Hurting Others with Energy: Part 2 of 5

Many people don’t consider harsh criticism, insults, and trash-talking to be a form of violence. It is.

In Part 1 of this long piece I described a dramatic, blatant pattern of how we let ourselves hurt each other by pretending we don’t see it happening. Looking at addiction, whether it’s to an external substance or a habit of behaviors, is an easy way to see how careless we can be about flinging pain at others, and by staying in the pain reality ourselves. By constantly dreading it, expecting it, deflecting it, and causing it—we continually re-abuse ourselves.

In Part 2, I want to talk about the more subtle ways we hurt each other with energy. But how do you injure someone with energy? Outright verbal and physical attacks and violence are an obvious way, yet many people don’t consider harsh criticism, insults, and trash-talking to be a form of violence. It is.

Remember the last time someone put you down? How easy was it to get out of that low-frequency state? To handle the meanness or dismissiveness, you probably either had to close your heart, go away and cry, get involved in an intense activity, indulge an addiction, or throw more meanness back in the perpetrator’s face.

There are so many reality television shows in the past few years that feature catty girls and women calling each other whores and bitches, or where there is ceaseless gossip and nastiness behind each other’s backs. Or, the host or hostess proclaims, “You’re fired!” or “You’re OUT!”

How awful can we make someone look and feel? Why is this huge behavior trend put squarely in our face? Are we trying to see through it? Trying to understand how to heal childhood pain by diving directly into it again? Perhaps there is a vicarious thrill in watching someone else hurt others and be hurt by others—as long as it’s not me, right?

My experience is that by repeating these literally insane, pain-based cycles of feeling wounded then wounding others to avoid feeling our own wounds doesn’t get us anywhere, except locked into a never-ending, repeating, wound-generating, and wound-feeding reality that is a living hell-realm. There is no end to these cycles, no way out, as long as we perpetrate the punishment reaction, either by punishing and blaming ourselves or others.

The Silent Treatment

Besides saying and doing mean things, it’s also possible to hurt others by simply shutting down while they’re sharing themselves. I have often experienced people clanging the energy door shut in my face when what I’m saying hits too close to home concerning one of their personal issues. In these situations, I had not been preaching or trying to change them, but they made me feel like I’d done something wrong by shutting down the energy exchange and reflecting my own energy back at me, making it seem negative.

So, too, when friends text or take calls on their cell phones during a lunch date while we’re having a conversation, the rudeness is a subtle meanness, a way of hurting by withholding attention and energy. And what about the plague of people who are habitually late for appointments and either laugh it off or have a plethora of excuses when they arrive? And the ones who reschedule appointments multiple times because something else more important than you came up at the last minute? Or people who don’t return phone calls?

Is this just a normal part of life? Or are these also ways we hurt each other with energy, and don’t practice the Golden Rule? There are thousands of seemingly innocuous ways each day that people convey to others that, “I’m important, and you’re not.” This is hurting others with energy.

Since we are all becoming so sensitive, telepathy factors into our exchanges more and more. We can literally read each other’s minds these days. So if someone is judging me mentally, for example—no words spoken—I may immediately feel unwanted or unloved without quite knowing why. It can take a while to realize what has happened in these subtle energy situations, and return to my own home frequency. That’s time I could have used creatively.

(continued in Part 3)