"How can I avoid other people’s negative energy?" asked one of my clients. 

You can't. 

What you can do is learn to navigate away from it or handle it in such a way that it doesn't affect you so much. 

Many people have negative energy. They are closed, hard, angry, withdrawn, anxious, stressed, blaming, resentful, irritated, hurt, judgmental, and so on. Their negative energy is theirs - it has nothing to do with you, but they may be directing it toward you, just as you might do when you are in your wounded self. When people are stuck in their wounded selves, they tend to dump their negative energy onto others as a way of dealing with it. 

This can happen any time you are with another person or out in public. If you are not aware of it, you can get zapped by someone's negative energy even while shopping at a supermarket. Someone you don't know might glare at you for any number of reasons - jealousy, neediness, or because you remind them of someone they resent. Or you might be the one doing the zapping without realizing it. 

More common are negative energy dumps with people you know - your partner, child, parent, boss, co-worker, or best friend. 

You might feel it as a clenching in your stomach or a tightness in your heart. These feelings are your inner child letting you know that you have been zapped with negative energy, or that you are dumping negative energy onto others. 

The challenge here is two-fold: becoming aware of sending negative energy to others and becoming aware of negative energy being sent to you. Both of these are handled by the same choice - the choice of compassion. 

Compassion is an extremely powerful energy - far more powerful than any negative energy that you can send out or that can be sent to you. Imagine negative energy as a dark room. Imagine compassion as a brilliant light. The moment you turn on a light in a dark room, the darkness is gone. 

Light is far more powerful than darkness. 

The powerful energy of compassion is like a shield of light that can protect you from negative energy. However, the key is that the compassion has to be for yourself first. You need to be in Step One of Inner Bonding - tuned into your feelings with deep compassion. The moment you feel the negative energy in your stomach, solar plexus, or heart, you move into Step Two, the compassionate intent to learn. Instantly, you can know if you are being dumped on or if you are doing the dumping of negative energy, and you can then feel compassion for yourself. If you are being zapped with negative energy, you can extend the compassion outward toward the other person, which forms a protective shield of compassion around you. Now the negative energy bounces off, as if it is hitting a bubble. You are inside the compassion bubble, safe from any negative energy. 

With practice, you can be in this state even before any negative energy comes your way. When you are consistently operating as a loving adult, connected with your source and consistently bringing through compassion to your own feelings – your inner child , you can reach a point where you are not projecting out negative energy and you don't even feel the zap of another's negative energy. Someone can be sending you negative energy, but it bounces off your compassion bubble without it going into your body at all. You can be aware of the negative energy, and send compassion to the other person, but you are mostly unaffected by it. 

We all need to be aware of how profoundly energy can affect us and others. 

We need to be aware of the energy we are sending out, and we need to be taking loving care of ourselves so that we are not receiving others' negative energy. 

You can certainly choose to not spend a lot of time with negative people, but everyone will likely have some negative energy at times. Consistently practicing Inner Bonding will help you to remain inwardly peaceful in the face of others' negative energy and will support you staying in a loving adult state so that you are not sending negative energy to others. 

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."