Whenever I am near someone, I sense their energy, and it affects me physically.

If the person is calm, I feel very calm, and my heart beats quite slowly.
If the person is high-strung or stressed, I experience heart palpitations, nausea, and a sense of being overwhelmed, it’s just too much, and it’s very unpleasant.
The same applies if they are feeling depressed, anxious, or otherwise distressed. Even if someone appears calm on the outside, or is pretending to be, I can still sense their internal energy.

So, how can I shield myself from other people’s energy? Dealing with negative energy is highly unpleasant and debilitating.

However, I am unable to visualize things. I’ve read suggestions about imagining a barrier or picturing myself inside a bubble, but I have aphantasia (a total or partial inability of the brain to voluntarily generate mental images).

Do you have any advice?

I don't know if I'm in the right subreddit with this.

I have to give a bit of background first.

About 10 years ago I had a boyfriend who lived with his family in an old hotel. While we were cuddling, we were both suddenly overcome by an extreme feeling at the same time. It felt as if something wanted to tear us apart. I thought, this must be what bloodlust feels like. It happened a few times that day and lasted a few seconds each time. The next day my ex noticed that I was making strange gestures with my hand. I was twisting my thumb and index finger in an odd way to pick at my fingernail.

It was a long-distance relationship. On the way home I kept seeing a mask before my eyes. A few years later I watched Totoro, and the mask was exactly like Kaonashi (No-Face), only completely dark. At the time I always thought that whatever was inside me now was a weeping mask. But I don't see any connection to the film, and I don't know if it's relevant.

Since my last visit to my ex, I lost all my strength, motivation and will to live, and I even ended up in a psychiatric hospital. It never got better after that. I was never my old self again. We broke up due to the distance. Not because there were any bad spirits between us.

Fast forward: in 2021 I suddenly had the feeling that something was growing inside me. It was learning inside me. I kept hearing voices that weren't mine, and I still do to this day. She is friendly. Whatever is learning inside me doesn't feed on me. It is with me. Or maybe I just don't notice that it feeds on me. By now it's more a part of me, a second me that I can talk to inside myself.
But I still never got my energy back. What was all of that, and how do I get my old life back?

I have had this lingering feeling since I was young that the earth has been going towards a darker energy and it feels so much more present now as I am going older. It feels like a calling I have to help shift this energy from the darkness into a more positive radiant energy. The problem is I feel stuck.

When I do meditations I often can feel this fear that doesn’t feel like it belongs to myself but a fear of the power of this darkness that wants to consume humanity.
It’s hard to put into words what it feels like because it seems deeper than the human experience. It feels like it’s a two tiered issue of the unbalanced energy and then humanities issues( too many to list). I want to make a positive impact on humanity but also feel that in our lifetime we are going to see a more detrimental shift away from energy and connection and lean even more heavily on technology and data.

Has anyone else felt this shift or feel a calling to try to combat that? I don’t know where to begin with trying to use my energy in a way that is meaningful on this deeper level.

I’m visiting family (in laws) at the moment and sometimes when I get nervous I get what I like to call mental Tourette’s, where I think things I don’t normally think that don’t have the emotional charge behind it when people normally think / say those things out loud. It’s just a meaningless string of words for a couple seconds. When I do this too often my sister in law looks at me, but in that up in your energy in a knowing way / protecting the house space. Obviously I’m trying my best to control my thoughts but no one is perfect. I’m wondering if thought forms show up as colors or shapes in my aura, or if they move into the room. I can see auras and energy but not all the time. Just wondering if anyone here has insight to this