Dear Christina,
What creates negative energy in us?
-Shannon
Dear Shannon,
Thanks for writing in and asking such a simple but powerful question! I’ve broken my response down into sections because there’s a lot here. Actually, there’s far more that I’d like to communicate, however, there’s only so much I can fit into a single blog post. So I’ve tried to keep it simple (emphasis on “try”). 🙂
In short, negative energy is created in us because of the same four things: our thoughts, our pain, our actions, and our energy. People who have negative energy tend to have similar characteristics, in that they tend to think negative thoughts; carry too much emotional pain; act in ways that are out of alignment with love, kindness, compassion, joy; and/or hold too much negative energy in their space (their own and other people’s). But all this can change.
Negative energy is a lower vibrational energy, and it feels heavy to the person carrying it and to the people who have to be around it. This is because it is denser and thus heavier, and it weighs us down. This added weight makes it harder to think of positive thoughts, do positive things, and be positive overall (positive energy is a lighter energy, literally, it’s less dense and not heavy, which is why it’s harder to be positive when the heavy stuff is weighing down the lighter stuff).
But, once a person understands how negative energy affects them — and learns the tools for releasing it — they have a chance of taking back their power to shift out of a negative space and into a positive, lighter space, on demand.
I hope this article sheds some light for you — literally and metaphorically speaking. 🙂
Negative Thoughts
Negative thoughts are one way we create negative energy. Negative actions are another way that we create negative energy in and around us.
Negative thoughts can be tricky to detect because, for most people, negative thoughts are so ingrained into their way of thinking; they don’t even recognize the thought as negative. Here’s an example of a tricky negative thought: “I never have enough money for that.” Most people think they are simply stating a fact, but in truth, they are stating/thinking a negative thought. And the more they reinforce that negative thought “I never have enough [blank]”, the more their body responds to it (stress), the more their energy goes down because of it, and the more they recreate the negative situation in their lives. (Pssst. A simple switch is “I’m so excited that one day I’ll have enough money for that!” — can you see that at least with this thought there’s hope? There’s room for what you want to happen? When we say negative thoughts like “I’ll never have [blank]” there’s no room for it to happen. It’s like you’ve shut the door on your own desire to have [blank]. If you don’t believe it can happen, it surely won’t.).
Another example is when someone tells you a dark or sad story and after you say “gosh, that was really heavy”. What you’re trying to articulate without even knowing it is that the energy attached to the topic — or the energy that was exchanged in the sharing — was heavy. Watching the news can be a heavy experience these days. It’s usually filled with death, violence, people trying to get over on each other, people harming each other, fear, destruction, etc. That’s all heavy stuff, and it all has negative energy attached to it.
It’s important to have healthy boundaries even when watching the news and to watch as a detached observer and not as a participant, taking on other people’s hardships, fear, and pain. To find more articles on this topic, click here and search for the keywords “healthy boundaries”.
Even TV shows we call “entertainment” can negatively affect our energy. If the topic is dark or heavy or full of negative things – death, violence, fear, cancer, etc. it can pull down our energy, put us into a negative headspace or keep us down. Have you ever watched an intense movie and felt heavy afterwards? Conversely, have you ever watched a really inspirational movie and felt really uplifted afterward? Or, watched a really inspirational story about someone’s life and felt really inspired about your own life?
Energies such as joy, peace, happiness, and love are lighter energies—literally, they are less dense—and so they feel lighter; we consider them higher vibrational energies. They can actually lift us up if we’re in a lower vibrational place. They are inspirational and they open us up to the beauty of life. They make us feel good, and they also open our energy and hearts to experiencing more of its kind.
Everything we let enter our thoughts and mind has the power to affect our energy and our reality.
Negative Actions
I consider negative actions to be any actions we take that are the opposite of what we say we value and/or are outside of the basic principles of compassion, decency, and love (to ourselves or others). When we act in ways that are inconsistent with compassion, decency, and love toward ourselves and/or others, we create negative energy in our lives, bodies, and in our experiences. We have to. When we operate negatively, we create negativity in our bodies, in our lives, and in the world.
Negative actions always have negative reactions. We may not always feel the negative reaction right away, but it’s always going to be there and find you again.
If we want less negativity in our lives, we must hold ourselves to high standards and act in only positive ways — even when it’s damn hard to.
Negative Energy
We’ve all had the experience of being in a bit of a negative mood and then we talk to one of our friends who’s in such a great mood and laughing and having fun and we naturally felt better about the mood we were in. What happened is that our friend shared their light with us and we were able to take some of it in and it made the dark/heavy energy in us release and/or move to the back of our experience. Conversely, the same has likely happened where you were in a great mood and someone came around who was in a negative mood and their negativity took you down to a not-so-great place.
