DNFTEC

Years ago, long before the creation of the World Wide Web, when the Internets was still an idea stirring in Al Gore's brain, I belonged to an online community established using General Electric's company mainframe.  GEnie had bulletin boards and chat rooms dedicated to people crazy enough to use a modem in their computer, dial in to a local node, and converse with people they didn't know in person about a vast array of topics. I used to hang out in the SFRT (Science Fiction/Fantasy Round Table) boards, mainly in the Star Trek topics.  Yes, I am a geek. This is not news.

At any rate, I learned an important principle during my time on GEnie, called DNFTEC. "Do Not Feed The Energy Creature." The principle is borne from the reality that there are certain people in the virtual world who feed off the negative energy of others. They are strengthened and invigorated through other's anger or frustration and through choleric exchanges with people even if they don't personally engage every stormy response. As long as they can invoke outrage and vexation to the point that someone responds in kind they are happy. To that end they intentionally "flame" a thread (create conflict) by bringing up hot-button topics or just plain picking a fight.

It works incredibly well. You'd think we humans would be smart enough to stay out of pointless arguments and debates, but you'd be surprised (or not) how quickly you can get sucked in by an Energy Creature. All they have to do is find the right button in your head -- or heart -- and, boom!, you are screaming mad and using words you thought your mom had expunged from your vocabulary way back in grammar school when she made you spend two hours with a lovely bar of Lava soap in your mouth.

It took me a while to get what it really means to "not feed the energy creature" but finally I understood. The only way to "win" with ECs is to just not play. Don't answer. Don't respond. Don't take the bait. Just let their comments hang out there alone where everyone can see their futility, their ugliness and even their cruelty.

It's taking me a lot longer to understand that perhaps the same principle applies to dealing with the ECs out here in the real world. But out here it's simply called "Healthy Boundaries."

I have just said a word that tends to set the Christian world on end. Boundaries, healthy or not, are so often vilified by Christians because they can appear to others, especially those prone to co-dependency, to be quite selfish, self-serving, and even unfeeling, mean-spirited and unChrist-like. We Christians are supposed to be open and loving, allowing others into our hearts, not closed and holding others at a distance. Boundaries too often sound much more like an electric fence or concrete wall than the God-honoring self-defining borders healthy ones really are. And indeed, unhealthy boundaries, often are electric fences and concrete walls that hold people at a distance. Or they are floppy, wet-noodle sort of things that move all over the place, never providing any real protection or consistency. I have friends who's boundaries are so large that you have to scale six huge stone walls, cross three very deep crocodile-infested moats separated by miles of tall-grass fields and remember on which side of the rickety drawbridge it's safe to step ("walk on the left side!") just to get to know them. But then they turn around and let the skankiest, cruelest people of the opposite sex right in to the center of their heart and let them rule.

Healthy boundaries aren't floppy or nearly that big (think more suburban neighborhood than kingdom). They are like picket fences with gates or backyard wooden slat fences just tall enough to protect but not too tall for neighborly conversation (think Wilson from "Home Improvement"). There's room for interaction  over the fence, and others can come and go into both my yard and my home. Yet who I am and what I allow/how I expect you to treat me are clearly defined and immovable. My gates can be shut and locked should you refuse to treat me with the kindness and respect I deserve. We can still have good conversation and friendship over the fence, you're just not allowed in to my private sanctuary places because you've proved I cannot trust you.

I'm still working on this whole concept of healthy boundaries and making it a reality in my life. I didn't grow up with them. I grew up in a boundary-less family where I learned that everyone but me has a "right" to define me. It's taking me a while to understand that's not at all the way God intended. I'm also discovering that until I define and build my healthy boundaries, I have a hard time respecting yours. I think this is why I have always had such a hard time not feeding the Energy Creatures.

Some people just need chaos/drama in their life. Have you noticed that? I don't get that - because I hate chaos. But there are some people I've run across in my life that just seem drawn to it and if they go very long without encountering it, they'll create it themselves. They love to suck you into their vortex of chaos/drama, tie you up in some argument and guilt you into apologizing and "reconciling." If it's not you this time, then it's someone else in their life, but you're still sucked into the drama through their constant recounting of their emotional stress and trauma.

What's wild is they seem to be at their thriving best through it all; as if all that chaos and drama brings out their strengths... or that the only time they can be who they truly are and feel good about themselves is when they are embroiled in chaos, drama or conflict. So they continuously sabotage and destroy the relationships and successes in their own lives to feed that need.

For years my co-dependent tendencies kept me from seeing that the chaos/drama/conflict in some friends lives was in fact created by that very person, and not just life getting out of control. Several years of intense counseling (at least it feels intense to me) and working to understand and change my own hurtful/harmful patterns has made me a lot more sensitive to the harmful ones in others. For this I both thank God and cry out to Him, "why???" Because now I can clearly see how some friends sabotage themselves on a regular basis. I desperately want them to stop but I cannot do anything about it.

I cannot just run from these people either -- though perhaps prudence would strongly advise it -- because I love them dearly. But I also cannot let their chaos continue to wreak havoc in my own life. So the only thing I know to do is develop healthy, durable boundaries that lets them continue on in their cycles of chaos as long as they so desire, but keeps the chaos off my lawn and out of my house. It sounds so simple. Doing it, however, has been the hardest thing in my life.

Online Energy Creatures can be ignored when they spew their drama, but EC friends cannot be. They get in your face and demand attention. Learning to walk away from arguments, to not perpetuate their drama by responding in kind; learning to say, "I'm sorry you feel that way" and mean it -- to truly be sad that they feel the way they do and not just angry that they refuse to listen; learning to state clearly how I expect to be treated and not treated, saying "this is unacceptable"; learning to guard my heart, holding these people at  an arm's length, even though I love them deeply, so that my heart and soul are protected from getting tangled up in their chaos and drama --- these tools are helping me. They are some of the pieces of re-setting boundaries and holding those boundaries as sacred, even in the face of hurtful accusations of selfishness. This, I think, is the real-life way to "not feed the Energy Creatures."

