Do You Feel Like You Are Absorbing Other People’s Emotions?

It is certain that you have already met a friend who was very happy and enthusiastic about a project and his enthusiasm carried you so much that you felt motivated to put into practice what you had in mind. But you might have bumped into an old classmate who told you how bad everything was and long ago threw in the towel. After this meeting, you decided that it was better not to take risks, that life was dangerous enough like that. Have you noticed that this can mean that you are absorbing the emotions of others?

When you absorb other people’s emotions, you let their emotional state influence how you feel. If you are surrounded by pessimistic people, you too will become a pessimist. It doesn’t matter how perfect everything is in your life or what you’ve accomplished. You suffer from an emotional contagion that causes you to appropriate an emotion that is not yours.

Emotional contagion is not the same as empathy

If you absorb other people’s emotions, you may think that you are being overly empathetic and you are not entirely wrong. However, you should know that there are big differences between empathy and emotional contagion. Let’s take a look at some of them:

• Empathy : You are able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, take into account their feelings and understand their point of view on what they are going through. But this understanding does not get rid of your own emotions.
• Emotional contagion : you take another person’s feelings as your own. It affects your life and has serious consequences. You engage in an emotional back-and-forth in which the emotions of others determine your life.

Mirror neurons

Empathic capacity manifests itself in mirror neurons, as Daniel Goleman mentions in his book Social Intelligence: the new science of human relationships . According to this author, in the human brain there is a group of neurons that are activated in the same way when they perform an action as when they observe it in others.

This activation is what allows you to identify with another person and to be able to understand how they are feeling. It’s nothing negative, moreover, it helps build much healthier relationships. However, you have to be careful not to start absorbing other people’s emotions.

Can you avoid emotional contagion?

If you are asking yourself this question, the answer is “yes”. But it is not an easy thing to do. You have let your empathy get carried away to the point that you no longer know how to set the limits, so that the line between your emotions and those of others is blurred. So what must you change to avoid emotional contagion?

Try to surround yourself with positive people

This is a first step that can be very interesting, because if you absorb the emotions of others, it is better that they are positive. The fact that you are motivated, ready to take on and start new activities is fantastic.

Also, by choosing the people you want to surround yourself with, you will avoid the emotional influence that you can feel when you meet four positive people and four negative people in one day. It’s true that we can’t always run away from these, but if there are more positive people than negative people in our life, our balance will be much better.

Think about how you feel

When you are absorbing the emotions of others, it is important that you reflect on how you are feeling. “ Why does this motivation to start my project flood me when someone else tells me about their success? “. Or “ Why am I sad and depressed when a friend tells me how bad his relationship is going? “.

Often times, this emotional contagion says a lot about you. In the first case, regarding what you want to do, it means that your insecurity makes you feel dissatisfied. In the second, you may be thinking about your fears about dating relationships or remembering an old relationship that went wrong.

Understanding your emotions will allow you to put that distance which will help you avoid absorbing the emotions of others. Because they are not yours, even though they might have been at one time. You don’t live the same life or the same experiences as other people.

Our thoughts

Emotional intelligence is that ability that allows us to control our emotions and express them in a meaningful way.