As a generalisation their are two types of people in the world, the givers and the the takers.

Givers are happy when they are giving and takers when they are exploiting others.

It would be easy to look upon the takers as the bad guys and think the givers are the good guys. It is not that simple. One cannot exist without the other. If we give too much and lack the ability to accept back (take) we are out of balance and a taker will come to steal energy.

When a takers cannot find someone who is a giver they use multiple forms of abuse to try and force the other person to give away their energy.

It is an energy dance, takers tend to be blind to their energy scavenging behaviour and have a sense of entitlement. Underneath they are probably more afraid and more powerless than givers. Takers survive being preying on the goodness or ignorance of givers.

Givers who lack a good sense of boundaries are easy prey for the energy vultures, simply because they lack enough sense of value to be willing to receive as well as give. Sometimes it is the givers that create the environment for the takers, parents who give everything to their children wonder why when they are finally in a nursing home the children are stealing all their assets.

Learning the playbook of the giver and the takers can help us bring our energy balance to a more equal position. We all need to understand which game we play and how the other side plays as well.

Taking back power from a bully or an abusive taker can be a dramatic affair, especially when they have no idea something else is controlling them. Some inner demon steps in and tries to hold onto whatever energy they can steal by turning to threats, emotional, mental and physical abuse. I know one taker who has no idea just how violent they are, because in their eyes they have never hit anyone. They use every trick in the book to turn the issue onto the other person, blaming them, telling them no one likes them. They plant seeds of doubt trying to undermine the other person into stepping back into the game of energy stealing. What is most interesting watching this particular person recently i realised it was the giver who actually had the power when they stepped out of the game. The level of violence rose and the taker was giving their own power away. It was so obvious to see their own hurt and feelings of powerlessness.

Now everything in life is a dance of energy, when givers learn to balance their energy they fall prey of the takers less often. When takers have no one to prey on they become more powerless and slowly destroy themselves unless they open up and have a good look at themselves. It is hard for the serial giver or taker to recognise the issue and own up and take measures to step back into a place of feeling empowered.

Both polarities in the energy dance are part of the problem, find that place of centredness and self worth and our lives change. We need to be a giver or a taker no longer needs to exist.

Depression, anxiety, stress can all be symptoms of over taking or over giving.

Reading Kissing the Black Dog or having a Motivational Kinesiology session may help to move us back to a more centred place.