"Toxic Energy"

By Scripps Howard News Service

When you have toxic people around you, it's hard to feel good about life. They tend to wear you out with their negative actions and words. Judith Orloff, M.D., author of "Positive Energy," describes them as "energy vampires." The term makes sense, since toxic people can suck the life out of you.
Living with toxic energy at home can be terribly problematic. Home is where you are supposed to recharge and find some peace. If you can't do it there, you may find yourself hanging out elsewhere and creating additional issues.
Dealing with toxic energy at work is almost as bad. You may find yourself taking on more than your fair share, just to keep away from someone else's negativity or to avoid being emotionally beaten up. Sometimes, it seems, all you can do is keep a low profile and dream of retirement. If it's causing you to feel physically ill, you may want to consider looking at other options.
You can take some additional proactive steps to make your life easier. Orloff recommends that you design an energy-aware approach to diet, exercise and health and find new ways to rejuvenate yourself. Discovering what emotionally feeds you is key to maintaining a balanced life in an unstable situation.
When you deal with toxic people on a regular basis, you have to find the inner strength to cope. It can help to understand that you don't have to sink to someone else's level or leave town to make things better. Simply committing to yourself that you won't let someone else disturb your internal calm can work wonders. It also helps to keep some physical distance. A good rule of thumb is to maintain at least 3 feet of space between you and the offending party. The physically closer you are to toxic energy, the easier it is to be affected by it. You can also try to limit your communications to text messages or email, rather than have conversations in person.


Toxic according to Webster simply means, "poison." Ever been around someone that is an "energy vampire" like this article is describing? If you have, you can't survive very long, especially spiritually. Hanging around a skunk or around the area where one has let off his smell, if you stay in the vicinity for very long you begin to smell like a skunk. The same goes for hanging around someone that is toxic in their spirit. You begin to take on the attitudes and the speech of someone that has this poisonous "energy." If you have ever been around someone like this, you know what I'm talking about. They tend to drain the life out of you. You leave their presence feeling nasty and dirty, even to the point of when you get home, you want to take a shower just to wash that feeling off of you.

I will say a great big "THANK YOU" to my Mom and Dad for keeping our home free from poison. We were not allowed to talk about others unless it was about the good things. We did not "eat" the Pastor and his family for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They kept close tabs on where we were, WHO we were with, and what the conversation was like. There were certain questions that they could ask that I guess gave everything away, even if we didn't always give them the "whole" story! I will interject here that they were pretty good FBI agents even without the proper training of one!

My Pastor and his wife were another positive influence in our lives. He used to always say, "Garbage in, garbage out." I can remember sitting with them in restaurants (one special occasion comes to mind), and if someone ever brought up something that was "toxic," the conversation was very quickly shut down or changed.

I am so thankful for Godly influences that were placed in my life to help guide and lead me and my family!

God, help me to keep my conversations pure to keep from infecting others. Keith and I have two precious daughters that are looking to us for the same guidance that we received. I want them to have the same kind of examples we did!

Philippians 4:8
"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."