Comments

[Marti]

For years I had a roommate I didn't like. Oh, there were moments I felt affection for her - mostly before she moved in and after she moved out, though. She'd lived in the house - which has long been rented to groups of single women - before, and when the actual landlady moved out she asked if she could come back. I didn't see any reason why not.

But under the circumstances there seemed no way to get her out without her own volition: she paid her rent, and we had an equal right to be there. And since she had grown up in a pretty unpleasant environment, she did not mind the tension between us, the fact that she drove me crazy. So I was the bad guy. Even when she decided she wanted to move and I warmly encouraged her she felt pushed out, tried to change her mind at the last minute, suggested I should move instead.

Well, I could have. Didn't want to.

Of course the fact that I am a missionary and a bit of a skinflint and she is a pauper who acts like she grew up in the depression made both of us cling to our low-rent housing situation pretty fiercely. Who could find a $250/month deal anywhere else?

I think it was a boundary issue more than anything. Some of the problems were practical - sharing the bathroom (she had her own downstairs but after starting a physically demanding job, she wanted to use the upstairs one to take hot baths), taking care of the house (I wanted to throw old things away and buy nicer ones. She filled the house with ugly houseplants and cutesy knickknacks; I hated the clutter). Or she'd invite herself along when I was going someplace, or join a group I was part of, until I felt she was following me around.

She seemed to really LIKE me.

I was not the only one who had a hard time with her lack of boundaries. Ironically, when I think of how her family members have hurt and rejected and excluded her I still feel a righteous indignation: how can they be so mean?

But I was mean, too. Meaner. I knew I was becoming unreasonable. I would ocassionally check in with someone else for another perspective, but came to realize that most things she did irritated me not just on their own merits but because she had done them.

One trait - filling up dirty dishes with water and leaving them around the sink and counters so they would be easy to clean up later - continued after she moved out. It was actually my other roommate who did it - and still does. But I love Deb, and find it does not bug me anymore.

It was only when the difficult roommate did it that it really drove me crazy. So I was now an irritable person and did not like to be at home. Somehow it did not bother her so much, having an angry, irritable roommate.

Boundaries? I think so. Mostly not physical ones, but emotional ones. The difficult roommate was extremely emotional. She filled up our small house with her emotions - sorrow, sometimes; and more often, perhaps exuberant joy and energy. So, this is a little different from what you describe, Lu: she wasn't negative so much, she was positive more often!

For example... sin of sins, she was almost always cheerful and wanting to talk in the morning when I wanted to be alone. If I stopped to listen or answer her questions I was inevitably late for work.

She always answered the phone in big round tones, "good MOOOOR-ning!' I found this unforgivable. I was hostile.

There seemed no solution for it but to claim irreconcilable differences. I think it felt to her like we were getting divorced, when she left. But it was such a relief to me, to like being at home again, not feeling like I was always trying to dodge her behavior, her stuff, her emotions.

Yet I know Jesus would like her. Does like her. And He likes me. Doesn't He have scandalous taste?

[Christy]

Energy Creatures.....never heard that term, but yes, that's exactly right.

A Texan friend of mine likes to say, "Two ticks, no dog," when two Energy Creatures are together.

Boundaries are good. But they are so hard for those of us just learning about them!

[KatRose]

I prefer the term "energy vampire" because it has a very visual and viseral feel to it. :-) I have several of these creatures in my own life. They're hard to deal with until you realize that by feeding the monster what they want, they refuse to go away. Once you realize that, accept that, and understand what to do (i.e. respond if you need to, but not in the way they're anticipating), then you can change not only your behavior, but theirs.

But sometimes, even after changing the way you react to these EVs, there's no change coming from them and you have to decide whether or not having these people in your life is worth the drain on your own psyche. Sometimes, no matter how much you love that person, it's best to walk away, even if it's only for a short period of time or perhaps keeping only limited contact. I've had to do that with my mother - which you know hurts me, but it's better than the hurt and anguish I felt before I took that step back. I know it's hurt her, this disconnection from me, but my own soul was at risk for even more chaos than I was capable of handling if I'd stayed.

EVs or ECs may be good people in their hearts, but their actions and reactions don't always play out that way. They are often their own worst enemies and we, as caring individuals, have to decide which is worse: letting them go to bring chaos to others' lives or keeping them around and taking on the task of being trying to subdue their EV/EC-ness. Personally, I don't have a hero-complex, so I let them go (wholly or only partially) and try to understand that I'm not a bad person for doing so.

[Lu]

Marti - I've known people like that too; people who just suck the life out of you and then get upset and feel rejected when you have nothing left to give. And yeah, that's also a boundary issue. I BIG one. They are just as much energy creatures/vampires as the ones I described. Leeches, is actually how I've heard them described by one pastor friend of mine. Emotional leeches. And you do have to set the boundary at your picket fence, the farthest out your "self" goes, and keep them there in order to keep yourself from being drained of everything by them.

Christy - I LOVE that analogy! Very true.

KatRose - Vampires is also a very good term. It's got to be sooo hard to have to hold your mother at a distance! You are such an amazing woman of strength!!

Can you really change their behavior? I haven't seent that yet - but I'm still new to all this. Mostly what I see is them still behaving the way they used to, I just don't let it get to me now, or let them drag me down with them, because I'm holding them at arm's length. I'm changing MY behavior... but so far they haven't changed theirs. Then again, this new life is still "young" and anything is possible! :)