#533: Negative Nellies Havin’ Me Down (Rebroadcast)

Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope.

And joy and relief.

And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. It is the feeling that you bring forward. It is your emotional connection that really sets the tone for what is going to be happening to you and for you. And you know that feeling when you touch it, it just spreads through you. I'm Summer McStravik and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. Hi, it's Summer. And a quick request before we jump into the show. If you like this podcast, the number one reason Flow Dream has grown is because of your reviews. People rely on your opinion and frankly, they often misunderstand Flow Dreaming.

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Hi, I'm Summer McStravik. Happy to be happy with you. This episode of Flow Dreaming. Flow Dreaming is a way to manifest. It's a way to receive information from the universe. It's a way to think and understand life. Understand non physical. Some of you know a bit about my history. You know about my family because you've listened to my mom's show and she spills everything. You probably know that I have not had the easiest life. I've had a lot of really horrible, horrible, horrible things happen to me. I've also had an equal number of gorgeous and beautiful things happen to me. And on balance, I consider myself a pretty positive person. Optimistic, despite all the terrible, terrible stuff. Terrible stuff. Multiple divorces, living with a man who physically and emotionally abused my mother, living through cancer, living through all kinds of betrayals, living through. My God, this list just. It could go on and on. I don't even. I don't tell you guys half of it. It, it's boring. Happened in the past. It's part of me. But it doesn't continue to generate how.

I look at my future.

Right? That's the big difference. And yet some people seem to be stuck in all the negative things that have ever happened to them. And that stuckness is generating their future based off of it. You know what I'm saying? That's why I'm calling today's episode Negative Nellies having me down. Negative Nellies. These are people who've all had tragedies happen, and yet their way of responding was to look at what might happen next and say, well, you know, it's gonna be bad. You gotta get ready for it. The whole world's falling apart and they're crabbing and they're bitching and they're crabbing. And always something is wrong, and always something is unfair, and always something isn't good enough. And always someone isn't acting right. And always, you know what I'm saying? On and on and on. So today I want to talk about Negative Nellies. Why we have them in our lives, what to do if we are one. Because you know what? We all have a bit of it somewhere inside of us. I'm pretty sure of it. I've looked in so many minds and hearts, and there are places and times where I'm the one who's crabbing and complaining, getting into that lack thinking. So let's look at, one, how to deal with those people. Two, how to deal with it if it's in us. So like I was saying at the beginning, first of all, everybody's had tragedy. We've all had it. In fact, it's funny, I was. I go and I get these treatments for lymphedema now each week I get a nice massage and. And my practitioner that I go to, Janine, she is the wise older lady and I love talking with her. We lay and we just chit chat for the hour and. And we were talking last time about how, you know, a lot of us have had physical problems, things happen to our bodies. Because she works with cancer patients, heart patients, people who have, you know, swelling from all different. All different things. So she sees sick people constantly. And I said, you know, it's funny, you know, our bodies, you know, they really. Our immune systems, I mean, we do a pretty good job on the whole staying well, but, you know, ultimately our body's job is to die. Yeah. And we puzzled through that. Felt like a pretty profound thought there in the little darkened massage room. Our body's whole job is to die, is to come to an end. And it will figure out a way to do so, right? It'll be something, hopefully while you're sleeping and you're 100 years old. That's my preferred method. But your body will figure it out. And I said, yeah, it's kind of funny, you know. So your. Your body is actually meant to expire. It's got an expiration date so it's funny because, you know, it's not just body trauma. Why do we have so much. So much mental trauma in our lives? I mean. I mean, shouldn't. Shouldn't evolution maybe have helped us to better deal with mental and emotional traumas? What's the point of those? It seems like we. We would succeed so much better as a. As a society, as cultures, as humanity, if we weren't so messed up in our heads from all the stuff that has emotionally or mentally hurt us. Not even physically. This conversation came up because, you know, cancer, you know, can leave a kind of lingering PTSD in you. When will it come back? Do I have to be scared of myself? Do I have to be scared of my body? These questions that you kind of have to move through over time. I said, it'd be so much better if I could just fix up my body, but didn't have the mental emotional trauma from it. And she pointed out, well, you know, maybe the mental emotional trauma is partly also what sets up your expiration date, because some people don't survive that.

And I said, oh, yeah, you're right, they don't.

