How Do You Detox Family Energy and Break Toxic Patterns? (Transcript)

Episode transcript, ShelbyRADIO · 74 minutes

Short answer: To detox family energy and break toxic patterns, you have to notice the energy you're absorbing, process it and release it, and then set boundaries so the pattern has nothing left to feed on. When family members don't deal with their own emotional wounds, that unresolved energy gets passed down to the people closest to them, often the empath of the family. Detoxing isn't a one-and-done event, but each time you move the energy through, you build immunity to manipulation and old family patterns. The goal is sovereignty: holding your own energy without feeling responsible for everyone else's unresolved issues.

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Key takeaways

• Unresolved family energy doesn't disappear. If a family member doesn't transmute it in their lifetime, it goes to the people closest to them.
• If you're the empath of the family, you're likely taking on energy that skips everyone else, and you're the one who has to move it.
• Detoxing family energy can show up physically and emotionally: unexplained emotions, sudden physical symptoms, relationship changes and clarity about people's true nature.
• Energy isn't personal. Look past someone's personality to their core pattern, and stop enabling it.
• With pushy or manipulative energy, it's not about being nice. It's about being direct and effective.
• The four steps: awareness, discernment ("Is this mine?"), transmutation through breath, movement or cleansing, and boundaries that build immunity.

Full transcript

Lightly edited for reading.

Breaking the cycle (00:00)

Have you ever felt a calling, something deep, something you can't quite explain, that's urging you to step into a higher version of yourself? Hello, welcome to ShelbyRADIO. I am Shelby Carino, and today we are breaking the cycle. We are detoxing family energy for good.

This is a pretty big topic. For a few weeks I couldn't bring myself to get on camera. I had a strong objection to it, and I kept talking myself out of it.

Now I'm ready to do this again, and I'm choking up about it. It doesn't matter when you're listening to this episode. It will resonate with you whatever time and space you're in.

This has been a series about family. I've talked about family in transition, why what we thought family was is not what family has become, and why abrupt changes to family dynamics are happening. I've talked about how family energy isn't gone just because you leave or put distance between you and your family.

And I've talked about the emotional inheritance, what we as descendants inherit in the family's emotional structure. Today we end with breaking the cycle and detoxing that family energy.

Why family is where we work it out (02:48)

There's a massive spiritual cleanse happening for the collective, and a lot of it centers on our sovereignty as it relates to family. We're having to get back to the basics and remember who we are, not just as humans but as spiritual beings. We've been sidetracked for a while on this planet, because there's been a battle between good and evil, and we play out those collective energies through our own lives.

And what are the closest relationships we have but our families, our biological families and sometimes our chosen family? We have these relationships so we can work out dynamics in our vibration with other people. But with biological family, there are things you just can't overlook.

There comes a time when you have to call it like it is. This is what it is, and this is how it's been, but that doesn't mean it has to continue to be this way.

Not one and done: building immunity (07:00)

When you're healing and working in your bloodline energies, as much as we want it to be a one-and-done process, where we do one piece of change work and it never happens again, it's not that easy. But when you keep working the process and transmuting energy in that line, you build immunity to it. When you embrace that, it will detox you for good.

You will get to that point. The goal isn't to keep doing this for the rest of your life. The goal is to detox it, let it go and build immunity.

I'm drawing this from exactly what I'm going through, what my husband is going through and what his family is going through with his mother and her siblings. This past month has been very telling. I don't want to call it challenging as much as I'd say it's required stamina and endurance.

My dad always told me growing up, "Shelby, it's an endurance contest." That program he put into me has served me well. When I want to quit, or feel like I can't take one more step, I hear him say it, and I think, "You're right. Just keep on going."

The only way to get through something is to get through it. If you quit, you just move on to something else you have to endure. So you might as well stay on the path you're on.

The empath of the family (10:44)

Here's the core concept: family energy can be toxic, that toxic energy sheds during family transitions, and it's vital for your own immunity and energetic clarity that you detox it.

