Sour Energy

Once in a while you meet somebody who uses a lot of their energy trying to bring other people down.

Decades and centuries ago, this took more dramatic forms. Sometimes it resulted in terrible periods of persecution of either individuals or groups. But it seems to be an aspect of human nature that is always with us.

It takes more insidious forms today. Low expectations are forced on people and sometimes these victims come to believe them. This might be in the workplace or even from parent to child. It can also be more overt, like when somebody insults your family or culture because they don’t like something you do or say that you consider perfectly normal.

I decided to call this animated form of negativity “sour energy.”

People with sour energy are easily identified. Simple pleasures are never good enough for them, they judge results without giving credit for effort or intention, and they are never satisfied to hold these feelings in. They have to try to push their perceptions on the world around them.

Once sour energy is released into an environment, it’s like slow poison on life’s sweetness unless actively countered by positive energy. Sour energy does nothing to make situations better. It simply seeks to tear down anything anybody takes pride in or that enriches their lives. This may have deleterious effect for the person being sour. They don’t care. While they never apparently benefit from this arrangement, they will keep it up to derive whatever value out of it that they do.

I want to give a couple specific examples. I have an ex who once insulted my family in an intentionally hurtful and inaccurate way. This included my parents, who are gentle and kind people, and other relatives who would also have enriched her life, and whom she to this day has never met. She also attacked me for practically every aspect of my identity at some point or another, and got angry anytime something good happened to me or my kids. When it did, anyone involved would be excluded from her life until she found use for us again.

In another case I had an associate who actively worked to get private information about people, pretending to be a trusted confidant, so he could use the information against them. Most people fell for the conversational way in which he gathered information and it gradually destroyed their standing in the community, causing them to drop out. If he couldn’t get the real information he sought, he would lie about a person’s habits, either exaggerating their foibles or casting their success in the most negative light. If somebody did a great job at something he would attack it as not good enough. If somebody was honest about their mistakes, he would flip the proportion of failure and success so that, no matter how well they were doing, they would always be remembered for those one or two mistakes they were honest about.

You can’t always cut people with sour energy out of your life. You might be too invested in a community or metaphorically or literally married to this persistent negativity. So what can you do?

Mostly, you have to starve sour energy and hold it at arm’s length. You have to work against it actively sometimes because even though it might not manifest as insult or abuse, it is a persistent form of negativity. Here’s what I did in the examples above.

In the case where my family was insulted, I directly countered the insult. I told the ex that her perceptions had nothing to do with the realities of my family, either immediate or extended. And while I never deprived her of civility, I stopped going out of my way to be kind. Eventually she escalated from being sour and went on the offensive to try to defame me to my family. That failed, so she threatened me with legal action, among other things. When she finally realized she couldn’t manipulate or demoralize me, she cut me out of her life as if I’d never existed. And that was probably the best possible result.

In the case of the gossip monger, I never gave him the personal information he wanted once I saw what he did with the smallest sliver. When the ironic sing-song of his voice became enough to literally give me headaches, I actively placed intermediaries between us. I never descended to being passive aggressive, and when I had to deal directly with him I was still cordial. I played the long game, displaying my character and counteracting lies and exaggerations with numbers that proved them wrong. I never let it get personal, and rarely even called him out to others for his behavior.

Sometimes it’s not enough to address the people in your life who are overtly destructive. Humans have gotten awfully good at channeling sour energy into forms of social manipulation that can have equally negative results.

I didn’t give into the sour energy. Sometimes it was discouraging. I even had a medical professional suggest leave a community behind. Instead I focused more energy into other activities that recharged my social and emotional batteries. And eventually, the good things in my life felt even better because I overcame sour energy.

Where you encounter people with sour energy from whom you can’t or don’t want to disengage, it’s important to build proportional responses, to stay objective, and to stand your ground. Rarely will confronting sour energy have desirable results. Mitigate it instead. Try not to disassociate or compartmentalize the experience, but use the most healthy coping mechanisms available.

Eventually, a little sour energy will just be seasoning to an overwhelmingly sweet life.