Based only on my experience, Shielding Protection keeps people from negatively affecting me emotionally. That’s the Empathic Shielding part of it I suppose. But I notice something different with APE, it directly blocks them from influencing my mind. These days I always carry both outside the house.
With Shielding, when an attack is underway, my heart feels like it has some dampening field around it. Like if you had a sound booth that only blocked out negative sounds.
With APE, when an attack comes in, my mind directly strips it bare from having any meaning. I still know what they mean. It’s like they have no credit with me right in that moment, no believablity. No emotional significance to me. I don’t know how the field “knows” when the attack is coming. But it does. I feel my mind change right in that moment. It’s like Neo freezing bullets in mid air. It’s just like “No.”
When I boosted APE it was wonderfully effective. But the boosted energy part of APE pushed me to or past the border into tired. So I had to go back to using unboosted APE. It’s still good. But I loved that part of it boosted. It’s almost worth being tired again.