The energetics of relationships with Hijackals can shut you down emotionally, and even physically. Understanding what happens within yourself, and why, can help you thaw, move, and take action in your own best interests. You need to hear this to empower yourself and get unstuck!
HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS EPISODE:
- Energy exchanges can be damaging
- How Hijackals are constantly sending “high charge: in your direction
- The energetics of relationships
- What happens when you cannot safely discharge energy
You are not powerless, although you may be feeling that way. You may be so worn down and torn down that you are overwhelmed by the negative energy that is always being sent your way.
We are energetic beings. We need to be balancing the positive and negative energy, the heightened and depressed energy, and therefore, we need to recognize when we are receiving or feeling too much charge, or the opposite: feeling depleted and exhausted. And, we need to know what’s causing it.
In this episode, I talk about the energetic interchanges of relationships with Hijackal–narcissists and anti-social folks, too.
MACHINE TRANSCRIPT
last episode, we were talking about what is healthy love. And it prompted me to think about why a person feels so frozen, stuck and powerless when they’re in a relationship with a Hijackal. So that’s tonight’s topic. Because we just get stopped, don’t we? We get stuck. Our energies freezes. We don’t know whether to go forward whether to go backward, whether to go up whether to go down where it is safety ly. And so we’re going to have a good talk about that tonight. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’m glad that you’ve returned if you’ve heard another episode. And if you’re new welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. You can go back and find over 235 episodes at save your sanity podcast calm. If you’d like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com/save your sanity. So the big question then is, why do you feel so stuck. And I’m sure you have a lot of ideas about that. But when you’re in that state, when you’re in that stuck, frozen, powerless state, many things are going on, that are overwhelming. And so let’s take that apart, let’s really examine what’s underneath all of that, and what is holding you in that bind. And when you’re feeling stuck and frozen and powerless, there are things that are likely to happen. You are likely to buy the love bombing that comes your way, because you so wanted to be true. You want to believe that that person that you chose who was so wonderful in the beginning, is the real person. And the nasty person with the difficulties and the rages and the silent treatments is some kind of aberration, and that’s absolutely backward. They really are that difficult person who was putting on a good show. But you so want to be right that they love you that you buy their love bombing. So you get stuck. You’re just going back and forth making a rut. You’re hooked on hope that that person you fell in love with I want to swept you off your feet is the real person as I said. So you say you get stuck. Or you think you’re being a really good person by being fair and saying, well, sometimes they’re good. And they do this or that really well. The other day I had a woman say to me that, after all the conversation we’d had about the Hijackal in her life to whom she was married, she said, but he’s a good father and amazing father, actually. And I said, in what way is he amazing? And she said he takes my son to T ball and coaches the group. I said, in what way is he amazing. She told me the same thing again. That’s not amazing. That’s what fathers do. And we get to that place where we focus on the things that they do. And we think they’re extra special and wonderful, even if they only do them occasionally. And actually Healthy People do it all the time. So we can get stuck focusing on what we think is being fair, and not really understanding that the way we’re measuring fair is a bit warped, or you’re just too worn down to speak up. You just you can’t do it anymore. You have no energy you have nothing to do, and you know what won’t help anyway, so you stay stuck. Or you become so hyper vigilant that your shoulders actually live up near your ear lobes, and you’re constantly trying to avoid further rage. You’ll do anything to not be raged at. So you stay stuck. Or maybe typical Hijackal Move. The Hijackal has all access to the finances, and you have nothing in your name and no access to finances.
