7 Ways to Avoid Getting Sucked In to Other People's Dramas

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a situation, that doesn't really concern you, where there is a lot of anger, or fear, or even sadness, going around? Perhaps you've been invited to dinner by a couple whose marriage is falling apart, and the air crackles with the intensity of silent recrminations. Or maybe two of your colleagues, both of whom you like, can't stand each other, and they each come crying to you. Or perhaps an acquaintance, not someone you are close to, has just been diagnosed with cancer, or a friend's sibling (whom you've never met) just died. Emotion swirls around you, but it isn't of your making, and really, it doesn't concern you, except in John Donne's sense:

"No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Well, I was in one of those situations this week. (Sorry, I can't talk about it, but I promised I wouldn't.)

I kept hearing my guides say, "It serves no one for you to get caught up in their drama", which is, of course, true. If I get caught up in these others' drama, then I am not available to support them, and I feel lousy, too. It also serves no one for me to feel sorry for them, because that actually prevents their healing. (Don't believe me about that last? Take my Intuition Development telecourse, and you'll learn through your own experience that it's true.)

So what can you do to avoid getting caught up in other people's dramas? Here are a few ideas:

• Get out of the situation! Literally. Remove yourself from physical proximity to the actors in the drama as much as possible. If you can't help, and often the actors in the drama don't want help, why stay? Whom would it benefit?
  
• Keep reminding yourself that it is not your drama, and that it serves no one for you to get sucked in to it.
• Visualize yourself as standing at the fulcrum of a see-saw -- You stay neutral while they have all the ups and downs.
• Ground -- and pull up earth energy through you for more protection. Use this energy to fill your aura.
• Put your shields up. Remember all the energetic protections you have learned -- thicken the edges of your aura, put a shield in front of your second chakra, etc. (Again, check out the Intuition Development telecourse for more.)
• Ask your guides/angels for protection -- they can remember to protect you even when you can't.
• Turn down the volume of the feeling -- if you feel something in your body, notice where that is, and then literally turn down the intensity of the feeling, or move the feeling out of your body.

Remember, these methods of protecting yourself are not either/or. You can use all of these more or less simultaneously, if necessary.