If you're the empath of the family, which I can almost guarantee you are if you're listening, you're taking on things you may not even know you're taking on. You need the strength, awareness and courage to receive fully what's being placed on you, because it's skipping everybody else. Some people drown it by turning to sex, drugs or alcohol in unhealthy ways, or by staying busy in their minds, not having the conversations and staying in the illusion of what's going on.

That doesn't help anybody, especially you, because at some point it all comes back. It's already sitting in your vibration. So let's deal with it, get the immunity and get the clarity.

A year of caring for Joe's mother (12:36)

Here's my situation. My dad died in November of 2023, a week after his birthday. He died at home in his sleep, without a physical illness.

Eight years earlier, he had died on a football field and was brought back to life, which I've talked about elsewhere. But this time he passed silently in his sleep.

A couple of months later, in January of 2024, my husband's mother went into the emergency room because she felt she couldn't breathe and had a lot of pressure on her chest. That began a year's worth of work helping her get to a place where she could stay in her house, run her business, stay mobile, go to the grocery store and go to church, the way she wanted to.

My husband and I put our life on hold for several months. We cleared a lot of spaces, went through papers and files, and made her business, which she ran from home, easier to manage, so she could have the quality of life she wanted. In doing that, my husband and I learned things about his mother and the family that we maybe knew, but hadn't seen at that level.

And as we helped his mother clear, it cleared us. There was a trinity, a triangle, between his mother, me and him, clearing among the three of us.

We did about eight months' worth of work in two months, and she rode the wave of that energy for six to eight months. Once that energy was used up, she had another episode that sent her back to the ER, then to a rehab facility, then another facility. It got to the point where she couldn't go back to the house. She wasn't strong enough to live independently, her health was getting worse, and she needed to be somewhere safer with help.

So we had to go back into her house again, and this time detox it all the way to zero point, because the house was going to be sold. We put her on FaceTime and let her be part of the decisions, which was very beneficial. But whereas before she would rebound as we cleared, this time she wasn't rebounding. That told us the triangle of the three of us clearing together was running thin, and she was getting closer to her own authentic energy, not what my husband and I had shared with her.

Nine hours unresponsive (18:40)

Then she had a stroke and was sent to the ICU, and she was unresponsive for nine hours. When I say unresponsive, she wasn't in there. I told Joe it was time to call the family, because we didn't know if she was going to come back or if she was exiting. He called four people, three of them her sisters.

She has four sisters. Not one of them answered, which I thought was very ironic. He left a voicemail with every one.

We went back into the room. He was holding her hand, and he said, "Mom, it's Joe. I just want you to know I called," and he named the three sisters. What happened next was the most interesting thing. I was standing at the foot of her bed watching, and it was like a lightning bolt of energy entered the left side of her body at her neck.

It looked like a worm wiggling down. You could literally see the energy drop back into her body and move all the way through it. Her body shook, taking in the energy, and then, like a robot that had been asleep, her eyes popped wide open and she started responding to Joe.

It startled Joe so much. I said, "I've got to go get the nurses." I told one of the ICU nurses she had just woken up, and he said, "What?"

The medical staff had said they had tried everything medically possible to get a response, and nothing had worked after nine hours. They all came running in, and she was looking around, and she even said, "How am I alive?" We said, "We don't know. But welcome back."

When she was unresponsive, I could sense her spirit in the room, flying around. The minute she dropped back into her body, I didn't hear it anymore. She was in the ICU for seven or eight days, then moved to a rehab room in the hospital, and then back to where she'd been living.

She came back for the siblings (23:48)

I tell you this because we're talking about family. I said to Joe, "Your work with her is done, because she didn't come back for you. She didn't come back because you were holding her hand saying, 'Mom, it's Joe, your son.' She didn't come back for us. But the minute you mentioned the siblings, she hopped right back into her body." That's the family dynamic. That's the family tie.

