Setting Energetic Boundaries Without Diminishing the Connection?

[Ammonite]

Longish post ahead, but I’d very much welcome advice if anyone has it.

I’m in a strange phase of my TF journey, and have been thinking about doing a cord-cutting or some other energy reclaiming ritual. There’s a thread here about cord cutting, and I almost put this post there before realising it probably needs its own thread. Two important people in my life (one of whom is a twin flame in union) have said they feel like this would be good for me right now, and although I was resisting the idea, I’m at a point of agreeing that something needs to happen; I’m just not sure what.

We’re in separation; my surrender began around the time he left. I have spent this year deep in growth and transformative work: powerful shadow work, connecting with my Divine Feminine, feeling this deep strength form in my being, claiming my life on my terms, discovering beautiful soul contracts with people I was always supposed to meet, recognising my need to develop and use my psychic gifts. I have felt growth and healing happening for him too, through our energy current, which he’s confirmed in one of the very few conversations we’ve had this year.

So I am way beyond the yearning obsessive stage, trusting my insights for the two of us more than ever, and knowing that our path is unfolding exactly as it’s meant to. But. I am also at a point where I’m truly choosing myself, which has been a big part of my own healing. And I know that choosing myself means choosing people who are willing to fully choose me back. This has shown itself in a few relationship dynamics in my life, but obviously it’s playing out hugely in my TF one. I love my TF unconditionally. I know he loves me too. But he is absolutely not choosing me right now, and I can’t keep putting my life on hold waiting for him to do so.

So I’ve been exploring other relationships, which in itself is part of my healing journey, for several reasons. I recently started dating someone I really like, and we’re having fun and getting to know each other and it feels really bloody good to have someone who actually wants to share this with me. Choosing this for myself feels like stepping into my own power in a deeply necessary and transformative way.

And yet… the energy exchange between me and my TF has felt intense over the past couple of weeks. He hasn’t responded to my last text of over a week ago, so I know his conscious self is avoiding again… but I am receiving new precognitive visions of our future, waking in the night to find him sharing my bed (which has included some telepathic sex), having telepathic conversations with him in which he’s expressing deep sadness and fear that I might be choosing something else, feeling him intensely in my heart chakra right after sharing intimacy with another person, seeing intense signs that are really specific to the two of us (including when I’ve been with this other person)… and I’m just feeling this deep sense of frustration over all of it. I want him in my life. He is not ready for that yet. I am choosing to fully embody my own life in the meantime, which I know is necessary for me as well as for his and my path. Our only contact right now is telepathic/energetic, and I don’t want to lose that, but at the same time, I need to claim my own sovereignty, be able to live my own life, and stop clinging to the hope that he’s done enough healing to finally show up on my doorstep.

I need to do some kind of energy work to balance this. I don’t know if a cord cutting is the right way to go about that - I definitely don’t want to make this worse (see linked thread for accounts of that happening), but I wouldn’t be doing it in an attempt to break the connection, just to tone it down a bit so we can work on our individual growth without all this energy interference. I woke up early this morning with just this sense of heaviness around our connection, like it’s literally weighing me down… and I don’t want that, for me, or him, or us.

How do I lift that heaviness so I can fully exist in my present life? How do I set an energetic boundary without pushing away our connection? This feels like a new stage on this journey, and I don’t know how to navigate it right now.

[eunichick]

I admire the stage of the journey you are at now. I believe I am one of the individuals who contributed to the cord cutting thread sometime ago, coz when I was at the initial stages of my journey and didn’t quite understand what was happening energetically between my Twin and I, I was desperate to try anything to be rid of the constant torment of his (energy) presence in my life. Needless to say, that absolutely backfired. But that’s another story.

Over the last year, I have been consulting with a psychic about my situation. She has been incredible helpful with her guidance, readings (she has not been wrong yet), and healing. The one thing she did for me at the start of the year was a cord healing ritual which I found incredibly helpful. I was constantly feeling my Twin’s stress, pain, frustration, anger and I noticed it coz it would always hit me like a ton of bricks when nothing in my own personal life would be causing me to feel this way. I slowly learnt to decipher the difference between his energy and my own, but because of the cord that keeps us tethered to each other, it was impossible to completely push away his negative emotions. In simple terms, I was struggling. I tried meditation, journaling, even sending positive energy his way, but nothing helped. So she offered to help me do a cord healing ritual. It basically cleansed the cord between us and puts some boundaries around it so that even though we can still feel each other, the negative energy he would channel subconsciously to me would have a barrier. She explained it like a pipe that isn’t cleaned for a long time that builds up with emotional residue. And honestly, I felt that it helped me a lot because after a month or so, I genuinely felt a lot “lighter”, less anxious, less “heavy”. Perhaps that is something you can explore.