It's a bit of another way that we get taken out of the game, but that is not satisfying for me at all. I think it's tragic. I know it's real. It's real. We're not all living forever in a state of pure mental, emotional, and physical bliss. So any one of them can take you out of the game, can help set your expiration point. So what about these people who are seemingly trapped in all of their mental, emotional traumas, who got so marked by them through life that now, even though they're living and they're still breathing and experiencing and taking in life, they're doing so through this filter of dog poop, you know, filter of everything is bad. You've got to watch out. I was hurt before. I'm expecting to be hurt again. I'm anticipating loss at every step I take, and I'm gonna caution you and nag you to be afraid of it too. Can you see how this might have gotten started for someone? Like, back up into compassion here. This is a person who's had trauma. They had it growing up, or they had something monstrous happen to them, or they had some physical tragedy and their mind and their heart got swept up and they never were able to come out of it. It's almost like their emotional immune system failed, and they are stuck in that fail. As much as someone's body can be stuck in a kind of Physical fail and not be able to get them out of something physically wrong with them. Right. Compassion, even. I mean, my heart is opening even as I speak this. These are our negative Nellies. These are our moms, our dads, our brothers, our sisters, our kids, maybe us. And yet we say, gosh, Summer, I come home and my mom or my husband or someone is just going on and on about the day. And then they watch the news, and the news gets them all angry, mad. And then. And then I just.

I can't stand it.

Every time I try to do something, they say, oh, be careful, and oh, that's not a good idea, or, oh, don't be so stupid, or, oh, you did that before, and that was so dumb of you. And I just can't stand it. Right. I don't want to be sitting in someone else's disease either. It's tiring. Why? It's not your disease. It's theirs. It's theirs. It's. It's not yours yet. It's an odd thing when it comes to this kind of mental, emotional trauma, this negativity. I'm calling negativity a trauma. Are you seeing this? And they want to invite you into it with them. They want you to experience it with them. They want you to see the world as they see the world. Why? Because it's really comforting. You know, when you don't feel good, you want other people around you to commiserate with you, to make you feel good about not feeling good. Right? They want you in their negativity community. Because that's what we all want, right? We all want community. Feel how I feel. Think how I think. It's gonna make me feel more comfortable with how I think if I know you think the same way. I don't like to feel like I'm all hanging and swinging in the wind by myself, and everybody else feels different. That makes me feel like an outsider. So your negative Nellies are saying, come on into the club of whoa, crab, crab, crab, crab, and you say, no, I don't want to go into your trauma with you. I don't want to go into your negativity disease with you. You got stuck in what they call loss aversion, right? There's a sociological psychological term, loss aversion. It's this need in us to avoid losing at any cost. And by losing, I don't mean like losing a bet. I mean losing anything. And it kind of creates the sense of. Because what I've got is all I'm going to get. And I can't lose it and there is no more. And someone's trying to take it from me, and if I'm not really careful, they're going to get it from me, and then it's not going to be fair. And then. Right. They live life on a constant defensive mode. Constant defensive mode. This is how they handled their trauma. They didn't go through it, they didn't escape it. The lesson they took from it is stay on high alert.

Always.

