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I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 216, Energetic Boundaries – Protecting Your Peace Without Building Walls.

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Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast where courageous women learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become the boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves ever. If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently living but don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place. Stick around to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

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Hello everybody. Welcome to episode number 216. I’m going to talk today about a topic that I’ve been in a deep learning about lately, something that I’m really understanding at a level that I don’t think I ever have, and with that understanding I want to share with you, I want to share with you. So energetic boundaries. Energetic boundaries, what are they? So we are in a time, which I’m grateful for that we talk a lot about boundaries in ways that we never have before. We’re talking about boundaries. What are they? I need to set boundaries, right? And often I know when I think of boundaries, I think more of physical things like, I don’t want you to call me after this time, and if you do, I won’t pick up, right? Or with some of my clients that are dealing with shared custody, it’s like we only will communicate custody issues over this app or through email, right?

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We’re not going to text back and forth, or please don’t text about anything personal, right? Energetic boundaries are boundaries that we set when we are wanting to protect our energy. And it’s not necessarily things like, don’t call me because energetically is too much. It sometimes is where we are trusting how something makes us feel. Even if on paper there’s nothing wrong with what the other person is doing. In fact, even if on paper they’re doing the things that we told them that we want them to do, okay? So for example, many of you may feel like your partner, your spouse is doing what you ask them to do, that they’re like following what you ask, keeping the lines, reporting different things, this and that. But you may still feel exhausted when you’re talking about things. You may still feel drained, you may still feel like you’re replaying the conversation and that something feels off, and you don’t even know why.

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What you’re experiencing is thin, energetic boundaries. They’re thin. There are very porous, and part of our healing has to be to gather back our own energetic resources, bring some of that energy back to us, restore some of that energy back, to give ourselves some of the energy that we have been pouring out and pouring out and pouring out so that we can decide from a more energetically whole place what we want our next moves to be. Okay? Now, energetic boundaries are not about keeping people out. They’re about keeping ourselves in, staying in our own body, staying in our truth, staying in our own vibration, our own frequency that we are working so hard to heal. Okay? So what are energetic boundaries? In every relationship there is energy exchange. Every relationship we have, often there is an over-functioning, more energy being thrown out to try to get the other person to do certain things that make us feel better about how much energy we’re putting out.

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Sometimes it’s spoken, often it’s not empathy, being overly empathetic, overly compassionate, overly caretaking, trauma, bonding. These things can really blur the lines making choices when we didn’t have all the information and we are going off of what we felt at the time, and then going back later and going, whoa, had I known this and this and this, I would’ve made a different choice. Sometimes we made those choices from a place where we didn’t have great energetic boundaries, and we thought that the only way to be safe was to make those choices so that other people would give us the things that we needed to feel safe and know many of you have felt that way about getting married when, particularly those of you that got married young, if I would’ve known, then would I known Now, I don’t know that I’d make that same choice.

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That could be a true statement. Now, after betrayal happens, we often amp up how much energy we’re giving out. We get hyper, hyper aware, hyper attuned to others. We scan, scan, scan for danger. We’re scanning for approval, we’re scanning for closeness. And that constant attunement means that our energy is often everywhere, but within ourselves. And I want to backtrack with that a little bit. I don’t actually like using the word attunement with this because attunement, I like actually hyper attuned, okay? Attunement is a very, very healthy thing when we are really locked into somebody else’s experience without needing something from them. It’s being aware, mindful where we are fully in presence with ourselves. Hyper attuned is where we’re so plugged into them that it’s energetically taking things from us to stay plugged into them. Okay? Mutual attunement. There’s reciprocity, there’s give and take. So energetic openness, and in the realm of energetic boundaries is it’s a place where we feel open to somebody.

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There’s a healthy sensitivity, there’s a curiosity. I wonder what’s on with them, right? Energetic fusion is where we get lost in being that caretaker, being aware of what’s going on, we get lost, fused with them to the point where we can’t even understand what’s going on with us because we’re so locked into their energy, right? On a personal note, I have noticed in my own lifetimes where I’ve been emotionally fused with children, with spouses where hyper fixation or hyper awareness of what’s going on with them so that I can match their energy or bring mine down or try to make it more comfortable for them. And what I’ve learned is that all that’s doing is bringing me down. It’s not helping anyone, right? And what I have learned is that realizing that I’m giving away my own energy stores to manage someone else’s state is depleting for everyone.

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It doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help anyone. Alright, so let’s talk about signs that your energetic boundaries are compromised. I’m going to give you some examples, okay? One feeling exhausted after helping or listening to others. Now, I have people that ask me about the field I’m in. How do you do that? How do you listen day after day to people? Talk about the hardest experiences they’ve ever had without just feeling so tired? And the truth is that it’s because when I’m taking care of my own energy, when I know what kinds of giving, I can honestly give in my client relationships that feel good to me and honor that I can know that I’m not going to deplete myself, and I will be honest and say that some of this I have learned by having relationships with clients at times that have felt more depleting, where I’ve realized where there’s not reciprocity, where there’s more taking or more kind of an energetic mismatch, and me learning what that feels like to me, to where I know that I can give what I’m giving and walk away feeling energized and not depleted.

