When Your Energy Feels Off: How to Reconnect With Yourself
Have you ever felt betrayed, energetically crossed, or simply thrown off—even when nothing “major” happened?
Maybe the words didn’t convince you, but the energy stuck. It lingered. A fog. A heaviness. A part of you wanting to disappear.
Or perhaps there wasn't one particular moment at all.
You just notice that you don't quite feel like yourself. You're more tired, more reactive, more easily affected by other people. You keep thinking about the same things, falling into patterns you thought you'd moved beyond, or saying yes when something in you is quietly saying no.
Your energy feels off.
And I actually think there's something useful in that phrase.
Because whether you understand energy through physiology and the nervous system, through emotion and embodied experience, through Reiki and Eastern traditions — or simply as the felt sense of being you — most of us recognise what it means when something feels out of sync.
You may still be functioning. Working. Taking care of things. Doing what you're supposed to do.
But somewhere underneath all of that, you've moved a little further away from yourself.
And perhaps the question isn't only how do I get my energy back?
Perhaps it's also:
What has pulled me away from myself — and what helps me find my way back?
Sometimes we know exactly what shifted us. Sometimes we don't.
This isn't only about what happened. It's also about what it left behind — and what we continue to carry.
We often talk about healing through mindset. But some experiences don't resolve simply because we understand them. The body may still respond. The breath may shorten. Old emotions or protective patterns may surface. And sometimes there is something harder to name — a felt sense of heaviness, contraction, disconnection, or simply not quite being yourself.
This is one reason I work with breathwork, somatic practices and energy work. Not because every uncomfortable feeling needs to be fixed, but because they give us another way of listening.
A way to notice what the mind may already understand, but something deeper in us hasn't quite caught up with yet.
You may hear a voice inside that says:
“See? This is why we don’t open up. This is why we protect.”
But caring doesn't make you foolish.
Hoping doesn't make you naive.
Feeling deeply doesn't make you ridiculous.
It makes you human.
And perhaps reclaiming your energy isn't really about pulling something back from the outside world.
Perhaps it's about noticing where you've left yourself.
Where you've overridden what you felt. Where you've adapted, protected, held on, or made yourself smaller. And slowly creating enough space to hear yourself again.
To return to your body.
To return to your breath.
To return to yourself.
Signs Your Energy Is Out of Sync
Feeling disconnected from yourself doesn't always arrive dramatically.
Sometimes it looks like exhaustion, irritability or restlessness. Sometimes like overthinking everything. Sometimes like knowing perfectly well what you need — and doing the opposite anyway.
You might notice that you:
Say yes when your whole body is a no.
Keep looping through the same thoughts or patterns, even when you know better.
Feel unusually affected by other people's moods, expectations or opinions.
Second-guess decisions that once felt clear.
Feel restless when you stop, but depleted when you keep going.
Find yourself procrastinating, numbing or distracting yourself from things that actually matter to you.
Want something to change while simultaneously resisting the very thing that might create that change.
Feel as though you're constantly responding to life rather than actually inhabiting it.
Simply have the strange sense that you don't quite feel like you anymore.
None of these automatically means something is wrong with you.
And they don't necessarily mean that you need to immediately fix, optimise or regulate yourself either.
Sometimes they're information.
A sign that something in you needs attention. That a boundary has become blurred. That an old protective pattern is running the show. That you've been carrying more than you've realised.
Or perhaps simply that you've spent so much time listening outward — to what is needed, expected, sensible or wanted from you — that it has become harder to hear what's happening within.
Not every inner experience needs to become a self-improvement project.
Sometimes the first movement back toward yourself is simply noticing where you are.
Why We Can Feel Disconnected From Ourselves
There isn't always one clear reason why we stop feeling quite like ourselves.
Sometimes it's obvious. A period of stress. A relationship that has taken more than it has given. A loss, a disappointment, a change we haven't fully caught up with.
But sometimes it happens slowly.
We adapt. We keep going. We become very good at reading what is needed from us, while paying less attention to what is happening within us. We override tiredness. Swallow the no. Rationalise the discomfort. Stay busy enough not to notice.
Until one day something simply feels… off.
There are different ways of understanding what happens here.
From a nervous system perspective, our responses are shaped not only by what is happening now, but by what our system has learned through previous experience. Under prolonged stress or perceived threat, we may become more reactive, vigilant, withdrawn or disconnected from what we feel.
Psychologically, we develop patterns too. Ways of protecting ourselves, belonging, avoiding rejection or maintaining control. Some are so familiar that we don't even recognise them as patterns anymore. They simply feel like us.