Now you know what happens to your body when your body's on high alert. Always. Always in a state of intense inflammation, because that's high alert, right? When there's inflammation and your body's fighting something, Fighting something, fighting something. Will you eventually wear out? Think about these poor people who have this kind of emotional inflammation going on, and they're wearing out because they're constantly fighting something that isn't actually in their life, but they're anticipating it might be or could be. You do not need to share this with them. Right? That's the very first thing I want you to hear. You do not need to share this with them. You are under no obligation to go into it with them, to share this illness, to share this trauma. No matter how much they want you in their community, no matter how much you feel like, they'll think, I don't love them if I don't spend 15 minutes, you know, being surrounded by their negative outlook, what they'll think you won't love them if you don't let them spend 15 minutes dumping on you. What kind of love is that? Maybe your job is to step in and say, hey, let me talk to you about a different kind of love. In this love, I encourage you and you encourage me. In this kind of love, yes, we're cautious, but we're not worried about things being fair or not fair, who should get this or who's not acting like that or right or blah, blah, blah. In this kind of love, I encourage you. I support you. I say, let's go into healing together around this. And some of you guys are laughing like, yeah, if I ever said that to my husband, he'd just look at me like, oh, God. Not more of a New Agey mumbo jumbo. But there is ways. There are ways. How can you encourage your negative nellies to heal? How can you support them in their healing? And how can you also protect yourself from not succumbing or being sucked into their trauma? Because every time you're giving them airing or venting of it, you're letting them circle through Their trauma again and again. It's kind of like you're. You're. You're. You're watching someone harm themselves to take drugs or something in front of you. You're like, yeah, I'm gonna let you do that because I love you. And this is what you want. And this is the old pattern we established. Can you see? I know it sounds really harsh when I put it that way, but just envision a different thing. Envision something else. Like, you know, I know you feel that way. I wonder how it would feel if we could heal that, if we could look at the people who are doing beautiful things or great things, or, I know you're mad at the government. Maybe we could look at the organizations that are doing good stuff or get involved in a rally, or maybe we could. And they say, oh, well, nothing will ever change. What do you do then? What do you do when a person actually completely rejects you and you feel like, it's not really my job to rehabilitate them? Love them, but it's not my job to rehabilitate them. So now we're going on to step two. Step one, make an attempt. Step two, protecting yourself. I found that the best way to hold back from being drawn into someone else's negativity.

You're not gonna like this.

Is not to be around them. That's it. I mean, it's just. That's just. Just, Just it. Just not to be around them. And if you're saying, well, I have to. I'm married to them, or I'm not, you know, able to move out of the house yet, or, you know, that my. These are my kids, dad, or. Or even, you know, my. My sister. How can you create ways and places of being together where the negativity is minimized? I know you can do it, but you're gonna have to get over your own guilt in order to do it. The old expectations people have placed on you about what it means to act nice and be a good family member. If acting nice and being a good family member or friend means playing into someone else's tragedy, kind of think about what they're really asking of you. They're not being very nice. They're saying, come hurt yourself with us. What? You're not going to.

I know, I know.

Getting all up in your business here, but it's true, you know, you don't have to go and visit on the holidays. You really don't have to. When you're on the phone call, you know, calling your parents every Sunday night or whatever. It may be. And your mom or your dad or whoever starts going off, you say, mom, I have to go now. I just wanted to share with you some of the great things that happened to me this week and share some feelings I have for you about how wonderful I think you are and how I think you should take up your quilting again and how I think that, you know, you should take up maybe walking with dad and. Right. You can moderate the conversation. You can moderate where you're willing to go with people. And that's where we often feel guilty. Like, no, I can't, because they want to share something. That's. And I'm like, are they really sharing? How many times have you heard them share that thing? Chances are a lot. Have you noticed that about Negative Nellies? They don't just share a brand new unique thing, like, whoa, this crazy thing happened. You know, this person backed into my car and I was like, what? He happened? That was weird. And like, wow, okay, yeah, that's a bad thing. And that's a kind of a negative thing to share. But Negative Nellies aren't doing that. They're saying the same things every day about the same people, and it's the same situation, and they're not changing it. They're not changing it. You get it. You listen one time, you're being a friend, you're being open, you're being cool. By the time you're hearing it the ninth time or the 10th time, nobody's helping anybody. They're not listening to your advice, and they're not doing anything about their situation. They are out of power and they're just expressing to you how I continue to be out of power, how I continue to be run over. So you are allowed at that point to minimize your interaction with that. I think you've done your duty if you've heard it two or three or four or five times, if you really love the person, let's say 10. But after that 10th time, hey, mom, what are you going to do about this? Hey, Mom, I think you have a lot of great skills. Hey, wife, I don't think you ought to feel so bad about how you look. I think you ought to embrace it. You're beautiful. Hey. Right. You are allowed to steer the conversation elsewhere, to take it in a new direction. And I want you to notice when you try this, if the Negative Nelly shuts you down, watch them do it. Because you will try and steer them into a good place and they will shut you down. They will come back at you with why you are wrong about things getting better for them. I know, it's so funny, isn't it? It's true. Because they're really invested in their negativity and they will defend their negativity. And that's when it really becomes clear I'm with someone. I'm surrounded by people who are defending the horrible things in their life and their inability to change them. Now you can see why I call it an illness. No one does this purposely. They do it because they have been damaged. They do this out of fear. They do this because they're living life from a pulled back, fearful loss, aversion overdrive, traumatized background. So what do you do? Third thing. Love. Compassion. Love compassion, but without attachment. Right? You get, you get, you get into that again, that Buddhist way of thinking, compassionate, loving, but not attached. Your stuff isn't my stuff. I love you. And when you're ready, I'll again try and give you some ways that we can feel differently about this. But as long as you're not accepting them, as long as you're batting them down, well, I'll just love you and let all your stuff slide off of me. And when I get home, I'm gonna take a nice shower, get all of that ucky energy off, you know, because it's not like I don't have people in my life who aren't like this too. I do. I have family members and it's always this and that and have any money and this isn't fair. And then the landlord did this and then and that and I go, oh boy, I need to get up now. And I'm gonna go and talk with my other aunt over there and when I get home, right. Clean up my energy. Right. Whenever you're around other people's energy, you're interacting with it, you know, it's like, you ever been in a dust storm, you walk out into it or you ever been someplace, you know, a tractor in a field and it's pulling up all the dust, you walk into it, you get a powder coating all over you. My daughter rides horses now and I always come home from the barn and there's this powder coat of dirt all over me. That's what it's like when you're around the negative nellies. You come home with a powder coat of negativity. Be sure to wash it off. Be sure to cleanse it off of you. Right? Let it go. And that's the last little bit that I have to help you with navigating through these negative people in your life. And I'd recap it if I could, but I can't. I think the first thing was have compassion, understand it's a kind of trauma. Two, help them if possible. Three, if you can't, you are allowed to detach. Come from a state of love. Notice if they're continuing to defend their negativity no matter how you try to help them out of it. And then become at peace with that. And finally, take care of yourself. Excuse yourself, say no, go home and clean that energy off. Because you're probably not going to get to a point where you have no negative people in your life at all. Most of us, because we live. We live in the society, we're going to encounter people, many people, people we love who are traumatized. It's up to you how you want to be in that relationship. Not up to them. It's up to you.