So you stay stuck. Or maybe in that beautiful romantic picture that a Hijackal painting Let’s go off and live in the forest off the grid. It’ll just be us, it’ll be wonderful. And now you are totally isolated because it was a ploy to isolate you. And so you stay stuck. Or maybe they’re using the children as hostages against you. If you do anything, evil will be fall your children, I’ll take the children from you, I will badmouth the chill you to the children. And so you don’t speak up and you stay stuck. Or maybe in the most horrible case, you’re afraid of sexual or physical harm. And so you stay stuck. Or maybe you’ve just lived in fear too long. And you’re worn out, you’re just absolutely frozen. Because everything produces the wrong result when you take action. And so you stay stuck. Or maybe your anxiety is too high for too long. And you just live in anxiety, and therefore you don’t have a perspective on what’s happening. And you feel powerless and stuck, or you don’t know how to take the steps to change those things. That’s where I come in, I can help you with that. But if you don’t know how to take the steps, you don’t know how to change your communication, you don’t know how to set a tiny boundary and make it stick. If you don’t know those things, then you may stay stuck. You’re just not equipped to leave. And so you need help. And the reason that you need help, is because you’re in a place that is unsafe in every way. I know we don’t want to think we’re unsafe with our partners, but we are and so our children, when people are really accomplished Hijackals They are unsafe to be with and to be around and to have as a model for our children. So that’s why this is an important broadcast tonight. Because we need to really get deep down in our bodies. Why it is that we feel so stuck, frozen, powerless. Now, the subtitle of tonight’s episode is the energetics of Hijackal relationships. And that’s what I want to address is this energy issue. We’re energetic beings. There’s energy all around us. There’s energy within us, there’s energy flowing through us, and this basic energy of life. And so we’re all familiar with that we understand energy, sometimes it’s flowing nicely, sometimes it’s stuck. Sometimes it’s feeling filling you with good feeling. Sometimes it’s depressing, and awful and ominous. And so we’re aware of that. We have energy, and the energy must be balanced. It needs to be balanced within us. It needs to be balanced between two people among people in your family. When it’s balanced, we call it harmony.
Balance is something that we hope to achieve. But the actual fact is, we’re always balancing. We are never balanced. We are always balancing energy is always flowing, people are coming in order of our lives. Things are being said and done and expected. And so we are always balancing. So we get this charge of energy. And then we discharge energy. So it comes in and it goes out and comes in and it goes out and we achieve balance. We bring it in, we send it out. We achieve balance, but we can be overcharged, which puts our shoulders up to our ear lobes. If it stays too long, and we can be undercharged, which leaves us on the couch not wanting to get up. And with Hijackals we are experiencing all the time hypervigilance what’s happening? Where are they? What are they thinking? What are they doing? What are they going to blame me for next. And they’re, we become hypersensitive because they are Oh, the smallest thing can put them off the smallest thing that you say or do or lift an eyebrow can be the downfall of the day. And with Hijackals There’s in excess of charge. They are always pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing themselves on to your pulling away from you in order to create a deficit or to create an overcharge. And these are unpredictable environments. So that’s why they’re unsafe. We can’t it fully express ourselves in healthy ways. When we live in relationships that are basically emotionally verbally, physically, mentally, spiritually, financially, or sexually unsafe. And if you’re screaming to say, well, it’s not really unsafe. If you feel 100% confident that you are not going to have anxiety in your relationship with the Hijackal ever, then it’s not unsafe. But people with Hijackals Know that you are unsafe, you know you feel unsafe. So managing our charge, that energy that we’re feeling is coming at us that is going from us. Managing our charge is how we manage trauma. And believe me, it’s trauma is traumatic to be with difficult people, chronically, relentlessly difficult people. And our nervous system is wired for self protection is wired to take care of us. And when trauma overloads, our nervous system, our self protection fails us. Now, again, I’m bringing you some ideas from anodea. Judith, because her work on energy and love and things is so important, and so accurate to my mind. And so we have to realize that our self protection will fail us, when we are overwhelmed by a charge coming at us. And an energetic charge coming at us, which could be rage, it could be overbearing as it could be control, could be manipulation, it could be our fear that is engendered in us by their threats. And so we go into overwhelm, and our self protection fails us, our nervous system fails us. And we can become frozen. And we’re just unable to manage in any kind of a way at all. We know that if we get angry and yell and scream and say what we have to say, that doesn’t work. We know if we fall silent, we’ll be accused of the silent treatment, we’ll be accused of having nothing to say we’ll be accused of being too fearful, or having low self esteem or low self confidence. You can’t get it right with a Hijackal, can you you just can’t get it right. Because they’re always looking to be right. So you have to be wrong. And so we can become frozen. And we recognize that we can’t even engage in fight or flight, we can’t do it, we don’t have the resources, we can’t do it in a Hijackal relationship. We can’t discharge that energy by running away. And we can’t discharge that energy by fighting. Think of he had a Hijackal parent as a small child, that dynamic, where it’s the parent is raging at you. And you know, you can’t fight back. And you know, you can’t run away. Imagine how that affects a child. And then that dynamic that feeling that energetic is what allows us to attract and be attracted to the familiar energy of someone else who does it. So we’re raised by a Hijackal will almost certainly end up in our first relationship, if not marriage, being to a Hijackal as well. Because much as we don’t like it, it’s familiar energy is we feel familiar, this is how my life is this is how it always was and it feels familiar. And I’m encouraging you tonight to really examine that that familiarity is