When that happened, I knew there was something not done with the siblings, because she reacted to those three specifically. She's always had trouble standing in her truth with her sisters. We knew she probably wasn't going to deal with it, especially in her state, but she would open the energy for it. And because it's a female issue, it was going to skip Joe and come to me.

I'll be honest, my first reaction was, "This is going to be hard. Why did I come in as a woman at this point in time to deal with all of this?" I only had one sibling, and Joe has none, so I had a lot to learn. But I'm a teacher, so I thought, let me figure out what these energies are about.

Letting the family do what it does (26:08)

When she came back, the siblings did what siblings do. They all jumped right in, because none of them have boundaries. They all started trying to run the process and had their opinions. One flew in from out of town, stayed a week, and spent time at the hospital pushing her network marketing products on the ICU nurses and on his mother.

We sat back and said, this has to happen. This is his mother's relationship with them, and she came back for it. We had to let it ride, while still watching out for her.

Her birthday was coming up and they wanted to celebrate, and Joe got pulled back into the family after being estranged. A lot of good came out of it. It created good memories and good moments, and it was beneficial for them, for his mother and for us.

But when people aren't talking about the problem and the problem is still there, once the party is over and everyone has run their energies and their agendas, you're still left with the energy, and someone has to do something with it. She wasn't going to. Joe is an empath, so he'd receive it in his feminine energy, but he'd throw it to me, because it takes a female to clear a female wound. Just like we'd clean our body of toxins, we have to clean our energy of toxins.

Over the last year, the three of us had cleaned up a lot. But when the siblings came in, it wasn't about the three of us anymore. It was about what his mother would receive from her siblings, which I would then take in and process. That way I could gain compassion and empathy on a whole other level, and see the sibling dynamic and why she never felt she could stand up to them in her truth.

So I went back to her and said, "Wow, I understand your position in the sibling dynamic. I understand how you've probably felt, because I've received those energies." I could give that back to her because I'd been feeling and transmuting it. I'm grateful she's alive and could receive those conversations.

I didn't have to tell her, but why wouldn't I? Why would I hoard that and keep her from having someone understand what she grew up in? That's why I tell people it's so important to communicate what you're going through, thinking, feeling and learning, especially if it will help the other person in their soul process.

Feeling the detox in my body (32:12)

After she got out of the ICU and things settled down, I felt I needed to do a detox in my body. I had a bottle of cellular detox drops, actually a product his mom represented in her natural health business, that you take twice a day. Since we were detoxing the energy, I thought I'd detox my body too.

One night I looked up what it feels like to detox heavy metals out of the body. It said you can go through a healing crisis where your body feels heavy, achy, sluggish or fatigued as it purges toxins. For whatever reason, I just needed to read that in my human. I shared it with Joe while we were watching TV.

Within maybe five minutes, I felt a weird push into my body, coming from the top and pushing down. It's a weird example, but you know when a recipe calls for packed brown sugar, and you press it down with a spoon? It felt like I was the brown sugar, and someone was packing energy into my body. It went further down, I got woozy and swirly even lying on the couch, and then my psychic took off, and I thought, "Oh my God, I'm receiving the detox."

I'd swirled psychic energy around before, but now the energy was really moving through my body. I didn't say anything out loud. Joe would go insane if I narrated everything I felt in my body. I just sat with it in silence.

We went to bed, and about 30 minutes later my body still wasn't done moving it. My stomach bloated badly, and that's how I knew it was coming out of my spine and pushing out through my stomach. I was in the bathroom for over an hour, not because my stomach was upset, but moving my legs, rubbing my spine and my hips. It was like giving birth, pushing that spiritual energy through.

My legs went numb because the energy was trying to come out. Joe was asleep. I've stopped telling him when I go through those episodes, because the only thing that matters is that I move it.

The next morning, getting dressed, I realized: this is my episode. Breaking the cycle and detoxing the family for good, because that's literally what I've been going through. I'm empathic. I take on energies when there's a benefit for me to take them on, and through this process I've realized how much immunity I'm building, in rapid-fire mode, because of the siblings on his mother's side.