Stay in your personal power.

So I made some flow dreams that are going to help you with that. Speaking of come home, clean up. One of them is the no More Negativity playlist. Feel safety, sunlight and ease. Doesn't that sound great? Feel safety, sunlight and ease. No more negativity. And what these flow dreams do, you listen to them. You move through the emotion with them, and it helps strip off the old varnish. Gets that powder coating off of you so that you feel again, centered, refreshed in you.

Because if you don't do this, you.

Know what ends up happening. You start to feel like them because that powder coating builds up. It becomes part of your energy, and then you are with them. You can't allow yourself to do that, be traumatized by proxy, be drawn into their way of thinking. Can't allow it. Your life is way too valuable to let that happen. So you have to look at these flow dreams as kind of your first aid kit. Good to have around, especially. You ever encounter someone who's just really crazy, angry, upset, and your mood immediately tanks? Like you just feel like, oh, gosh, I've had days like that. You know, my husband will have a bad day. It happens. And then he gets really cranky about it. Then the kids do something sassy and then he goes. And suddenly I just feel like, oh, God, you know, I'm empathic. It hits me hard because normally I'm wide open to my family. It's not my husband's fault. I get that way too sometimes. But I have a first aid kit, which is. That's right. This is not me. I don't need to feel this way. This isn't my Upset. Let go of it. No more negativity. You can practice it. You can get through it, right? That's what Flow Dreaming is all about. Being a master of your emotional landscape, choosing to feel what you want to feel, when you want to feel it. Because that's what your flow is reading off of you as it's busy constructing and making your future. So check out that playlist. We have a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to do a little flow dream together. Create some negativity release in our lives. So stay with me. Be right back after this.

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All right, loves you ready? Let's get some of that negativity washed. Stop us. So we're sparkling Clean. By the way, in MI school I teach my classes really deep varieties of ways of staying clean and clear. If you do any kind of intuitive work, if you are empathic whatsoever, you should have a whole bag of tricks, a whole bunch of different ways to clean yourself, right? To clean your windshield, to clean your filter, as I call it. Because you don't ever want it getting plugged up with all the other stuff you encounter, all these people's stuff. And negativity is a heavy energy, right?

It's heavy and it tends to, you.

