UNDERSTANDING - THE MECHANICS OF ENERGY DRAIN ▶️What's Actually Happening When You "Absorb" Other peoples energy. Let's talk about about the mechanics, because understanding what's happening is the first step to stopping it. Every human has an energetic field—call it an aura, a biofield, whatever language works for you. This energy field has boundaries, like your skin has boundaries. Most people's fields are relatively contained. They leak a little, sure, but they maintain basic integrity. Empaths have naturally porous fields. It's not a flaw—it's a feature. This porosity allows you to sense and feel what others are experiencing. It's how you "just know" things. It's why you can walk into a room and immediately sense the tension from an argument or disturbance that happened hours ago. But here's where it goes wrong: Most empaths never learned to control the porosity of their own field. Your field is like a screen door that's always open. Everything flows through—emotions, energy, thoughts, moods. You're not choosing to absorb these things. It's happening automatically, unconsciously, constantly. When you're around someone who's anxious, their anxiety literally enters your field. Your nervous system responds as if it's your anxiety. Your body produces the stress hormones. Your thoughts start racing. And because you didn't consciously take it on, you don't realize it's not yours. This is why you can feel fine one moment and devastated the next. It's not mood swings. It's energetic absorption. ▶️The Difference Between Empathy and Energetic Merging Here's the distinction most people miss: Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person's feelings while maintaining your own separate experience. You feel with them, not as them. Energetic merging is when your field and their field blend together. You lose track of where you end and they begin. You literally take on their emotional state as your own. Empathy is healthy. Merging is devastating. Most wounded empaths are actually merging, not empathizing. And nobody taught you the difference.