How unresolved energy gets passed down (38:16)

Unresolved energy gets passed down to other family members. His mother hadn't dealt with this energy with her siblings, and I understand why. Feeling it, I could see how hard it would be.

There are so many of them that it's easier to go with the flow than to go up against them, especially in the time she grew up. Unfortunately, that got passed to Joe, and Joe became a scapegoat for his mother. Then I became his wife, and I'm a healer, so I transmute it, and it heals him and it heals her, if they choose to receive the healing.

This happens all the time. If you're married to someone, or very close to someone, even if they're not your bloodline, you'll receive that dynamic, especially if you're open to it. And I happen to be open.

Since we're talking about packing brown sugar, think about family recipes. "This was my grandmother's apple pie recipe, and it's been in the family for generations." Now imagine that, instead of a delicious recipe everyone wants, what keeps getting passed down is toxic emotional baggage.

That's emotional inheritance. When that energy isn't processed, you feel drained, confused, manipulated and emotionally reactive.

Joe and I had been more sluggish this month because things were coming to a close and I knew I hadn't run it all through yet. We were still in it. Once I got to "Oh, now I know what this is, and now I can address it," I could talk about it and even get back on camera, and I knew I was at the end.

Once it runs through, I build my own immunity, I give that immunity to Joe, it builds immunity in him, and we're done. Then it's back to his mother and whatever she does with it.

Energy sheds in major transitions (42:56)

When someone is in a transition of their spiritual energy, whether they're staying in the body or moving out of it, which we call death, or they're ill, they shed a lot of energy. Energy is shed during major life transitions like illness, death and spiritual awakening. That's why I tell my lightworkers to take advantage of the heavy, transitional times. If you go through it first, you can help others navigate when the energies hit them.

For us, my mother-in-law waking up from that unresponsive state when she heard her siblings' names was the beginning of a new shedding. She chose to come back for it. In the ICU, she even told me, "Stick around, Shelby, there's more to learn." And boy, have I learned.

She never processed that sibling dynamic, and it's what pulled her back into her body. That left it for Joe and me to transmute. So we said, okay, let's get back to work.

A key understanding: if family members don't do the work in their lifetime to transmute their energy, it still goes somewhere, usually to those closest in proximity. With Joe's mother, it goes to Joe. If it's a female energy, it skips Joe and comes to me. I transmute it and give it back to Joe, which builds his immunity in his feminine energy, and his mother is left with whatever is originally hers.

Look at it this way. In a forest, there are old trees that look like they could fall at any moment. When an old tree falls, the environment around it absorbs it and eventually processes its decay, however long it takes. When somebody dies and leaves their body, the body is gone, but the energy is still there, and it gets absorbed by the environment closest to that body.

That's how generational patterns keep going until somebody stops them. Joe is an only child, his mother was one of seven, and I only had one sibling. So it was very purposeful for her to come back after nine hours and give us the opportunity to process all this energy from the siblings and really understand what she'd been through.

When you detox family energy, it can show up physically and emotionally. Joe and I both felt we needed to detox our bodies because we were feeling heavy from the emotional detox. Even using a product his mother recommended was a mirror. When we have these physical mirrors in front of us, it helps cleanse the body and the energy field, but we have to be willing to see it, listen to it and act on it.

Signs you're processing family energy (50:24)

How do you know you're processing family energy, or energy you can't explain? First, you'll have unexplained emotions. Second, you'll have sudden physical detox symptoms.

Your stomach might drop and you need to run to the bathroom, you might feel dizzy, or you might get a bout of anxiety and not know where it came from. It's sudden. It just hits you.

You'll have changes in your relationships, and you'll get clarity on people's true nature in those relationships. That happened at the end of this month with Joe, his mother's energy and one of her sisters.

And eventually, you'll notice an increase in your immunity to manipulation and to the family pattern. You'll find yourself not getting pulled in, not because you're trying to avoid it, but because there's nothing feeding it anymore.