And then there is the energetic experience.
You don't need to believe that every emotion is a blocked chakra or that someone has literally “taken your energy” to recognise the feeling of walking away from a person or situation completely drained. Or entering a room and immediately sensing tension. Or feeling expansive around one person and strangely contracted around another.
Traditions such as Reiki have their own language for these experiences. Psychology and physiology have others.
I don't think we need to force them into being the same thing.
For me, what matters is the experience itself — and what becomes possible when we begin to pay attention to it.
Because sometimes feeling disconnected isn't about needing to become more grounded, more healed or more regulated.
Sometimes it's about noticing all the small places where you've stopped listening to yourself.
And this is often where another voice enters the conversation.
The one that says don't.
Don't say that.
Don't take the risk.
Don't make yourself vulnerable.
Don't change what already works.
The voice that can sound remarkably convincing.
Meet the Inner Saboteur
Have you ever tried to change something in your life—only to find yourself hesitating, delaying, or somehow getting in your own way?
You know what you want. Maybe you even know exactly what you need to do.
And still… you don’t do it.
This is where you may meet what I like to call the inner saboteur.
The part of you that resists change even when another part of you genuinely wants it.
But I don’t really think of the inner saboteur as the enemy.
Often, it’s protective.
It may be the part that has learned that staying with what is familiar feels safer than stepping into something unknown. And familiar doesn’t necessarily mean good. We can become incredibly accustomed to ways of thinking, relating and behaving that no longer serve us simply because we know the landscape.
Change introduces uncertainty.
Will I fail?
What if I’m rejected?
What if people see me differently?
What if I actually get what I want—and everything changes?
So the inner saboteur whispers:
Are you sure?
Maybe wait.
Maybe this isn’t for you.
Maybe tomorrow.
Not because there is something wrong with you.
Perhaps this part simply hasn’t realised yet that you no longer need the same protection.
How the Inner Saboteur May Show Up
Second-guessing
You make a decision that feels right—and then the doubt arrives.
It doesn't always sound fearful. In fact, it can sound remarkably reasonable.
Maybe you should wait a little longer.
Perhaps you haven't thought this through.
Who do you think you are to do this?
Before long, you're back in your head, analysing something you had already felt quite clear about.
Procrastinating
This one can be wonderfully sneaky because procrastination sometimes looks suspiciously like productivity.
You clean the kitchen instead of sending the email. Reorganise something that absolutely did not need reorganising. Research for another three hours. Scroll Instagram while telling yourself you'll start in five minutes.
Sometimes we're simply tired or uninterested. But sometimes delaying helps us avoid the discomfort attached to taking the next step—being seen, risking failure, making the wrong choice, or even succeeding and discovering that life now asks something different of us.
Numbing
We all have ways of moving away from what we don't particularly want to feel.
Working. Scrolling. Eating. Watching another episode. Thinking endlessly about the feeling instead of actually feeling it.
None of these things is inherently a problem. The question is perhaps what function they are serving in that moment.
Am I choosing this because I want it?
Or because I don't want to be with what is here?
Telling you “this isn’t for you”
This may be one of the saboteur's most convincing moves because eventually the story stops sounding like a story.
It sounds like truth.
That's for other people.
I'm not that kind of person.
I'm not good at that.
I'll probably fail anyway.
Repeat something often enough and it can become part of how you understand yourself.
But a familiar story isn't necessarily a true one.
The inner saboteur isn't the enemy.
But it isn't necessarily the guide either.
And perhaps the work isn't to silence it, defeat it or finally become brave enough that it disappears.
Perhaps we can get curious instead.
What are you trying to protect me from?
When did I learn that this wasn't safe for me?
Is this still true?
Because once you can hear the voice without automatically obeying it, something changes.
There is a little more space.
And in that space, you may begin to hear another voice too.
The Inner Voice: Your Closest Neighbor
There is always a voice inside.
Sometimes quiet. Sometimes loud. Sometimes kind. Sometimes incredibly convincing in its criticism.
We often talk about “listening to yourself” as though there is one clear inner voice waiting patiently underneath all the noise.
If only. 😅
Because what we hear inside can come from many places.
Fear. Habit. Old experiences. Other people's expectations. The need to belong. The desire to be liked. Things we've heard so many times that somewhere along the way, they began to sound like our own thoughts.
And somewhere amongst all of that—there is also you.
