Feeling wiped out? Energy leakage might be to blame

Written by Katie Rosseinsky

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Small negative moments can have a major impact on your emotional energy once they start to accumulate. Here’s how you can tackle energy leakage and recharge your batteries. 

How are you feeling right now? The chances are, your answer will probably involve some variation on the theme of “knackered”. 2022 has been the year of the Great Exhaustion: two years into the coronavirus pandemic, we’re still grappling with the longer-term mental and physical repercussions of this era-defining event, including a pervasive sense of overwhelm and emotional exhaustion. And just to compound this all-encompassing tiredness, now we’ve reached December, end-of-year burnout is creeping in.

Conserving our mental energy reserves, then, has never felt more important. When it comes to energy-zapping activities, we tend to think of the big hitters: work stresses, tiring journeys, time-consuming chores and difficult emotional situations, such as arguments or breakups. But smaller interactions and day-to-day moments can be just as draining when they accumulate, according to Melissa Urban, the author of The Book Of Boundaries: Set The Limits That Will Set You Free.

She argues that “every interaction you have, whether you’re meeting your [mum] for lunch or replying to a social media comment… is an energetic exchange”, according to Huffington Post. Sometimes those exchanges “can leave you feeling really invigorated and positive and restored”. Think about how a conversation with that friend who just gets you can seriously revive your spirits when you’re in a slump, but sometimes the exact opposite occurs: “You just feel depleted, you feel anxious, you feel overwhelmed, you feel frustrated.” Sound familiar? 

Urban describes an interaction that takes up more energy than it’s giving back as an “energy leakage”, a small but eventually significant shift that can leave us feeling drained by the end of the day. So, if you have a short but tense conversation with a scary colleague, scroll past a humble-bragging social media post that really fires up your insecurities and get let down at the last minute by the friend you were supposed to be meeting for a quick after work drink all in one day, the cumulative effect can be significant.

“Common triggers for energy leaks are hurtful comments on social media, mainstream news headlines, interactions with people, deadlines at work, and bills we haven’t taken care of,” says Niraj Naik, holistic health expert and SOMA Breath founder. “All this noisy environment around us causes stress. We can’t control all of the things that life throws at us, but we can control our inner world and how that stress [impacts] us internally.”

You might notice, too, that there are certain people in your life that seem to catalyse this energy leakage. They’ll leave you feeling a little bit worn out, whether it’s the friend who bombards you with various woes without giving you a chance to breathe, let alone share how you’ve been doing, or the former colleague who (accidentally or otherwise) has a way of making you feel bad about yourself. Or maybe it’s the family member who asks pointed questions about you settling down. They’ve become known as ‘energy vampires’, and whether their behaviour is deliberate or not, interacting with them can be emotionally exhausting.

These ‘energy vampires’ are often easy to spot: they are “the people who focus on negatives, make you feel flat or even project their own insecurities and worries onto you”, says Rhiannon Bates, business mentor and visibility coach. “It doesn’t make them bad people, just different from those who focus on positivity.” 

Other triggers for energy leakage, though, can be small and therefore hard to detect, so what is the best way to work out what is draining your own personal battery? “At the right point in the therapy cycle, I ask people to draw their ‘bucket of energy’,” explains hypnotherapist and neuro-linguistic programming practitioner Robert Brennan. “I call this a behavioural map, where you write out all the things going on in your life that drain your energy on the whole.”

Your bucket, he explains, might include a difficult family relationship with a sibling or parent or your job; it might contain another ongoing worry like your housing situation or the pressure of expectations (your own or other people’s). These energy drains belong in the bottom half of the bucket: over the top, you “draw in your arrows marking your energy top-ups – friendships, time with your partner or colleagues”.

It’s important to recognise that all the drains aren’t necessarily outright negatives. “Some of the drains are also top-ups and some of the top-ups are also drains,” Brennan says, noting that parenting is a good example of the former: “It takes energy, but we get so much joy and happiness from our children that the net balance is generally positive.” 

Exercise, he notes is generally a top up to people’s energy, but the very thought of going to the gym can be quite draining. “The strategy for this could be [to tell yourself] that I’m going to get up, not chat on my phone and go to the gym with no distractions, then I’ll get the benefit of the top-up and I won’t beat myself up about it all day.”

If work is sapping your internal battery, the solution isn’t just to remove that demand completely, because you’ll just be creating a whole new load of worries. “If work is draining your energy, you can just leave the job. That’s one solution, but then you’re going to be drained by lack of money, fear and uncertainty,” Brennan says. Instead, try breaking the drain down into more manageable segments that you can find more practical solutions for. 

“What you might say is, ‘I don’t like my boss, so I’m going to manage that drain and speak to the HR team, read a book about behavioural management and look for another job on the side,’” Brennan notes. “This approach will start to top you up a little bit as you might get excited about your career again and by the time you do quit your job you’ve got something else lined up to manage the drain.” 

Even if you love your job, “knowing what drains you can also be a powerful tool”, says positive psychology coach Dr Tania King-Mohammad, as it can help you home in on tasks that you could outsource or delegate.

Keeping a diary could help you to keep on top of the people and scenarios that build you up and bring you down. “Track the things you do and whether they feel like an energetic investment or an energetic drain,” says Bates. “Some things may not feel like either but over time you’ll gradually start to see patterns of the things that fill you up and those that deplete your energy resources… Once you bring your awareness to your habits, behaviours and energy you can take steps to find balance or plan your day so you have harmony between depletion and refilling.” 

When you’ve identified those triggers that are causing your energy to ebb away, mindfulness and breathwork could help you retain that sense of balance in the moment, so that these interactions don’t throw you off kilter. Naik recommends a slow rechaka, or exhalation. “The ideal ratio is when your exhale [time] is double your inhale time,” he says. “This ratio is also shown in studies as the optimum time needed for increased relaxation, stress reduction, mindfulness and positive energy.”

When you breathe in this ratio, he explains, the conscious focus and effort required to extend the exhale stimulate the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that deals with awareness, attention and memory. “By bringing your attention to slowing down the exhale, your thoughts become more focused, the parasympathetic nervous system is switched on and your emotions become calmer.” We’re feeling more relaxed already. 

Another way to pre-empt the impact of draining scenarios is to build “short and snappy daily resets” into your day, says King-Mohammad, which might include affirmations, meditation, practising gratitude and moving your body. “They only need to be five to 10 minutes but these micro-resets with a focus on all of these good things can work wonders for shifting energy and getting you out of an energetic funk or feeling drained. This means you can move onto something new feeling good and bring your best self to the next thing in your day.”

Images: Getty

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