5 choices for dealing with parasitic energy

When I was in the fifth grade, the science teacher showed us a video about parasites.

The video showed how an innocent little snail moving along the limb of a tree unknowingly ate a parasite, and it later progressed to show footage of the parasite slowly taking over the snail’s body. In the final stages before the parasite killed its host, the snail–usually your average, everyday brownish looking little guy–was actually pulsating this weird striped white, yellow, and black color.

I could hardly look at the screen. Everything in me felt empathy for that poor snail who had simply been going along, minding its business–and then a parasite had taken over its body.

Parasitic Energy

There is such a thing as “parasitic energy,” energy that can seemingly live and grow and start to spread throughout its host, until it becomes all-consuming.

This is something different than so-called “energy vampires,”  which I don’t actually believe in—I do not believe that other people can “suck our energy” without our being a willing participant.

Parasitic energy, on the other hand, is energy that is all consuming. When you’re stuck in it, you feel triggered and anxious, and you start ruminating on what might happen or did happen, casting yourself as the victim of someone else’s behavior without thinking of any way you might want to change or engage differently. You start feeling attached to results. You start anticipating in advance how you’ll react if X happens versus how you’ll react if Y happens. You’ll feel defensive and judgmental of how everything outside of yourself is being handled, while mentally validating and insisting that however you’re handling things is on the up-and-up. For sure, when you’re caught in parasitic energy, you feel lower energy, tired, frustrated.

I call it parasitic energy because, much like that snail, sometimes we’re just going about our lives and we pick it up. It’s not intentional. You aren’t a bad person. It’s not as if you woke up in the morning and thought, “I know; today I’ll ruminate on something negative until I feel pissed off and depressed.” If anything, the parasitic energy feels as if it just comes over you, takes over, squeezes every last drop you’ve got. It’s just part of being a human to deal with parasitic energy, sometimes.

But this isn’t a victim thing. Unlike the snail, we have a lot of choices as to how we will proceed.

Choices, Choices, Choices

Choice #1: Noticing what it feels like when parasitic energy has taken over. This is basic somatic awareness to notice when you feel bad, and decide to observe exactly what’s going on—what are the sensations? What are the thoughts? This somatic awareness, however, has to focus on simply being aware. Don’t make it mean anything, just yet.

Choice #2: Unpack the Stories. When you’ve spent some time simply being aware, now you can ask yourself what the “Stories” are that you tell yourself about the situation. What are you making it mean? Is there another possible interpretation? Are you telling stories that are limiting? Are there stories that speak more to possibility?

Choice #3: Look a few layers underneath the presenting Stories. What’s driving this Story? Why would this be the Story I would adopt? What frame of mind must I be, in to adopt this Story?

Someone once brought up a topic with me that I said I wasn’t open to discussing on the phone. What I really meant was that I wasn’t open to discussing it at all, but I had only mentioned the phone. The person later emailed me. I was furious—I told them I didn’t want to discuss it! How dare they! I had to pause with what I felt, unpack the Stories that I was “making it mean” that they were overriding my boundaries. Then I asked myself, “What’s driving this Story? Why would this be the Story I would adopt?” It occurred to me that there was a place where I didn’t trust the person and that was the real issue. If I trusted them, I would have easily assumed, “Ah, they misunderstood me—they didn’t realize that I don’t want to talk about this.” Dealing with parasitic energy, it was harder for me to see this.

Choice #4: Choose a course of action that is the antithesis of your Story, and see if that creates movement.

The place from which we habitually react and get stuck is a place you’d think we would all recognize and not do, yet again, the next time around. But we are human, so when we are faced with parasitic energy our tendency is usually to battle it in all the usual ways. And often, that means we’re just stuck in it, longer and it becomes even more parasitic. So, when dealing with parasitic energy, what if we choose the opposite? What if we choose patience when we are most sure that someone should be hurrying? What if we choose compassion when we are most sure that we have been wronged? What if we choose action when we are most sure that the systems are too big and powerful to every change?

Choice Five: Ask yourself: “What would acceptance do? What would forgiveness do? What would compassion do in this situation?”

Parasitic energy feeds on “being right.” Asking what the choices of acceptance, forgiveness, or compassion would bring is a way of getting out of “being right” and into being back in our grounded selves.