This is why reconnecting with yourself isn't necessarily about trusting every thought or feeling that appears.
It's about getting to know your inner landscape well enough to begin noticing the difference.
Is this what I actually want—or what I think I should want?
Is this a no—or am I afraid?
Am I protecting something important—or repeating something familiar?
Is this my voice—or one I've carried for so long that I've forgotten it came from somewhere else?
The aim isn't to interrogate every thought until you finally arrive at the “correct” answer. That can become another form of overthinking.
Sometimes discernment begins much more simply.
By noticing.
How does this thought feel in my body?
What happens when I imagine saying yes?
What happens when I imagine saying no?
Do I expand, soften, become curious?
Or do I contract, brace, disappear a little?
None of those sensations gives you an infallible truth detector. Fear can accompany something deeply right for us. Relief can come from avoiding something difficult. The body isn't a magic eight ball.
But it is information.
And the more familiar you become with your own signals, patterns and protective voices, the easier it may become to notice when you've drifted away from yourself.
Your inner voice is, after all, your closest neighbor.
Perhaps it's worth getting to know who's actually living there.
And one of the places this becomes particularly visible is in our boundaries.
Boundaries: When Your Body Says No
Sometimes disconnection from ourselves happens in very small moments.
You say yes, while something in you quietly says no.
You agree to something because it's easier than disappointing someone. Stay in the conversation a little longer. Take on one more thing. Explain yourself when you don't really want to. Make yourself available when what you actually need is space.
None of these moments may seem particularly significant on their own.
But repeated often enough, they can create a strange distance between what you feel and how you live.
Boundaries are often described as something we set with other people. A line that says: this is okay, this isn't. This is where I end and you begin.
But I think boundaries are also about the relationship you have with yourself.
Can I hear my own no before I override it?
Can I notice when I'm agreeing because I genuinely want to—and when I'm agreeing because I want to avoid discomfort, conflict, rejection or disappointing someone?
Can I recognise when I'm making myself smaller to keep something else intact?
And can I stay with myself even when someone else doesn't particularly like the boundary I choose?
That last one can be difficult.
Because sometimes the hardest part of a boundary isn't saying no.
It's tolerating what happens after we say it.
The awkwardness. The guilt. The possibility that someone is disappointed. The impulse to immediately soften the boundary, explain it away or take responsibility for the other person's reaction.
And this is where old patterns can become very persuasive.
Don't be difficult.
It's not that big a deal.
Just do it.
Keep the peace.
Sometimes saying yes is generous and exactly what we want to do.
But when we repeatedly say yes while our whole body whispers no, we stop only crossing a boundary.
We stop listening to ourselves.
Perhaps a boundary, then, isn't simply a wall that keeps other people out.
It can also be a way of staying in relationship with yourself.
Of noticing what is yours to carry—and what isn't.
Of allowing your needs, limits and desires to exist without immediately negotiating them away.
And sometimes, before we can put any of that into words, we need enough space to actually hear it.
For me, one way into that space has always been the breath.
Breath: Creating Space for Choice
The breath is always responding.
It changes when we're afraid, excited, angry, focused, relaxed. Sometimes before we've even consciously registered what we're feeling.
And it also gives us something unusual: a process that happens automatically, but that we can consciously influence.
That doesn't mean every difficult feeling needs a breathing technique.
Sometimes the most useful thing we can do is simply notice.
What is my breath doing right now?
Am I holding it? Breathing high in my chest? Barely breathing at all? Do I immediately want to take a huge breath and make the feeling disappear?
That moment of noticing can create something important:
space.
Space between what happens and how we automatically respond.
Between the voice that says say yes and the part of you that wants to say no.
Between I can't do this and I'm afraid to do this.
Between an old pattern appearing and automatically following it.
This is one reason I don't think Breathwork is about “fixing” the inner saboteur.
We don't need to breathe it away.
Sometimes the parts of us that resist, protect, contract or hesitate need to be listened to before they need to be changed.
The breath can become a way of staying present long enough to do that.
And different forms of Breathwork can create very different experiences. Slow, gentle breathing may support settling and regulation, while more activating practices can bring stronger physical sensations, emotions or altered states of awareness.
Neither is inherently deeper.
Intensity isn't the same thing as transformation.
What matters is what becomes available when we are no longer reacting quite so automatically.
Perhaps you notice the sadness underneath the irritation.
The fear underneath the procrastination.
The exhaustion underneath the constant doing.
Or perhaps nothing dramatic happens at all.
You simply have a little more room to choose.