Energy is exchanged between people all the time. It happens through our thoughts, words, actions, presence, etc. This is another reason healthy boundaries are so very important to learn. People can learn how to not let someone else’s mood or vibration affect them. People can learn how to be in a negative space and transition themselves to a positive space. And every single person can learn how to stay in a place of peace, love, joy, and harmony, even if unhappy people and chaos surround them. Every single person. There are tools and strategies that can do this. And I teach them. 🙂
The problem though? Most people who are in a negative place prefer to stay there, unconsciously. Negativity can be like a drug or an addiction. And for so many people, it’s more familiar than the alternative of being happy. And for those people who are not familiar with being happy, happiness may trigger all of their greatest fears and if they don’t understand how to deal with being triggered, and know how to comfort and soothe themselves through it, then they will revert to what’s familiar — negativity.
Years ago, too much joy forced me to drink just as quickly as too much pain. I didn’t know how to hold the vibration of joy. Holding joy would light up all the pain in me, reminding me of all the times that weren’t joyful or all the pain (and disappointment) that came after I allowed myself to feel joy in the past. It was more familiar to walk around devastated and in pain all the time than it was to walk around feeling hopeful and full of all kinds of joy — until I started retraining my brain to know that I could feel joy and survive. Then I made sure joy became the familiar feeling I lived with, not pain.
Every single one of us has a brain that is wired to do only what’s familiar. This dates back to caveman days and being a part of a tribe. If you went rouge, took a new route, got a wild hair up your ass, or did something unfamiliar in those days, you got eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. So our brains were wired to always do what was familiar — to keep us alive, even if it created misery for us. The challenge is that our brains have not caught up with our new reality in that we can now make choices that differ from the status quo — and not get eaten by saber-toothed tigers. What this means is that our environment now allows us to live and survive even in unfamiliar territory. But, sometimes we have to force ourselves into that unfamiliar territory and stay there long enough until it becomes familiar before it feels good and rewarding to us.
Likewise, sometimes we have to force ourselves out of our negative thinking habit pattern until positive thinking becomes familiar and habitual to us.
Now, the cool thing is that once a person knows this and they know the tools for shifting their negative energy into positive energy, they can enjoy a much happier life. I’ve dedicated this entire website to teaching both, so please read up. 🙂
Emotional Pain
Having emotional pain—conscious or subconscious—will affect our energy patterns as well. We can trace much negativity to pain within us.
When I say pain, I’m not just referring to hurt feelings, I’m also referring to fear, anger, resentment, jealousy, insecurities, self-hate, self-shame, self-judgment, etc. All of these are forms of pain in our emotional body. And we can have these forms of pain in our emotional body, even if we are not expressing them in the present moment. For example, one can have a subconscious fear of being loved but not feel triggered about this fear in the present moment. But the subconscious fear can create negativity in the person’s thoughts, beliefs, actions, and energy. Maybe they are always skeptical of love, or maybe they are always negative about someone else’s loving relationship, or maybe they don’t believe that true love exists–or they believe that they’ll never find it, or worse off… true love finds them and they reject it because it reminds them of all the pain and fear they feel inside of being loved (they defend against it).
I have found that people who are negative all the time or have negative energy are people who are simply carrying more pain than they can comfortably handle and they typically have a mindset about themselves, others, and life that keeps them stuck in pain and unable to feel anything positive.
Sometimes negativity is an unconscious programmed response (e.g. the last time I felt joy, I lost everything. So, if I never feel joy again, then I never have to feel the pain of losing it) and/or an unconscious coping mechanism (e.g. if I assume everything will always go wrong, then I never have to feel the pain of disappointment or I never have to live up to everything I’m capable of when things go right). You can see how that last example is almost nonsensical when we look at it consciously and logically. What this person is really saying (without knowing it) is that they’d rather stay in perpetual pain (always negative and dark//heavy) rather than risk something good happening and/or risk the temporary pain they may feel when something doesn’t turn out the way they wanted it to.
Our pain forces us to create programs and patterns, addictions, and escapes because most people were never taught how to safely feel their pain and heal. So, as a society, we’ve been programmed to escape our pain, hide it, run from it, blame it on others, shame others for the way they make us feel… all of that, all because we are trying to protect ourselves from ever feeling pain again. So, we stay in a perpetual loop of pain. And it’s all caused because people don’t realize how powerful and purposeful their pain is… to heal them. You can read more about Purposeful Pain here.
So, Shannon, I hope this answered your question. 🙂 There are many more layers and many more nuances, and many more perspectives that I didn’t include here. What I’ve shared is just a portion of my perspective and all that I could articulate in this post. What I will say, though, is please read more of my articles and free coaching responses as all of them are dedicated to giving people the tools to grow personally, release negativity, and live a joyful life. If you are going through a particular situation that you’d like my opinion on, please submit your free coaching request here.
I hope this information finds you well, happy, and in a positive frame of mind. 🙂
With love, gratitude, grit, and grace,
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