Why You Feel Drained After Conversations (And What to Do About It)
Episode #62: Show Notes
Have you ever walked away from a conversation feeling heavy, exhausted, or just plain off, and had no idea why? No obvious reason, no big conflict, nothing you could point to. If that sounds familiar, you are not imagining things. In this episode of Om WOW Podcast, I sat down with Linda Roberts, an internationally known animal communicator and shamanic healer, to talk about what is really going on when that happens and what you can do about it.
Listen to the full episode:
When Someone Else's Energy Drains You
Linda shared a personal experience that many of us will recognize. After a short conversation with her child's preschool teacher, a person she genuinely liked, she walked away feeling completely drained. When she tuned in and asked her spirit guides what happened, the answer was that the teacher had been drawing from her energy on a subconscious level. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. Just because she sensed something in Linda that she felt she was lacking.
This is the important piece: most of the time, the people who drain our energy are not doing it on purpose. It is happening beneath the level of conscious awareness. They feel safe around you, they feel good near you, and on some level, they pull toward that without even realizing it.
And it can work the other way too. Some conversations leave us feeling uplifted and energized, and that is also an exchange happening below the surface, with people sending positive energy our way, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not.
What Is an Empath, Really?
Linda defines an empath as someone who is aware, aware of the world around them, aware of other people's feelings, and aware of their own inner experience. It is the ability to sense things that are beneath the surface, the gray areas that are not obvious or black and white.
Here is something Linda and I both believe: we are all empaths to some degree. Think of it like math aptitude. We all have some capacity for it, but some people lean into it and develop it, while others do not. The same is true for empathic sensitivity. It is not a special gift reserved for a few people. It is a human capacity that exists on a spectrum.
If you are not sure where you fall on that spectrum, here is a telltale sign that something you are feeling might not be yours: it comes out of nowhere. It interrupts your train of thought. It does not connect to anything you were just doing or thinking. That sudden, unexplained shift in mood or sensation is worth paying attention to.
Linda also shared that for her, these signals sometimes show up physically. She has experienced physical symptoms that turned out to belong to animals she works with, including tasting blood from a dog with bleeding ulcers and feeling acid reflux from a dog who had not been eating. Our bodies can pick up on what is happening in others in very tangible ways.
How Environments Affect Your Energy
It’s not just people. Places carry energy too. I shared an experience of driving up to a cave in the woods in Vermont and immediately knowing I did not want to be there. I got back in the car without even seeing it. That gut reaction, that instant knowing, is your intuition doing its job.
Linda encourages honoring that sixth sense rather than overriding it. Your intuition helps you navigate life and keeps you safe. At the same time, she suggests staying curious about why a place might feel off. Sometimes it is simply energy you do not want to interact with. Other times, it could be pointing to something within yourself that is ready to be looked at.
A place that triggers you may not be inherently bad. It may just be something that is not right for you, or something that has more to show you when you are ready.
Social Media, the News, and Your Nervous System
The same principles apply to what you consume on screens. Linda puts it simply: be conscious of how anything makes you feel. Food, liquids, the people around you, what you watch, what you scroll through. The question to ask yourself is, do I feel uplifted after this, or do I feel worried and afraid?
The evening news is a perfect example. I stopped watching it years ago and I am doing just fine. News media is designed to keep you watching, and the way it does that is by cycling through alarming content on repeat. That is not just emotionally uncomfortable. It is a real physiological event happening inside your body.
When you absorb someone else's stress or take on negative energy from your environment, your nervous system reads it as a threat, even if your conscious mind does not register any danger. Your body cannot tell the difference between your own stress and stress you picked up from someone else. Cortisol starts pumping. Your heart rate goes up. Blood pressure rises. Muscles tighten. Breathing gets shallower. Your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response kicks in. And because there is no obvious source, no emergency you can point to, you just feel drained, anxious, or exhausted with no explanation. Your body responded to something your brain never consciously registered. That is why this topic matters.
What Is Energy Hygiene?
During the pandemic, we washed our hands constantly, especially after touching shared surfaces or greeting people. We wore masks to create a buffer. Energy hygiene works the same way, just on an energetic level.
Before stepping into interactions, especially ones you know might be heavy, Linda recommends setting up an energetic boundary of light around yourself. Think of it like an energy bubble. She also incorporates sacred geometry, surrounding herself with specific geometric shapes you can easily look up, as an additional layer of protection. The intention is to stay present and genuinely helpful without inadvertently absorbing what someone else is carrying.
And when a session or conversation is done, she clears her energy intentionally, much like washing her hands. This is what allows her to see multiple people in a day without feeling depleted. You can even do this literally at a sink, washing your hands while setting the intention to wash away the other person's energy from your field so it does not linger.