And sometimes that is the shift.
Not becoming fearless.
Not silencing every protective voice.
Not perfectly regulating yourself.
Just enough space to ask:
What do I actually need here?
What am I feeling?
What would I choose if I didn't have to respond quite so quickly?
Space to feel. Space to listen. Space to choose.
And from there, another question sometimes emerges:
What am I actually carrying—and is all of it mine?
Energy: What Is Mine, and What Isn't?
There are moments when the question what am I feeling? isn't quite enough.
Sometimes the more interesting question is:
Is everything I'm carrying actually mine?
If you've ever walked into a room and immediately felt the atmosphere shift, spent time with someone and left feeling strangely depleted, or found yourself carrying an emotion that seems to have appeared from nowhere, you may recognise this question.
We affect each other.
Some of that we can understand through things we already have language for: facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, attention, emotional contagion, stress responses. Our bodies are constantly taking in information from the people and environments around us, much of it without deliberate thought.
And then there are experiences that don't fit quite so neatly into those explanations.
This is where traditions such as Reiki, yoga and other Eastern systems offer another language: energy.
Not as something I think we need to prove in order to work with it, nor as a scientific explanation dressed up in spiritual language.
Simply as another way of exploring what we experience.
In Reiki, we work with the idea of Universal, often invisible life-force energy—not only something that exists within us, but something we are in relationship with. The practice can invite us to become more sensitive to subtle shifts: where we feel open or contracted, where attention is drawn, where something feels heavy, alive, quiet or difficult to name.
I find this particularly interesting because the question is rarely as simple as is this energy mine or yours?
Sometimes what we feel around another person may actually be our own response to them.
An old wound being touched. A familiar dynamic. Attraction. Fear. The urge to please. The part of us that begins adapting before we've even realised we're doing it.
And sometimes?
I don't know.
I think there is value in being able to say that too.
I don't need to explain every energetic experience in order to take the experience seriously.
What I can do is become curious.
What happens to me around this person?
Do I feel more like myself—or less?
Where am I shrinking, adapting or holding back?
What am I taking responsibility for that perhaps isn't mine to carry?
What changes when I allow myself to occupy my own space?
This is where “reclaiming your energy” means something slightly different to me than imagining that pieces of you have literally been scattered around the world and need to be retrieved.
It's a return to your own centre of gravity.
Your attention.
Your boundaries.
Your body.
Your choices.
Your sense of what is yours—and what belongs to someone else.
And that doesn't mean becoming impermeable.
I don't particularly want to move through life energetically armoured, untouched by other people. Connection asks something different of us. To be affected, moved, changed even—without automatically abandoning ourselves in the process.
Perhaps energetic boundaries aren't really about keeping everything out.
Perhaps they're about being able to remain yourself while something else is present.
To notice another person's fear without having to make it yours.
To feel someone's disappointment without immediately changing your decision.
To enter a room without unconsciously becoming whatever that room seems to require.
To care deeply without disappearing.
And perhaps that is one of the quieter meanings of reclaiming your energy:
not withdrawing from the world, but learning how to stay with yourself while you're in it.
The Science of Energy: Bridging the Physical and the Subtle
The word energy means different things depending on the framework we're using.
In physics, energy has a precise scientific meaning. In physiology, we can measure electrical activity, metabolic processes and changes in the nervous system. In Reiki, yoga and other Eastern traditions, energy describes something different: concepts such as ki, prana or qi — life-force energy moving within and around us.
I don't think we need quantum physics to make those traditions legitimate.
For me, the interesting space is where these different ways of understanding human experience can sit beside each other without pretending they are the same thing.
We know that the nervous system is continually responding to information from within and around us. Breath, heart rate, muscle tension, attention and emotional state influence how we experience ourselves and our environment. Breathwork can consciously influence some of these physiological processes, which is one reason changing the way we breathe can change the way we feel.
And then there is the subtler experience — the part that may be harder to measure or explain.
A sense of expansion or contraction. Feeling someone's presence before they've said anything. The shift you may notice during Reiki. The experience of energy moving through the body during Breathwork.
I don't need to call those experiences quantum physics in order to be curious about them.
Science can help us understand some of what is happening. Energetic traditions offer another lens. And our direct experience gives us something else again.
Meridian Work and Emotional Energy
Traditional Chinese Medicine offers its own map of the relationship between body, emotion and energy.
Within TCM, qi is understood to move through pathways often described as meridians, and different organ systems are traditionally associated with different emotional qualities. The lungs, for example, are associated with grief; the liver with anger; the kidneys with fear; and the spleen with worry or overthinking.
