she responded to the customer because it was so different than how she would have normally handled something like that.

This is why energetic boundaries are so critical, especially for highly sensitive people / empaths.

When we take on / absorb energy that isn’t ours, we quite literally behave in ways that aren’t actually congruent/aligned to who we are.

Over time we may become versions of ourselves that aren’t authentic, absorb belief systems that aren't part of our own internal GPS, enter relationships that aren’t right for us, build careers based off of others’ needs / expectations and build a life that isn’t reflective of our soul or truth.

And if your fight/flight/freeze/fawn stress response leans towards “fawn”, this is when we see the people pleasing behaviors get activated and your whole life, identity and purpose may begin to revolve around making sure others’ needs are met.

When we have proper energetic boundaries, we are clear about what energy is ours and what energy is not and even if we do absorb something that is not ours, we understand how to clear it and come back home to ourselves and our truth.

We enter relationships, choose careers and build a life that is reflective of our own soul and energetic blueprint; not someone else’s projected energy, needs and/or beliefs.