I hope this helps you in some way.
Creating a Shield:
Shields can take many forms and can be created in many ways. The method explained here will be based on visualization. Other methods exist that are closer to ritual magick which work just as well. The general method is to form energy around yourself that is programmed to allow only certain energy to move through.
Begin by clearly thinking through your purpose for the shield. Why do you want a shield? What exactly do you want it to do? Will it allow no energy in, or just allow good energy in? Will it be temporary (just when you are thinking about it), or will it be permanent? Will it be just defensive, or will it attack in response to negative energy?
Once you have a clear intent, begin drawing energy and let it swirl around you. You can picture the energy as anything you wish. Some common visualizations are soap bubbles, waterfalls, balls of light, fire, trees/vines, crystals, feathered wings or fur, tank metal, and armor. Choose an image that is appropriate to your personality and that you enjoy thinking about. Be sure that it doesn't make you feel cramped or heavy. Let the energy swirl around you in that form.
When you feel the shield is strong enough, let go. It will continue to maintain itself with whatever purpose you gave it as you created it. If it gets depleted over time, repeat the creation as needed to add more energy to it.
Shield Styles.
Maintaining a Shield:
Stressful conditions can sometimes interfere with maintaining a shield. Under normal circumstances, a shield will maintain itself for quite a while before becoming depleted. However, large amounts of negative energy, attacks, illness, and lack of sleep can all cause a weak shield. This section details how to maintain a shield more successfully under stressful conditions.
Daily Stress:
The most common difficulty with shielding is daily stress. While a shield often helps prevent psychic energy from adding to the stress, eventually the shield can weaken. The best cure is more rest, planned time alone, meditating, and avoiding environmental factors that are stressful. Daily (or weekly) meditation replenishes a drained shield and also helps relieve the internal stress that weakens the shield.
Empathic Overload:
Empathic overload is similar to, but can be more intense than, normal stress. As many empaths have realized, large crowds, schools, and cities are often filled with intense emotional energy. Empaths who are particularly sensitive to this learn to build very strong shields to keep other people's emotions separate from their own. The first few days of an emotionally intense environment can be particularly tiring if the empathic has not yet made a strong enough shield.
To protect from the empathic pounding of emotionally charged environments, meditation and careful examination of the self are very important. Meditation helps relieve the stress and emotional energy in a controlled way. It also gives time to identify the difference between empathic emotions and personal emotions. By identifying the self carefully (especially emotionally), an extra layer is added to the shield which defines "own emotions" and "external emotions" and separates the two. This helps external emotions bounce off harmlessly.
Effects of a Shield:
A shield can have any of multiple effects, alone or in combination. A shield can keep energy on one side or the other, or act as a filter to allow only certain energy inside. It can convert energy from one form to another so that a filter is unnecessary. Shields can help empaths keep out some of the extra emotional energy so they don't feel overwhelmed.
Shields can also define boundaries in the physical world, which people will tend not to cross (often without realizing why they stopped there). The edge of a shield can be used like a psychic alarm; when someone physically crosses it, the person sustaining the shield gets a psychic warning that someone is nearby.
Shields have whatever effects you intend them to have when you create them. Just like any psychic ability, energy follows thought. Whatever you are thinking about and planning when you create the shield will affect how it is created, so that it best matches your thoughts.
Shutdown:
Shutdown means stopping all psychic activity, totally but temporarily. Shutdown can be useful if shielding is impractical or difficult to do. Shutting down all psychic perceptions can give you a chance to figure out what you have experienced, recover from emotional surprise/shock, and help you return to normal reality.
Shutdown is accomplished by focusing all conscious thought toward the physical world. You can do several things to accomplish this. Become involved with other people, preferably with a lot of social interaction and discussion. Do physical activity; walk around, stretch, jog, or do anything else that makes you more aware of your physical body. Let the thoughts of the psychic experiences float away like a dream, without concern about them. If there is anything you especially enjoy doing, like games, programming, writing, art, etc., involve yourself deeply in that. Do anything you can think of to keep both your mind and body occupied in the physical world, and don't let memories of psychic experiences distract you from it.
When you are ready to restart (and move out of shutdown), simply start opening your perceptions again as you would when you first practice any psychic ability. You can do this at any time, whenever you are comfortable and ready to do it.