unhealthy. And I’m going to give you some ideas further about this so you can really get what is going on. So trauma, whether it’s one time huge trauma, terribly impacting to you know, one person’s trauma is not another person’s trauma. Something can happen to someone, the identical thing could happen to another person once traumatized, the other person didn’t notice. Or it’s just like a fly, they brushed up. We never can judge another person’s trauma. Because we all have an energetic difference. So how it affects one person may not affect another person. And whether it’s that one time big trauma, or it is that constant small trauma repeated, repeated, repeated. And that builds up and Hijackals we just get stuck. We just get stopped. There’s nowhere to go. There’s no safe pathway. There’s nothing to say there’s nothing to do if you do something you’ll be wrong. If you don’t do something you’ll be wrong. You say something you’ll be wrong. If you don’t say something, you’ll be wrong. You’re stuck. So there you are with all this charge pent up in you with nothing to do with it. And that’s the beginning of stuck frozen and powerless. because they give us this high charge that we cannot discharge. And discharging takes place through action using energy. And we can’t do it. And it creates a vortex of energy that impacts every part of us, Peter Levine, he’s did a lot of work with body work and somatics, as it’s called. And in his work, he calls it a trauma vortex is a constantly swirling energy disturbance. So not just how it feels to have a Hijackal parent or partner, a constantly swirling energy disturbance. You never know when it’s going to show up. Once it starts, it builds. when it ends, sometimes it ends for a long time. And there’s a strange energy like after a cyclone, that eerie quiet when you don’t know what’s coming next, that same thing happens, then if we had Hijackal parents, we unconsciously seek the same again, as I said, it’s familiar, we may not like it, but it’s familiar, we got to break that pattern, we must break down that pattern and end up breaking the pattern down. Very important, or we will stay stuck in frozen and powerless. And as if we’re still seeking there. The release that we couldn’t get from our parents, if we had a Hijackal parent is almost like we carry it over and hope we’re going to get that release in a Hijackal relationship. And it doesn’t work that way. We just get more locked out more stuck, more frozen, more powerless. Sounds really pressing, doesn’t it. But it’s so important to recognize what’s happening within us, what’s happening to us, and what isn’t able to be discharged from us. And charge that’s this energy of liar. And it animates us and it keeps us motivated. It keeps us ambitious, it attracts things to us. And it keeps energy and in relationships juicy. I mean that charge is very attractive, whether it’s still water flowing, or it’s big charges of energy that come as excitement or our success or joy, whatever it is, but blocked or is worded charge causes problems.
Because it keeps us up at night. And it makes it difficult to speak up. And it shuts us down and can even turn our body against us. You know, there’s great bodies of research to show that when we have chronic emotional abuse, chronic stress that it affects our bodies. There’s even a study in Canada small study by Dr. Gabor Ma Tei that showed that when we have chronic stress and chronic anxiety together, those two things existing together that in the study, women who had chronic stress and chronic anxiety at the same time, were nine times more likely to get breast cancer, though a small study, but very interesting, right. And you know, lots of autoimmune diseases are caused by constant anxiety, constant being on edge as topic for another time, but our body actually turns against us when we are living in these very difficult conditions. And you may have experienced that. I’ve had many clients who have experienced autoimmune things, you know, lupus, or ankylosing spondylitis, or fibromyalgia, or MS or a host of other things. And yet when they got far away, and God help healed and recovered, and those two things are different, they started to heal. And it was so vastly different for them to not be living in that energy and not have their charge contained with nowhere to go, just nowhere to go. So it turns on the body. So when you’re with a Hijackal, you are constantly on the receiving end of another person’s charge is constantly coming at you and you’re constantly afraid of it coming at you. And so you’re at the mercy of the charge the other person is dispersing in your direction. And where does it go? What happens with all this charge that comes at you and into you. And then what? Where does it go? What do you do with it? How do you do it? I mean, it’s so difficult, because if you take it all in all you are is a vibrating sack of molecules with nothing to do with them and you’re overstuffed and overwhelmed, then you don’t want to match the energy of a Hijackal when they are charging all over you. Because you know, that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, I say all the time, don’t poke a Hijackal. You know, this is not a good thing to match their energy. By having that kind of negative energy of your own. But it isn’t okay to to pull back, it is important to be fully present. And that’s a good start for you is okay, this is all coming at me. But I’m not going to crumble, I am not going to collapse, I am just going to be. And that’s a good first step because that takes courage to do that. So very good thing to do. And, and you can’t, not only can you not match it, because it’ll be destructive, you can’t mitigate it, because a Hijackal always has to be right. So if the Hijackal always has to be right, that means you always have to be wrong. So engaging in and hoping for some kind of sensible discourse is not going to happen. And I know that you’ve had that experience if you’re listening to the podcast, because you can’t have a reasonable conversation with a Hijackal, who has already decided that you’re wrong. It just hasn’t happened and you can’t mitigate it, you can’t match it. And you can’t even escalate it. Because if you escalate it, the Hijackal escalates it, because the Hijackal always has to win in every situation in every time. You know, and so you can’t do any of those things. So no matter what you lose, and there you are completely vibrating with all this energy that’s been discharged at you. And it is exhausting to you because it has nowhere to discharge. And this is why we get so stuck. To be healthy. We need a balanced flow of energy moving flowing through the body, no frozen, no stock, no powerless, no filled with anxiety, no deer in the headlights, none of that no scared stiff.
