Being in awareness, you have the ability to hear your inner truth. You begin to look more closely at your response or dance with toxic energy.

When in the company of someone who triggers a negative reaction in your body or emotional state, how do you respond? In other words, what is your role in the dance with toxic energy?

Do you not respond because you do not know how to respond, even though you would like to defend yourself? Does the negative remark silence you? Or do you respond like a victim—helpless and hopeless—thinking, why is this happening to me? Or do you engage and try to “fix” the situation by apologizing for someone else’s bad behavior? 

Your response can often keep someone negatively engaged. Perhaps you stay in the dance because it actually feels normal to you.

If someone yells at you or speaks to you in a tone that doesn’t feel right and you don’t respond, what happens to the negative energy that was just directed towards you? I often wonder how negative energy is ingested or stuffed down deep into our psyches. Does it accumulate? And if it accumulates, does it then show up somewhere in your body as an ache, or over a long period of time, as a physical dis-ease, a psychological disturbance or disorder?

When old feelings are triggered and surface, they can feel like past wounds that have not quite healed. And it is painful when they open up again and again. Toxic energy doesn’t listen very well and it doesn’t respond to reason. 

There are different ways to respond to the dance with toxic energy. Sometimes it is important to step away from the person or situation. Creating space allows you to look at the interaction, your role and to problem solve. 

Being in your awareness will help you to identify what triggers your response to toxic energy and it will also help you to identify the old coping patterns of behavior. With support and healing, you can learn new ways of being in your awareness and listen to your inner truth without opening up the old wounds.

It takes practice to be in your truth. And being in your awareness will produce more empowered outcomes with your dance with toxic energy.