For anyone in a healing profession, and that includes therapists, chiropractors, energy workers, nurses, doctors, and anyone else who spends their days holding space for others, this is foundational preparation work. It’s so important to stay clear and present for each client without carrying “stuff” from the previous one into the next session.
I remember early in my EFT training, no one taught us to prepare energetically. I would finish one session and be completely wiped out. I could not imagine building a practice around it. Learning to manage your energy is not optional if you want to do this work sustainably.
Your Energy vs. Universal/Source Energy
Linda shared something that shifted her own healing practice early on. When she first started doing Reiki, she worked on her aging dog and felt completely exhausted afterward. When she called her master teacher, the answer was clear: she had been using her own energy instead of channeling universal life force energy. That’s a critical distinction!
When you are doing any kind of healing work, the goal is to serve as a channel, not to give from your own reserves. Your own energy carries your own experiences, your own unresolved stuff. Channeling universal energy keeps both you and the person you are helping cleaner in the process.
This is something Linda says is foundational in all of her Reiki and shamanism trainings. She reminds us that we have our own lives to live, and we don’t need to be carrying other people's burdens as well.
Be Prepared with Layers & Light
Linda's approach to energy protection is confidence-based, not fear-based. She frames it the same way she frames getting dressed in the morning. You would not walk out into the world without clothes on. You also do not need to walk out there without energetic protection. It’s just practical preparation. Set the intention, picture a beautiful white light surrounding you, and start your day.
If you are heading into a particularly heavy or busy environment, layer up. That might look like setting an energetic intention that your energy is yours and theirs is theirs, surrounding yourself in a bubble of white light, or using sacred geometric shapes as a protective boundary. The more intense the environment, the more layers you might want. Linda offers an Energy Hygiene class on her website if you’d like to go deeper.
Protect Your Field with Spiral Breath Mantras
I encourage people to try a gentle Spiral Breath Mantra as a morning practice. It requires no visualization, just your breath and a simple phrase to align your energy before the day begins. The suggested words are: "I clear my field. I center my breath. I begin my day." Pair that with a 3-3-3 breath (inhale for 3, hold for 3, exhale for 3) and think or say each phrase with the corresponding breath phase.
And if you feel like you have picked up something during the day that is not yours, here is a Spiral Breath Mantra reset: "I return all energy that is not mine. I reclaim my own." You can shorten it to "I release. I return. I reclaim." and link each phrase to the inhale, hold, and exhale of the same 3-3-3 breath.
You can repeat any Spiral Breath Mantra 3-4 times for a deeper effect, so feel free to do a gentle loop. Saying it just once is a perfect place for beginners to start. Learn more about Spiral Breathing right here.
Don’t Carry What’s Not Yours
The biggest takeaway from this conversation is that so much is happening beneath the surface of our daily interactions! Your body is responding to energy that your mind never consciously registered. The good news is that once you know this is happening, you have options. You can clear what is not yours. You can protect your field before you walk into a room. You can stay present for the people in your life without becoming a sponge for everything they’re carrying.
This is not about becoming guarded or fearful. It is about being intentional. Dress for the day, energetically speaking, and you will be ready for whatever comes.
Resources from this episode:
Learn more about Spiral Breathing & Spiral Breath Mantras for Energy Hygiene
Linda’s Energy Hygiene Masterclass (click “classes” in top menu)
EpisodeTranscript (PDF)
Meet Our Guest: Linda Roberts
Linda Roberts is an internationally known animal communicator and shamanic healer who bridges communication between animals, humans, and the spirit world. She helps clients find clarity, healing, and peace through intuitive sessions, energy work, and teachings that awaken natural intuitive abilities.
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Meet Our Host: Jennifer Robin O’Keefe
Jennifer Robin is always searching for the next thing that might help: the book, the practice, the reframe you didn't know existed but turns out to be exactly what you needed.
Through conversations with experts, authors, and everyday humans, along with personal reflection, Jennifer focuses on bridging the gap between "woo" and practical, accessible self-support. Her work is rooted in the belief that wellness is not about fixing yourself, but about remembering your worth and finding what genuinely works for you.
She has spent decades exploring personal growth, energy healing, and mind-body wellness. She's trained in EFT Tapping and coaching, tools she often references in her conversations. She's not positioning herself as an expert who has it all figured out. She approaches her work with humility, curiosity, and deep respect for individual experience.
Jennifer is a lifelong learner who cherishes books and notebooks. She loves diving into research and sharing what she learns in a way that feels relatable, compassionate, and pressure-free. These conversations are an invitation: to ask your own questions, gather perspectives that resonate, and build a life that actually feels good to you.