Now, an odd Judas said this wonderful thing that I want to share with you, she wrote, We need to be able to generate charge. When energy is required to feel its pulsation and movement when we have it and comment down when we have too much. We need to be able to harness its power to accomplish our goals. But most of all, we need our charge for the deeply human experience of being alive and connecting to one another and to the source of all life. Now we’ve got a big problem, because is it safe to connect with a Hijackal? Is it safe to connect with them in a way that looks for some kind of equality? Reciprocity mutuality. Now it’s unavailable from a Hijackal. So we have to connect with them in that power dynamic where they win and we lose, and you want to connect with somebody there. You don’t want to be in that imbalance. So they isolate you from others. And they want them to win. They triangulate through others, they’ll tell somebody a big story about you. And then they’ll tell you a big story about somebody else. They’ll tell you one thing, they’re telling another person another, that kind of thing. And then they they smear your reputation. Because if they feel for a moment that they can get someone on their side, that means you lose again. So again, we’re not going to have the safety to connect. And that puts us into that place with all this charge with nowhere to go. And And as I’ve said in a podcast, they blame shift. I did a whole podcast on blame shifting. You go to them and say, you know, I don’t like this or that about them. And immediately Asli No, that’s what you do. It’s not me, it’s you. So they shift the blame. They take no responsibility, no accountability for what they’re putting out. And then if you mentioned it is shifts back to being your problem, so you’re not safe and You shut down. Or if you give it back, if you speak up, if you say your truth, if you ask for what you need and what the price can be high, can’t it. And so you learn to shut down, you learn to freeze and plays, you learn to be powerless, or to feel powerless, because you’re never powerless. But you feel powerless, and it’s real. Now, Alexander Lowen, I don’t know if you would be familiar with him. But he did a lot of work with the body. And he said that living organisms can only function, when there is a balance between charge and discharge, we can’t function when we’re frozen. So again, he said, living organisms can only function when there is a balance between charge and discharge. And when you’re with a Hijackal, it is never safe to discharge. And so we get into the stock patterns, then when we feel unsafe, our bodies recognize the danger. And our body floods with charge of our own. We had that feeling, you know, your feeling of dread feeling of anxiety, feeling of concern, feeling of did I make a mistake, am I going to be blamed for something, and we build up charge within ourselves, and then we cannot engage in the fight or flight. And we freeze, because we’ve had enough experiences to know that it is not safe to discharge.