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Okay? For you, it’s like, are you feeling depleted when you’re listening to them cry about how sor they are and how they’ll do anything? Are you feeling depleted and exhausted or something different? It’s good to pay attention to. Are you obsessing over what someone thinks or feels? Okay? That’s a really good way to know. If you are robbing yourself of your own energy and trying to get energy from somebody else thinking that you’re depleted and that the only way you can feel better is if they plug back into you. This is a good thing to know, assigned to show you that your energetic boundaries are compromised. Three, losing your sense of clarity or intuition. Getting fuzzy. Getting confused, okay? When you’re really, there are people that are in your space that shouldn’t be in your space, or you are plugged into other people rather than plugging into yourself, okay?

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Physical symptoms, tension, headaches, heaviness and chest, stomach problems. These are often present when we are betraying ourselves by trying to get someone else to give us what we think that we can’t give ourselves, or when we are feeling dependent on somebody else after infidelity, it is common to over-function emotionally, to track moods, to scroll their socials, to think about what they’re doing or to hyper fixate on who they had an affair with, going and snooping around in their space and looking at old pictures and things like that. That is giving away your energy. It is giving it away. It’s energy leaving your body. The goal here is not to care less, to be like screw you. Don’t care. The goal is to care when. You need to care from a place of strength and wholeness, not from depletion. It’s like, this is something I want to go look at to remind myself of X, Y, and Z, or to get more information or to ground myself in what’s true, rather than pretending like everything is fine.

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Now, we have different reasons for doing things, but check in with where your energy is. When you are feeling tempted to go snoop around or to go look on the person’s socials or whatever, okay? Alright. How to reclaim your energy, call your energy back. There are ways that you can do this. One is by placing your hand on your heart and saying, all energy that belongs to me returns back to me. Okay? I’m calling it back. I’m calling back all of the energy back to me. You can visualize brushing off people’s energy. You can visualize brushing it off like getting off of your body. A huge, huge one for me is around water. Water is so cleansing for me. Water is like a reset in many ways. Sauna, hot tub, bath, shower, ocean, river, lake, all the water. It resets my body. It’s like it cleans out the crud and lets me be present with what is.

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Find what feels cleansing to you. Movement, music that moves things within you, that moves emotion within you. Okay? A boundary is not a fortress. A boundary is not a fortress. It’s like a membrane. It’s still porous enough that others can touch it, but it’s strong enough to keep people from coming in that shouldn’t come in. You can hold integrity. It’s a field, like a field, like a light field and not a wall and grounded energy. When we are grounded, it actually allows us to keep us from absorbing things that we shouldn’t absorb. So I want you to imagine literally standing in the grass, how we are grounding into the earth and that we can handle different energies coming because we are grounded into the earth. There’s somewhere for it to go. When we’re not grounded, it knocks us off axis, right? When we are grounded, we literally have a place for it to ground that goes through us, not into us.

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Honoring energetic boundaries is where it’s at, okay? It allows for deeper intimacy because connection has to require more than self abandonment. We cannot actually connect if it means that we’re betraying ourself in the process and ignoring somebody else’s bid to be close to us just because they want to be close to us when we really don’t. We can’t have real intimacy when it’s coming from pretending like we’re okay when we’re not. When your energy is clean, your own intuition gets louder and you stop mistaking guilt for love or obligation for compassion, saying no or pulling energy back to yourself is not rejecting someone else. Somebody else might take it that way. It’s not for you to make it your problem. It really is you being devoted to your own truth. You taking back that energy. You don’t need to fix or heal or save anyone to be connected.

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If you taking care of yourself, risk the relationship. If you taking care of yourself makes the other person move away from you, it’s okay. They were never meant to go the long haul with you. You only need to be fully here in your body, in your field, in your own truth, and that is good enough. Alright? It’s good enough. In the next episode, I’m going to talk a little bit about energetic yeses and nos. I’m going to go a little bit in depth with that, so stick around for that episode, and before I let you go today, I want to tell you that in my group program, get Your Life Back After Infidelity. We are doing deep, deep, deep work in this stuff right now. This is what we are doing. These are the conversations that we’re having. Everybody in there is about restoring themselves back to themselves so they can take that whole self, that energy of self, and make decisions from that place.

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If you want this kind of amazing, massive, loving, nurturing support, as you learn how to do this for yourself, please come join us. You can go right into scheduling a call with me, get on a call with me, come talk to me. You can find that on my website, andrea giles.com. The schedule link is right there. There’s many ways that you can reach out. It’s in the show notes. Go schedule a call with me. We’ll go talk through this, talk through where you’re at, what you’re needing, make a plan and get you the support, and have the support of others that are doing the exact same work. There is strength in numbers. You will go faster further when you have others that are going with you and supporting you. Alright, take care everybody. I will see you next time. Bye-bye.

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Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly email. You can subscribe@andreagiles.com slash lies about dash infidelity slash. Again, it’s andrea giles.com/lies about dash infidelity slash I will see you next time.