Time to Stop Matching People’s Energy

As I was perusing through Facebook, and just hanging out, I came across this post from my cousin Tarrel Gulledge (also known as King Iso),

“Anybody that is operating on a high frequency knows that the last thing you’d ever want to do is match someone’s energy”, considerably applying the they could be operating in the negative, literally. People say and do messed up stuff to me all the time, but I am not about to echo that or internalize it. You basically affirming that you’d purposely lower yourself at that point…”

When I say that I was stopped in my tracks after I read that, I was like a deer in headlights, because it is true. Now let’s be honest with each other, how many of us simply did not or do not like someone simply due to the fact that they were “rude” to us or did not speak to us when would have liked them to? We then wrote that person off and said, “shoot, I am just matching their energy”. Come on now, I know you have been in those one-sided beef’s because you think the other person feels “some type of way” about you. Then when the person actually comes around, we are making Facebook post talking about “when I first met you, I didn’t like you” or “You looked mean when I first met you”. I think this culture has a way of throwing people away like bad weaves.

Now it’s to hit you with the truth. The reason we are so quick to throw people away or write them off is because we have developed negative coping strategies. Essentially, we are trying to protect ourselves from being vulnerable, hurt, or afraid. We do not want to give people a chance to get that close to us to where they can hurt us. We want to feel in control of the situation. Yet, when we do not feel in the control of the situation, we start to retreat instead of assessing the situation.

Whenever someone would make me upset, my mama would say to me, “Why are you letting other people take your energy away?” I did not understand what she meant until I was an adult. Here you are, this happy and positive person, why are you letting one individual change that? What if I tell you, that you do not have to match negative energy, and that you can still hold on to your peace and energy? Let’s stop internalizing people’s bad attitudes and beliefs and start keeping our energy. Here are a couple steps that you can take to not match people’s energy:

1. Stop assuming the worse (I got this one from the bible): When initially encounter someone that has “negative energy” we start to believe that we are the problem. Instead let’s start saying: Maybe they are having an off day or maybe they are having family issues that they do not know how to work through. Honestly, a person’s negative energy is rarely about you.

2. Kill them with kindness: If you say “hello” and they don’t respond, don’t stop saying ‘hello’ still greet that person. As Nene Leakes would say, "saying hello doesn't cost me anything, that's free."

3. Self-care: People are naturally going to irritate us, but when we are attempted to match energy go participate in an activity that gives you energy. Whether that is calling your close friend, working out, looking at videos, or hyping yourself up.

The term we use in therapy is rationale reframing. We take a negative event and change the context of it. The first two steps are teaching you how to reframe and challenge your thoughts that come to your mind. Let stop allowing people have so much access to us and continue living our lives for us. We do not need to lower ourselves to match someone's energy. It's a waste of time.

Arianna Crum, PLMHP, MSW, MPH