Are You Giving Off 'Desperate Energy'?

A soothing balm for the anxious ‘reaching’ we do toward wealth, romantic partners, our work, and more.

I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘desperate energy’.

You know what I’m talking about; that needy, insecure yet unusually motivated form of anxiety we all experience from time to time.

Most often talked about in dating, when a person (maybe ourselves) is a little too excited, too quickly. Calling too often, texting too heavily, giving off that repellant ‘I need you to like me’ energy.

But desperate energy can happen in any area of life. I can be the anxiety we feel in a workplace where we don’t belong or have no friends. It can be in the swank bar where we want to meet people and have fun, but feel out of place and unwanted. It can happen in the DMV when we sense the clerk is having a bad day, and we’re working a little too hard to make the experience pleasant for us both…

Desperate energy comes from a desire to be seen, understood, accepted, and is driven by the belief that when we are not those things, we are unsafe.

Thus, we become desperate to do anything to protect ourselves, and that desperation is something others can feel, sense, smell.

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Once I started investigating my own desperate energy when I post (the hope that people will like it, the constant checking of stats, the headlines that felt like clickbait), I started to see it everywhere on Substack:

Endless notes blatantly begging for attention and likes: “I feel so alone here, if you see this hit like!”

A plethora of posts with grabby, notice-me headlines - especially ones pertaining to “Here’s how to grow your Substack” and “Avoid these deadly Substack mistakes.”

It’s content that silently says: “Please like this,” instead of: “I like this post, take it or leave it, I’ll be fine either way.”

To calm us all, I did the only thing I could think to do: write that anxiety, that desperation a love letter. Because as Martha Beck advises, if it were a scared, crying puppy (and isn’t it just that, in our psyche?) I would use a calm, loving voice to calm it, settle it, and let it know that a higher part of myself is in charge and looking out. That it can relax, so we can all create from a place of joy, wholeness, and abundance.

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Dear sweet, loving little Desperate Energy,

I can feel you trembling. And I know it’s hard to know whether those shaking hands before you write and nervous lips before you speak are because you are being brave, or because you are out of alignment.

The truth is: it’s both. You are being brave and putting yourself out there, but you are also chasing the wrong people, and asking for the wrong things.

Desperate energy, you are here because you are trying to protect me. You think that by making people like us, you will help us stay safe, and earn success. You are here because loneliness, rejection, and humiliation told you to do whatever necessary to make sure we are liked, loved, and approved of. They told you their heartbreaking tales and you, being so determined and strong as you are, decided to step up to the plate and make sure it never happens to us again.

I admire so much your drive and passion. I love how much you care, and how hard you work. You are trying to make others see me and accept me. You are trying to make sure others understand me and appreciate me, because you love me so much and you want others to do the same.

But you don’t need to work so hard. I have grown, I don’t need others anymore. After all, I am the one who has survived all those heartbreaks. I am the one who went through all those painful experiences, and I still came out as someone I like very much. I don’t need other people to like me in order to survive, like I did as a child when being part of that small tribe was so important, because there was no where else for me to go. I don’t need other people to approve of me now to be a ‘good girl’. I approve of myself, and that must be enough for both of us.

Please feel the weight of my hand on your shoulder. Regulate your racing heartbeat to mine; slow down, breathe with me.

We are doing just fine. No one has power over us anymore. We aren’t that scared little girl being bullied at school, unsure of what’s ‘wrong’ with her. We’ve grown into a strong, powerful, loving and kind person. Those bullies are gone and even if they came back - which I know is your greatest fear - we wouldn’t want them to like us, anyway. We want nothing to do with them. We want to repel them.

So even if I do something that others don’t like; if I post a Substack and people laugh at me, if I made art with my body and other people mock and laugh at me…That’s ok. Those are not our people. They can be cruel, but we won’t be cruel to ourselves or change ourselves for them any more.

We will no longer betray ourselves to be loved by others.

So, desperate energy, you can rest now. It’s ok for you to lay down, and know that you’ve done an incredible job and your work was greatly appreciated. Now it’s time for something else to take the reigns and lead the work.

It’s time to let Authenticity, Honesty, Realness, Rawness, Integrity, Individuality and Purpose lead the way.

They will make sure our posts, our art, our entire lives are in alignment. So that you don’t have to be constantly controling everything, constantly trying to figure out if we are in alignment or not, if we’re being brave or being desperate, if we’re reaching for approval or reaching into people’s hearts…

Desperate energy, your work is done.

Thank you for loving me so much. I’m grateful for you and I love you and now it’s me that will protect you. I will make sure you never have to carry that weight again.

From now on, we’ll do this for ourselves, not other people. We are more than enough. And we need not worry about how things are received.

Our only work is to be as candid and honest as we can, and to choose our true selves over our fear and desire to be liked.

Sincerely,

Your Highest Self

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