Energy isn't personal (53:12)

You have to break the enabling pattern. I kept telling Joe, "You have to quit enabling." I felt he was getting sucked in when a family member would ask him to buy something or do something and the energy was off.

When you enable the behavior, you get hit with it, which means I get hit with it, and I don't want to get hit with it anymore. So we needed boundaries.

I say this to all my students and clients: energy is not personal. It's energy. A personality is just a personality.

There are some very good actors and actresses out there in their personalities. But once you chisel down to someone's core pattern and see where their energy stems from, you see the heart of their energy regardless of their personality. You see the damage, the manipulation or the trauma.

That's why some family members, friends or coworkers aren't meant to stay in your life. If you met some of these relatives, you'd think they were very nice people. But at the core, the energy is toxic, and no judgment, it stems from their own mother. If someone isn't willing to see themselves for who they are, that doesn't mean you have to stick around in the chaos.

Be direct, not nice (55:04)

One of the last big lessons came from one of the sisters, who was like a second mom to Joe growing up. She has done network marketing her whole life. She's good at it, but she's very pushy and very focused on product, under the guise of "I care about you, so here, take this product." She was the one who flew in.

When I watched her in the ICU, talking to the doctors about her product while knowing his mother had already been on it for over a year, I thought, "Are you serious? You're going to capitalize on your sister's situation at the most intense time, under the disguise of caring?" Energy doesn't lie. There's a time and place for everything, and she kept breaking boundaries, and she knew better.

Then a new product launched, and she went to Joe and said it would really help his mother with her pain. Joe said, "No, she has enough of this product. She needs to use what she has." But then he added, "If you want to send her the bundle as a test and it works, I'll be happy to get more for her." I told him, "You have to tell her you're not buying this."

In his mind, she'd be sending it from her own supply as a test. That's not how she received it, and she still asked for the money. It all blew up.

The truth his mother had to see was that this wasn't only about her sister caring about her pain. Maybe a little. But the reality was she wanted his mother as a testimonial, and she wanted them to pay for it.

It wasn't an authentic connection. It all came through product.

Joe realized his error, because he wasn't direct. I told him, "You weren't direct in your language, so pay for the product, call it a day, and take the lesson." He told her he felt pressured and wouldn't have agreed if she hadn't kept pushing, and she just kept deflecting: "I'm just glad you're there to take care of your mother."

She wasn't taking ownership of her sales tactic or her pushiness. And his side of it was, "Shame on me that I didn't say no."

That's exactly what his mother always did. This is what happens when you're not direct. The person with the pushiest energy usually wins, and that's where his mom has gotten taken advantage of most of her life.

If you're trying to stay in your ethics, you have to be in the truth of the ethics, and to do that, you have to be direct. You can't just be nice. If you skirt the issue and the other person has pushy, manipulative energy, you're going to lose.

That's one of the biggest lessons for a lightworker, and the hardest. I struggled with it too in my own tests: telling people like it is, stopping them in their tracks and saying no. They're running their unconscious pattern, and they only see their pattern until you come in and say, "No. Stop pushing."

Somebody will stop her at some point. But now Joe knows why it's important not to skirt the issue. Say what you have to say, when you need to say it.

His mom got a lesson, and I got a lesson too, because I had to stay out of it. My inner tiger wanted to pounce and tell her exactly what she was doing. But I had to let Joe do his thing.

I'd tried to warn him. So, lesson learned, move on, don't do it again.

You don't want to enable people's patterns, especially family, but also friends and coworkers, because if you're on a spiritual path and doing the ethics, you will get hit with it. It's not about being nice. It's about being effective. Don't get caught up in a person's personality, because their core energy is what you're dealing with.

This isn't about them liking you. They'd probably respect you more if you'd just said no. These are serious things we deal with in our families, but our families are here to teach us the harder lessons.