I should add that my Twin and I are in separation. On speaking terms, but still in separation. I have also reached the stage of my journey where I hold space for him, but have decided to continue walking my path and choosing the things that make me happy. I guess I will always leave that light on for him, but I’ve also come to the conclusion that passive waiting isn’t my personal end goal. Sending you love and strength

[Hellena_Merrild]

I could be my words, but unfortunately I do not have an answer either.

[Ammonite]

Thank you so much for this insight, eunichick. It sounds like we’re at similar phases on our journeys. Although I said the only communication between me and my TF right now is telepathic, that’s only because his communication is incredibly sporadic and we haven’t been in touch for three weeks (as I mentioned, he’s currently ignoring my last message to him). We are absolutely on speaking terms, and have never been no contact; he just regularly ducks and hides when it gets too much. But yeah, we’re definitely in separation. Despite the fear and sadness I receive from his subconscious about the notion of my possibly choosing someone else, he himself has been in a relationship for at least eight months. The frustration (and pain) this causes me is infuriating, and I am done waiting for him - even though he has telepathically asked me to! - when he is very much not waiting for me in return.

I will definitely look into a cord healing ritual, though it’s less that I’m receiving negative energy from him and more that I’m just receiving so much in general, right when I’m moving forward and exploring a potential new relationship myself. Is this energetic chasing from him? If so, that’s definitely new for us. I am absolutely at a point of no longer chasing him, though I’m certainly not running - just standing still in our connection, I guess.

I’m feeling better energy around our connection today, though I’m not sure what’s changed aside from the fact that we spent time together astrally last night. I woke up in the night with a sense of having been talking with him, and the lingering feeling I had was that he was telling me he’s having trouble communicating something with me at the moment. Which, yeah… makes sense. I do feel (purely through our shared energy) that he’s opening to our connection in a way he hasn’t before, and that he’s sitting with that right now, so not being able to communicate that (and associated feelings) with me feels aligned with what I’m sensing currently. And that sense is something that would have held me back before; I’d have sat here waiting for him to finally make that communication. But I’m not prepared to do that now. He has to get his own head around this and talk to me as and when he’s ready to, which could be hours from now or months from now. I will meet him joyously when he’s ready for this, but in the meantime I am choosing my damned self for the first time. And given all of this, I do feel a need to establish a gentle boundary or barrier to some of this energy, similar to what you described.

Sending much love and strength back to you as you also claim yourself. Reaching that place of standing in our own power is so much the point of all of this, and I hope you’re finding that too.

[StarGirl]

You cannot fight it. Fighting it only makes it stronger because you are essentially focused on the connection. Shielding helps tremendously, which I believe looks different for everyone. But for me, shielding is more about shifting the flow of both your energies than blocking (which fights it). I believe this can involve first building yourself a secure mental/energetic “hideaway” then begin giving it protections.

For me I have slowly built myself an internal “lighthouse”, that symbolizes all of ME. I have a switch to pull, I call it the Defcon 6 switch that encases the lighthouse in obsidian (which absorbs/redirects his energy) and switches the tracks of the energetic “plumbing” to my lighthouse so that his is redirected by to himself, and only mine is allowed to flow upward into it. And most importantly, you must “blind” yourself to thoughts of him and his energy. I do this by imagining being at the top of my lighthouse, where my own light is turned inward onto ME only, so all my focus becomes… how am I feeling? What do I have to do right now? What’s something that makes me happy? which lessens the focus and thereby, the intensity of your TF’s energy on your body and mind. If you feel it creeping back, don’t fight it. Imagine it billowing up and around you, freely floating away somewhere else, but not piercing your hideaway.

That is how I deal with it anyway, and believe you me, I have had a LOT of practice Good luck

[Ammonite]

Thank you, StarGirl… this is really helpful, and resonates with my own strongly visual energetic practices. I will aim to create somewhere for this purpose within my own inner realm.

How long does this shielding exercise tend to last (ie how often do you need to repeat it)? Is it a daily energy shielding exercise, or just as and when you need to?

I definitely don’t plan to fight our energy… I never have; in fact I’ve always welcomed it. But right now it feels like I just need some breathing space so I can continue moving forward.