So hard, is so difficult. And it makes us immobile, even paralyzed, who says to be emotionally available in any way, because it’s unsafe. And it was, so here we are full of charge, no discharge, no relief, no release. And the charge. When we when we get charged, it brings energy in from the outside. And to discharge is to take that energy from inside and put it outside. But no, it’s all coming in, and in and in, and we’re generating our own because we’re fearful, we don’t know what to do with all the charge coming at us. So we’re generating it, we’re receiving it, and there’s nothing to do with it. So pent up energy, it just makes you feel like you’re falling apart or you’re bursting at the seams. And that’s what we call anxiety, that concern for our safety, that we will fall apart or burst at the seams. And it is so difficult. So we give out more than you take in. If you’re always giving, we’ve got the opposite problem, you’re always taking care of, you’re always giving, you have no charge left, you give all your charge away, you’re depleted, you’re empty, you’re exhausted, you’re worn down, torn, down, put down, and you’re exhausted, you’re depleted, you’re overwhelmed, and maybe you’re depressed. And again, we have to come back to that place where our job is to start to seek balance of charge and discharge. And we need techniques for that we need to learn things. That’s one of the reasons that I invite you to be part of my emerging empowered community, you can do that by going to join in today.com. There we have conversations about all the different stages, just finding out you’re with a hijack call, making decisions to stay or leave co parenting with Hijackal. Whether you had Hijackal parents, there are discussion threads of all of that. And as part of your membership, you get to group Ask Me Anything calls a month with me, so that we have a great conversation with people from all over the world. Last time there are people from Canada, the United States, Chile, Britain, and one other place. And we’re all in this together. We all can support one another. And you can find that a join in today.com. And when when a charge can’t flow freely, it’s uncomfortable. But when it meets a block, it’s uncomfortable. But we’re often afraid to release. And so we have to learn techniques to do that. Because when there’s a full discharge if we just throw it all out, we’re out of control. You know that you hate that feeling? I’m sure you do. And we’re hate it when other people are out of control towards us. That’s a full discharge when you just let everything fly at other people. And you know that coming at you so you don’t just charge you just take it on because you’re not going to give it back and you go into overwhelm? Is this making sense to you about the internal workings of how you get that frozen struck powerless feeling. When you put it in energetic terms, I think it really helps us make sense of what it is that we need to learn to balance and how we need to learn to balance, how to channel that to take action, not huge action, because that doesn’t usually work. But small incremental changes. You know, when I wrote my book, Kaizen for couples, I chose the word Kaizen so carefully, because it’s a made up Japanese word that means small, positive incremental improvement. And we want to use Kaizen approach to changing ourselves changing our lives, changing our relationships, so small improvements, so you don’t go and overwhelm, we need to discharge in a controlled way, in a way that makes sense, then we need self reflection and redirection to find appropriate, healthier ways to discharge this pent up energy. Because I think we’ve all experienced, at least I certainly have, when you just let it fly, nothing good happens, the only time that that’s going to work for us if you’re never going to see the person again. And when you’re with the Hijackal, you know, they keep coming back. So not a good idea, just not a healthy idea. And with a Hijackal is not once or twice, that you get this just charge at you, this charge coming at you and throw it into you. It’s repeated. Maybe it’s continual, unpredictable, but so frequent. And when that’s happening, you’re just taking it on and taking it on, what do you do with all that? There’s no discharge. So you need to get help to discharge to be able to do it healthily, appropriately, and incrementally, because blowouts just don’t help. So I hope this has helped you realize the what you’re feeling and that dynamic. And to recognize that we just need to let the air out of the balloon, tiny bit of time as quietly as possible, so that we can not have all that pent up anxiety, that pent up emotion, the pent up difficulties, that they’re going to keep coming at us, they’re going to keep discharging on us. And so it becomes imperative that you learn how to balance the energy of charge and discharge. We don’t want to be overcharged. And we don’t want to be undercharged, but we need to be imbalanced most of the time. And that’s going to require a constant balancing. So as I said, if you want my help, one way is to to go to join in today.com. Another way, if you want to speak to me privately, is to go to be a client.com. And take advantage of the new client one time one hour full session for only $97. And if you want to learn more about me you can go to for relationship help.com. Oh, so much energy. But you know, the flow, I could get very excited about something better, could calm down about something and we got a rhythm going. But when you’re with a Hijackal, it’s this and this and this and this and this, and then you’re exhausted. So we need to learn these things. And I’ll be talking more about the energetics of relationships with Hijackals as we go through the podcast cycle. But this introduction, I hope it makes sense to you that it is important to recognize that you are taking on way too much charge with no maybe knowledge or skills or strategies for discharge. And we can talk about that is very important. And I’ll talk about it on another podcast. So until we speak again, take very good care of yourself. Do the balancing act, see how you can learn to discharge small ways so that you are not living with pent up anxiety that keeps you frozen, stuck and powerless or feeling powerless. So until we talk again, as I said take very good care of yourself. You’re precious and you matter. Talk soon. Thank you for joining me on the save your sanity podcast today. I hope you’ve had some new insights, some ideas and strategies to help you gain clarity and confidence from moving forward toward greater emotional health and safety. You deserve that and so to your children, if you found value here and would like to support this podcast With $1 of five each month, please do so at patreon.com/save your sanity? Learn more about how to work with me via video conference, join me optimize circles, or subscribe to this podcast on my youtube channel at my website transforming relationship.com Talk soon
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