Know, like all heavy things. It hits the ground, it sinks. And when it's on you, you likewise sink. So if you're curious about, you know, if you recognize, yeah, you know what, half of what I've been thinking and feeling isn't my own, it's someone else's that I'm around. That's so negative. Really, please check out me school. It will change your life. Okay, so go ahead and close your eyes. We're going to go into flow. Do a little energy, work together, a little cleansing. Remember, use your emotions, use your imagination. Your mind doesn't have to be part of this. You don't even have to see things. But if you do, it's more fun. Relaxing, releasing deep breath in and exhaling. Noticing how you feel right now.

How is your body?

Start at the top of your head. How does your mind feel? Your brow.

Your ears, your jaw, your throat?

You feeling relaxed? You feeling tense? Over full? Empty, Tired? Notice your shoulders, your heart. How does your chest feel? In your trunk and your abdomen and your hips? How are your legs, knees, feet? What's the energy that's radiating from your body right now? Is there a lot of it or just a little? Does it feel worn or scuffed or tired?

Or does it feel bright, shiny as.

A copper penny, like sunlight sparkling off the water? How is your energy? Does it need a scrub? Is it holding on to someone else? Can you feel it? Can you feel that person? Who is that person or people? What atmosphere did you walk through? That left its coating, its powdery dust all over you? What did you give yourself to? What did you allow in? What did you listen to? What did you let yourself be surrounded by? Was it noisy? Was it upsetting? Does this belong to you? Do you need it or can you let it go? Can you feel this negativity rolling and rippling off of you? Can you put a sign on it? Return to sender.

Notice right now, as.

If someone has just taken a big blow dryer to you and all of that dust, all of that negativity is.

Just blowing right off of you standing.

In front of a wind machine.

There it goes, all off of you.

All negativity up and out, out it goes into flow. Flow will recycle it. Flow will take care of it. Released. And now you notice where you pick that up from. You remember it. What's next? How will you be next? Will it be the same next time or will it be different? How will it be different? How are you going to feel about it? Make an acknowledgement, a commitment inside yourself.

And when you're done.

Your daydream is ending and you're finding yourself returning from flow and opening your eyes. There you have it, a very quick dusting off. Now that's not gonna take all that long stacked up negativity off of you. Especially if you've been getting daily doses of it in your workplace or at home or from your best friend or from your partner. If you're getting daily doses of it, this is just the start, right? You've got a whole bunch of revisioning to do. Remember, you don't have to let these people go out of your life. You can if you've decided it's time. But you are certainly highly encouraged, I highly encouraged you and to remake your relationship with them. You know, do it for you and do it for them. Okay, no more negative Nellies having you down, I'm really happy to say. You know, in my own life, I have very few negative people. I mean, very, very few. Like under 4%. Meaning if I know 100 people, only four of them are that way. Because I just don't really, I don't want to say tolerate it, that seems weird. But I don't align to it. So those people eventually don't align to me. And the people who do have long standing, difficult situations, it's fine. That's different. We all have those. But I know they're working through them and I'm happy to work through them with love with them. It's a whole different thing. And eventually, if not already, you have that too. You will have that too. And then you know what happens? You are so freed up to do.

The good work in your life that.

You need to do, right? So hear me. It doesn't mean you only surround yourself with happy, optimistic people. It means that you surround yourself with people you love and care about. And they are people who are committed to, to working through their own stuff. So when they do talk to you about it, when you are sharing something that's difficult, you always feel like there's a light at the end of that tunnel with them, and they feel that same way about themselves. That's the difference between someone who's had trauma and are defending their negativity and people who are acknowledging, I need help. Will you help me? Because I love you and I trust you. Night and day. Night and day. Okay, love you guys. Speaking of which, and I hope to see you all again for another episode of Flow Dreaming. Bye for now.

All right, that wraps up our episode today. But before you go, two things. One, you can get the Flow Dreaming app in the Google, Amazon or itunes app stores. It allows you to search and sort to mark your favorite episodes. It's completely free to download, and it gives you access to the latest several dozen of these episodes, as well as to the premium episode library, where there are more than 400 episodes that date back 10 years. The app's free, so go download it now at Flow Dreaming in the App Store on your mobile device. And last, if you love my show, I'm going to give a shout out to my mom's podcast. It's called the Dear Venus show, and she's an amazing intuitive and a medium and super, super funny. Search the words Dear Venus in your podcast directory or online and that way you can find her too.