Like most of us that write or teach, I usually am learning what I need to share that week. With all this great lunar energy has come some good lessons and lots of insight. The lessons being learned haven’t been all too comfortable but big.

Yesterday I had a cranky or nasty fairy attack. I don’t have a great deal of patience as it is, but I was feeling super-impatient with others.

I went to Unity church yesterday feeling good and relaxed and found myself halfway through the morning cranky, drained and wanting to sleep. Keep in mind that the room was warm and even the Rev. complained that there were a few who were yawning through his lesson.

I concluded that I was picking up some nasty stuff including the general mood in the room of malaise. I did have a cranky encounter with one friend , who was being super-critical, and another who felt demanding to me because he was miffed I gave him the cold shoulder, so I figured I was picking up their stuff coming at me. That made logical sense and would explain my mood and energy drain.

Being an empath, which I am sure you can relate to, we can often pick up other folks’ stuff unknowingly even if they are thinking about us from far away. Discerning who and what it is you are picking up is crucial detective work. But what if what’s really happening is someone else’s SH*T is triggering your SH*T?

After a good night’s sleep asking for guidance, I realized that is exactly what occurred. Yes, I picked up on the mood of the room, but it was my interactions with my friends’ stuff that got me reeling and upset. ANGER is a great indicator that someone has blasted through your boundaries, which is a little of what had happened. But with new insight I realized that the big issue I had been working on from my past was being mirrored in their behavior towards me. They had just given me little clues.

When I woke up, I made a list of those behaviors that really peeved me and I could see there was a pattern developing. I continually got very upset when someone else demands of me with no regard to my needs, or is controlling and forceful while trampling my boundaries. This pattern was one that I grew up with and I probably wasn’t aware consciously that it upset me so much back then, but it stayed buried inside me until others push those specific buttons.

What I learned from this experience is not only that sometimes it isn’t empathic feeling I am picking up but those trigger buttons, but I also noticed that there isn’t a pat answer or explanation for every experience we have. If I had stopped there, and concluded that I was just sponging off someone’s feelings, or someone was psychic attacking me, or even that “bad spirits” were draining me, or, that I wasn’t “loving enough and they were only mirrors,”  I wouldn’t have gotten to the meat of that particular situation. That is one big thing I have against some new age or spiritual teachings. Every story is different, and that means different answers and different solutions. Blanket answers like “it’s all just fear or love,” may be true at the core, but doesn’t give real world day to day conclusions. Nor is “just love others” when the human relationship is so complex with all our stuff bouncing off each other! And I don’t know about you, but when someone tramples my boundaries or is abusive to me, just throwing love their way when I am supposed to be speaking up for myself and screaming NO! is not my answer.