You feel drained around certain people not because of who they are, but because you're suppressing your authentic self. The speaker describes feeling alive with close friends when he let himself be weird, and exhausted around others when he performed. Your job is to give yourself permission to be genuine, not to manage how others react.
Why is it that you will feel energized around certain people and other people you might feel completely drained around? Well, many times we can get in the pattern of believing that it's them when actually it's us and our ability to give ourselves permission to be the most authentic version of us when we're around certain people. Now, what I mean by this is for myself, I realized that when I was around certain people that I was close to, I gave myself permission to just be the weird version of myself that would just say things and be the most almost childlike version of myself. And what happened is that felt alive. I would love being around these people. But then I recognized that when I was around certain other people, I'd say, I feel drained. And what I noticed that I was the common denominator with how much permission I'd give myself to be a certain way. So while some of it is you can be aware that certain people maybe are a little bit more high maintenance than others, a big part of it is the part that you have control over is the ability to give yourself permission to be the real you no matter what other people say. Say or do. And what happens is you can then realize that if other people feel tension when they're around you, it's not your thing to manage.
