The Power of Establishing Your Boundaries

I have experienced many transitions in my life personally and professionally in the last five years. Some of them have been strong enough to shake the foundation that I stand on and rock me to my inner core. Some of these transitions could not have been prevented. They were part of circumstances that were outside of my circle of control. Others; unfortunately, were a part of the consequences of bad decisions I have made in my past. Regardless of how the transitions occurred in my life, these events have created a ripple effect.

I have learned over the years that I am a sensitive person, and I feel things with people, animals, and even myself at a much deeper level than most other people do. Unlike Taylor Swift's song I am unable to just "Shake It Off".

I decided to research negative energy not from a physics standpoint, but from a psychological one since I have more of a background in that area. There is evidence that your interactions with people and different environments can have an impact on your mood. We live in a world where there are more mental health disorders now than ever and even though there is help out there, it is rarely the right kind of help for people. The human brain is one of the most complex organs in the body. It controls our thoughts, memories, emotions, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger, and every process that regulates our body.

Many scientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, behavior specialists, therapists, social workers, and counselors disagree on diagnoses and strategies for helping people cope with issues they are dealing with and coping mechanisms for how to deal with their issues. Our mental health industry in America is failing to help most people who are really struggling to deal with daily problems in their life.

There is a ripple effect of negative energy on people and their environments. It can be devastating and cause them to be stuck in that mentality where they do not have the tools to just get over it. Then these people become anxious and depressed and take their negative feelings out on family members, co-workers, and close friends.

There are solutions to these problems: seek counseling services from a reputable counselor that will help you find the tools to deal with the negative energy and establish boundaries with people who bring that type of negative energy in your life or empower yourself and establish boundaries that you will not allow negative energy in your home or around you or your family members. It will take hurting some people's feelings and putting your foot down and even making some people that you care about angry. However, you will have to value your mental health over their need to criticize, judge, or what they consider "helping you" to be more valuable. They can help you most by keeping their comments to themselves. If they disagree with your choices in your life or in your home, then they need to stay in their home if they are not able to respect your boundaries. The old saying of "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is absolutely not true. We live in a world where suicide is more prevalent than ever. We have to protect our mental health and the mental health of our children.

Words are powerful and help form how we view ourselves in our society. We can look back at movies like "The Breakfast Club", "Pretty In Pink", "Mean Girls", "Varsity Blues", "The Karate Kid", and "Where The Crawdads Sing" to see the effects of criticism and other negativity in people's lives. Some people are never able to escape the power of these words. These words help mold their lives and form the people they become in life. Others use those negative words as a shapeshifter to shift them into an entirely different person as they grow up.

Be mindful of who you choose to be around and the power of their words. If they are being critical and overly negative, please allow them to exit the same way they entered. It is irrelevant if they are family or friends, your mental health is nothing to bargain with and they need to respect your boundaries. It make take a few times of leaving before they receive the message that their negative comments are not welcome in your home or in your life.