How To Know If You're 'Cording' With Someone — And If The Tie Needs To Be Cut
How charged is your connection?
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A / Shutterstock.com Ever have a feeling you should check on someone only to find they’re having a truly terrible day? Or maybe you’re thinking about someone and they call just at that moment?
The reason this happens is because close relationships build energetic ties.
Emotionally charged relationships, good or bad, create an energetic cord.
This connection helps you feel linked to the people you’re closest with. It’s the way you can tell that your manager, coworker, partner or sibling is in a foul mood — so it’s best to stay out of the way.
What is cording?
Think of cording as an energetic string that allows emotions to pass in both directions. Since energy is directed through thought and emotion, you usually get a “hit” through the cord when the person is thinking or “feeling” about you. Maybe they’re about to call you, wondering if you’d like to do something together this weekend or even dreading working on a project with you.
This is beneficial as it helps us have a sense of what’s going on with the people around us.
The stronger the connection, the more sensitive the link. With a strong connection, you can pick up on someone’s hard day, even if they’re not thinking about you. You just have a stronger sense of that person through the energetic connection.
The connection can become a negative thing when you’ve severed ties with someone and they’re still emotionally connected. Emotionally charged thoughts can have a strong impact on our lives and the lives of the people we don’t want around us.
What are the impacts of negative cording?
If you’ve had a falling out with someone who you’ve been close to or maybe you’ve never liked but you’ve had an emotionally fraught confrontation with, you’re likely corded to that individual. This is one of the reasons spiritual teachings are so keen on forgiveness.
True forgiveness releases those energetic cords. The problem is, forgiveness needs to happen on both sides.
If the person is still having hateful thoughts about you, they’re throwing energy your way. If those thoughts are repeated with frequency or are highly emotionally charged, they can recreate an energy connection between you. This means you’re getting smacked with negative energy every time you enter that person’s mind.
You know all those times you’ve had a fantasy conversation with an ex where you’re saying all the things you wish you’d gotten to say while you were together? That’s all negative energy moving through the energetic cord right into that person. Now, maybe that makes you put on a secret smile, knowing your ex is getting hit with negative energy, but it moves in both directions.
The truth is, it’s difficult to heal and move on when invisible insults are still flying back and forth.
Besides, your negative thoughts impact your own reality as well — but, that’s an issue for a different article.
Receiving these negative energetic slams can have many, varied results. One person may feel it as a sense of especially low self-esteem while another might get a headache or even trip and fall. How you take in the energy is as individual as your personality. Nevertheless, it’s never positive. And the stronger the feelings, the more intense the energy.
How do you break a connection you don't want?
Clean your own thoughts. There are a few steps to take to break energetic cording. The first is to clean the house with your own thoughts and feelings. You can cut a cord over and over, but if your own thoughts continue to creep back to the person — especially if they’re emotionally charged — you’re just rebuilding that connection all over again.
If the person comes to mind, don’t beat yourself up over it. No good comes from switching the negative thoughts from them to yourself. Simply, catch yourself as soon as you can and release it. You can practice Ho’onoponopono, say a prayer of forgiveness, repeat the mantra: “ light, love, and let it go,” or simply do something that distracts you.
Whatever works to get your mind on something else. Find some way to let it go without denying or stifling the emotion.
Seven steps for de-cording a negative connection
1. Make room for meditation.
Get into a relaxed meditative state by focusing on your breath and or relaxing your body from head to toe. Really take a moment to do this. You can follow a guided meditation from a mindfulness app if you want help. The calmer and more focused you are, the more successful this practice will be.
2. Seek assistance.
Call in any spiritual helpers you work with (power animals, ancestors, angels, or religious figures) and ask for their assistance. This is an optional step.
3. Verbalize your goal or goals.
Set your intention (either in your mind or out loud): “I am cutting the energetic cord between me and _____."
4. Create a neutral mindset.
Bring the person to mind, as neutrally as possible. See or sense the person in your imagination. Visualize the cord running between you. Notice where it enters your body and where it connects to the other person.
5. Visualize 'cutting' the cord.
See yourself or your spirit helper holding anything that cuts (scissors, a sword, a knife, whatever comes to mind). Say “I release you” and visualize the cord being cut.
6. Evaluate your new freedom.
Take a moment to see and sense being free of the energetic connection (be careful not to start thinking about the other person here, and inadvertently attach a new cord).
7. Create a protective energy barrier.
Now, see a thin but impermeable layer of energy surrounding yourself. This energy layer is protected from that person recreating a future cord between you. That is the only intention of this energetic layer, to keep out the energy of this one person.
As neutrally as you can sense this energy around you and fill it with gratitude for protecting you. If you’ve been working with a helper, ask them to assist in keeping this protection strong and in place. When you’re ready, open your eyes.
A few more things to keep in mind
Again, keep your thoughts away from the person until you can feel neutrally about them. If you start to notice you’re having thoughts about the person out of the blue, not provoked by some reminder of the person or other stream of consciousness that logically leads you there, the person may have reconnected to you. It is possible for someone to be persistent enough to rebuild a new connection. If that happens, repeat the de-cording exercise.
When we stay corded to an individual with whom we’re locked in a negative pattern, both sides are usually perpetuating the connection. This cord-cutting practice allows you to own up to what you’re contributing to the problem and release it.
If either person does this, it often helps the other person defuse their negativity and move on, as well. Work to keep your thoughts on forgiveness, light, and love, or simply surrender them to a higher spiritual helper, and let go. You’ll let both sides off the hook and be happier for it.
Nicole Corbett is a certified hypnotherapist and shamanic healer who combines spiritual and intuitive traditions with hypnosis to help clients reframe and release old patterns.