Seeing the true energy of those siblings so clearly, I know I don't want an ongoing association with them once his mother decides to leave her body, because I don't want to play a game that isn't authentic, and neither of us needs relationships like that. We already knew that before her stroke, but it became clearer after everything this month. That's a different immunity, a deeper packing of the brown sugar. A deeper knowing.

Detoxing builds immunity (65:48)

Detoxing isn't just about removing the toxicity. It's about building immunity to the toxicity. And you have to go through it to have that. Sovereignty means being able to hold your own energy without feeling responsible for transmuting other people's energy or unresolved issues.

But you can't just mentally decide, "I'm not going to process that." That's a mental thing. You have to be energetically aware of what you're receiving. If you're getting angry, tired or negative, or feeling emotions you can't place, you're processing something unresolved.

A lot of times it doesn't matter where it came from. You just need to move it. If you can identify where it's coming from, like Joe and I can because we're dealing with family, you get more wisdom.

Receiving energy is one thing. What's more important is releasing it. Even putting all of this into an episode is me releasing it.

I've released it through my body, my energy and my emotions, and now I'm sharing it with whoever needs to receive it, because I'm done with it. That's the ethical way for me to release it.

You want to shift from unconsciously absorbing to consciously absorbing. That means being aware of your body, your mind, your energy, your emotions, your environment and who you're around, because you're your own best barometer. If you say, "I just wasn't aware. I didn't know," you're missing out on the most important thing, which is you.

You want to be conscious of what's coming in instead of trying to deflect it, so you can see it and do something about it. That's where the power is.

Four steps, and an act of self-love (69:32)

So let's break it down. What are the practical steps when you're in a detox pattern with family or others?

The first step is awareness: noticing when energy is entering your field. The second is discernment: asking yourself, "Is this mine?" before you engage with that emotion or experience. The third is transmutation: processing and releasing the energy through breath work, movement or some kind of intentional cleansing.

The fourth is boundaries. That's when your energetic immune system strengthens and you're not as susceptible to manipulation or outside influences.

Detoxing family energy creates a healthier, more sovereign existence for you. Ask yourself what toxic patterns you might be unconsciously carrying in your family line, because that question can lead to another opening of your spiritual awakening. Reflect on the dynamics I've shared, and when it's appropriate for you, take steps to detox what no longer serves you, emotionally, energetically and physically.

Remember this: detoxing is an act of self-love and spiritual evolution. The stronger we become in our own energy, the freer we are to live our truth.

Share this with someone going through something similar who could benefit from what Joe and I have learned in our family dynamics. That's what we're here to do: share the information, the wisdom and the energy, so we can all keep helping each other walk home to our own personal sovereignty.

Remember, the journey doesn't end here. It's only the beginning. I'll see you on the path.

Frequently asked questions

How do you detox family energy?

Shelby's four steps are awareness (noticing energy entering your field), discernment (asking "Is this mine?"), transmutation (releasing it through breath work, movement or intentional cleansing) and boundaries, which build your immunity to manipulation and old patterns.

Why do I feel like I'm carrying my family's pain?

When family members don't process their own emotional wounds, that unresolved energy goes to the people closest to them, often the empath of the family or a spouse. You may be receiving energy that skipped everyone else so it can finally be moved and released.

What are signs you're processing family energy?

Unexplained emotions, sudden physical symptoms like stomach upset, dizziness or anxiety out of nowhere, changes in your relationships and new clarity about people's true nature. Over time, you notice you no longer get pulled into the family pattern. Sudden physical symptoms can have other causes, so please also talk with your doctor.

How do you stop enabling a toxic family member?

Look past their personality to their core pattern, and be direct instead of just nice. Say no clearly when you need to. If you skirt the issue with someone whose energy is pushy or manipulative, the pattern keeps running and you get hit with it.

Where to go next

• Start here: my free 16-minute audio, When You Don't Feel Like Yourself
• The course: Healthy Boundaries & Personal Power, stop over-giving and keep your power
• Listen next: The Emotional Inheritance: What Happens When Parents Don't Heal
• Work with me one-on-one: private sessions