I think the distinction here matters: this is a traditional energetic framework, not the same thing as saying modern medicine has demonstrated that grief is literally stored inside the lungs or anger inside the liver.
But that doesn't mean the framework can't be meaningful.
Practices such as acupuncture and acupressure work explicitly with meridian theory. Movement traditions such as Qigong also explore the movement of qi through the body. Other practices I use, including Breathwork and Reiki, come from different traditions and shouldn't simply be collapsed into TCM — but they share an interest in what happens when we bring attention back into the body and allow experience to move rather than only trying to understand it intellectually.
Sometimes that movement is emotional. Sometimes physical. Sometimes energetic. Sometimes we simply feel different afterward without needing to decide exactly which category it belongs to.
And perhaps that's part of reconnecting with yourself too:
being curious about what you experience without requiring one framework to explain all of it.
Coming Back to Yourself
Perhaps this is what all of this comes back to.
Not becoming someone new. Not finally getting rid of every pattern, protective voice or uncomfortable feeling. Not reaching some perfectly balanced state where nothing throws you off again.
Because life will throw us off.
We will get tired. We will lose perspective. We will say yes when we meant no, fall back into old patterns, become affected by people we love, make choices from fear, overthink things we already knew the answer to. Sometimes we will feel deeply connected to ourselves, and sometimes we won't.
Balance isn't about staying perfectly centered. It's more about learning the way back.
Back to the body. Back to the breath. Back to what feels true.
And perhaps that is what reclaiming your energy really means. Not pulling some lost part of yourself back from the outside world, but becoming aware of all the places where your attention, your choices, your boundaries and your sense of self have slowly moved away from you.
Sometimes the way back begins with noticing the pattern. Sometimes with saying the no you've been avoiding. Sometimes with allowing yourself to feel something you've been trying very hard not to feel. Sometimes with recognising that the voice in your head isn't necessarily the one you want making the decisions.
And sometimes it begins with something as simple as stopping long enough to notice: What is actually happening in me right now?
This is why I keep returning to practices like Breathwork, Reiki, meditation and somatic work. Not because I believe we should constantly be working on ourselves, but because they can create a different kind of space. Space beneath the constant thinking, explaining and figuring out. Space where we can become curious about what is actually here.
Space to feel. Space to process. Space to return to yourself.
And returning to yourself doesn't necessarily mean returning to who you were before something happened. Sometimes experiences change us. Relationships change us. Loss changes us. Age changes us. Life changes us.
Perhaps the invitation isn't always to get the old version of yourself back.
It may be to meet yourself where you are now.
To recognise what still belongs. What doesn't. What you've outgrown. What you've been carrying. What wants more space. And what has perhaps been quietly waiting underneath all the noise for you to notice it.
You don't have to know exactly where you're going to begin finding your way back.
You only have to notice when you've left yourself.
A Small Practice: Finding Your Way Back
You don't need to figure out what pulled you away from yourself before you can begin to come back.
Take a moment and let your attention move away from whatever you've been thinking about and toward what is happening in you right now. You don't need to change your breathing. Just notice it.
Notice where your body is supported. Your feet against the floor, your back against the chair, the weight of your body where you are.
Then ask yourself:
What am I carrying right now?
Don't rush to answer. Notice what comes before the explanation. A sensation, a feeling, a thought, an image—or perhaps nothing at all.
Then:
Is all of this mine to carry?
Again, you don't need to know. Let the question create a little space rather than demanding an answer.
And finally:
What do I need right now to stay with myself?
Perhaps it's rest. Movement. A conversation. A boundary. A deeper breath. Saying something you've been holding back. Not saying anything at all.
Or perhaps you still don't know.
That's okay too.
The practice isn't finding the perfect answer. It's turning your attention inward long enough to hear what might otherwise be drowned out.
A Place to Keep Coming Back
This is also, in many ways, why I created The Field.
Not as another place to work harder on yourself, but as a space to keep returning to your inner world.
Each week, I share practices and reflections through Breathwork, meditation, somatic work, energy, astrology and self-inquiry. Different ways in, depending on what you need and where you are.
Because we don't find ourselves once and stay there.
We move away. We get caught up. Life gets loud. We forget what we knew.
And then we find our way back.
The Field is a place to practice the return.
Your energy deserves to be yours again.
For the ones who’ve tried to figure it all out: You don’t need fixing. You need to breathe, feel, and come home.