[StarGirl]

I’m still learning myself, but I’d say how often you need to reinforce a shield depends a lot on where your mindset is at the time.

When I’m fearful or triggered, I naturally start focusing more on what’s happening in HIS world, which also seems to amplify how strongly I experience his energy. That makes shielding much harder, and I end up having to reinforce it way more often.

I’ve had several times where I slammed a shield down in a panic, and honestly, that seemed to turn it into a fight against his energy rather than calmly redirecting how the energy moves around and through me. Within the TF framework, if they are US energetically, it makes sense that trying to forcibly block everything can feel like fighting yourself. What works much better for me is remembering that I can decide where I place my attention and what I allow myself to engage with.

The #1 difficulty for me has been wrenching my focus away from him and placing it completely back on myself. That’s the part where sometimes you have to gently force the habit at first.

Because you can’t simply decide NOT TO THINK ABOUT SOMETHING. That usually makes it worse. Like… DON’T imagine a giraffe right now. Seriously. Don’t do it!

Crap, you thought of a giraffe.

That’s where my lighthouse visualization helps enormously.

I imagine myself standing at the very top of my lighthouse, completely bathed in its light. The light is so bright that I can’t see beyond it to the ocean. I can’t search the horizon. I can’t even see whether his ship is out there.

All I can see is what exists inside my own light.

And when I can calm myself enough to really settle into that, it has been the BEST way I’ve found to reduce how intensely I experience his energy.

Your attention probably WILL drift back toward him. Mine does. I actually find it easier to assume that will happen rather than getting frustrated when it does, because frustration just creates more intensity and makes me focus on the whole thing again.

So when you catch yourself looking for his ship again, don’t panic and don’t fight yourself. Just gently return to the lighthouse.

Come back into your own light.

The biggest thing for me has been believing that I am sovereign over my own attention, choices and energy.

For smaller, on-the-spot moments, I’ll sometimes just close my eyes and tell myself:

“My energy is mine. His energy is his. I return what is not mine to carry.”

That works surprisingly well for me when I suddenly experience something like anxiety that I associate with him and don’t want to engage with it.

The full lighthouse visualization is what I use for the REALLY intense periods, when what I experience as his emotional darkness becomes so strong that I can feel physically sick from it.

But even then, the principle is the same:

Don’t fight the ocean. Don’t search for the ship. Don’t stand there trying desperately to make his energy disappear.

Turn toward your own light.

That has been the biggest difference for me.

It does seem like many struggle with handling the effects of the others energy, so I’m looking forward to hearing what others try to manage this new reality of a shared energetic space with someone

[Ammonite]

This is beautiful, really helpful, and makes a ton of sense. Thank you for sharing. Turning towards my own light, choosing myself, focusing on my own energy and growth… these all feel like aspects of the same thing, and that really resonates with me at my current stage on this journey.

One thing I’ve been doing lately is deeply noticing and tapping into my own strength, which has been building over the course of the powerful growth my TF path is demanding of me. When I feel him struggling, or when I know he’s on the path and working on his own growth and healing, I envision myself standing in my complete, powerful strength at my end of our energy current (which I see as an infinity loop of light cycling between us both). I have a staff of power in my right hand, and I feel the energy of my divine feminine radiating from my being, knowing my strength holds our current steady so he can stabilise at his end. It also means I’m not receiving his struggles; I’m standing before him looking him in the eye, holding firm and calm and standing completely in my power, letting him know I’m here but also requiring him to match that power with his own in order for us to unite.

It’s a deeply empowering visualisation for me, and I know it translates through to him. It’s the polar opposite of the yearning, painful, chaser energy I was embodying in the early stages, yet it’s still connecting us and recognising what we are to each other. It’s just happening in a much more intentional, stable, strength-focused way. Instead of me saying “Why aren’t you here, why don’t you recognise this, why do you keep avoiding what’s right in front of you?” I’m saying to him “I’m standing here, firm in my power, asking you to rise up in your own power and match this energy. I’m not pulling you in; I’m not chasing you; I am standing still in front of you embodying this energy for myself and my own life, knowing you feel it at your end and knowing I’m worthy of nothing less than your own healed, transformative, powerful self.”

It’s become a potent practice for me, both in recognising where I now am in my own growth and in realising our union can only happen when he reaches a similar point in his. Anything less and we’re mismatched… and beyond anchoring him in our energy current, his growth is out of my control.