It can be challenging sometimes to discern between your emotions and those of someone else. If this seems familiar to you, you may be an emotional sponge, so read on to find out how to stop absorbing others' emotions.
Can We Really Absorb Others' Emotions?
Yes, it is possible. Everyone is occasionally affected by others' emotions or moods, and if this happens consistently, you may have an inherited personality trait called Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS).
This trait includes:
- The ability to process information more deeply.
- An increase in emotional response and empathy.
- A greater awareness of subtle details in the environment.
- Easily aroused.
Highly sensitive individuals, especially those with SPS, may exhibit this trait.
“Research seems to indicate that certain neurons — mirror neurons — function differently in the brains of highly-sensitive people than in the brains of regular people,” says Amanda Turecek, a licensed marriage and family therapist and addictions counselor in Parker, Colorado.
Even if you are not highly sensitive, others' moods and energy can affect you. Environmental factors like traumas or early experiences can cause you to acquire similar traits like empathy or sensitivity.
Furthermore, some people may have a strong enough presence to influence or drain your energy through their voice, tone, body language, communication style, or relationship dynamics with them.
Also, you might discover that you get your energy and feelings from someone else if you suffer from low self-esteem, an anxious attachment style, or a dependent personality disorder.
How to Stop Absorbing Others' Emotions?
You can employ several techniques to regain control and protect yourself from absorbing others' emotions, such as:
1. Establishing Boundaries
It is helpful to set appropriate boundaries with others. As Turecek says, “The key is to be profound in setting boundaries that prevent you from counting those emotions as your own, rather than to stop feeling.”
2. Establishing Your Baseline
When you’re in your own space, try to check in with your feelings and connect with your personal base. Awareness helps differentiate between what is yours and what belongs to others.
3. Identifying What’s Yours
Once you can identify your personal baseline, you can ask yourself: Is this emotion mine or someone else’s?
4. Engaging in Focusing Activities
You can feel stable and internally calm by engaging in various activities and lifestyle habits.
5. Separation Rituals
After social interactions, consider creating rituals to distance yourself from what you may have absorbed. For example, you could take a shower after a big-crowd event.
6. Spending Time in Nature
Taking a break from social interactions and resetting your senses in nature may be helpful.
7. Self-Care
Try journaling about your emotions, taking a warm bath to calm yourself down, and finding a quiet place to retreat and process your experience.
8. Processing with Someone
Talking to a neutral third party about your feelings may be beneficial. If you are not a highly sensitive person, a therapist can help you process these difficult experiences and offer strategies and resources to help you manage your boundaries. Also, they can help you determine whether you learned to listen to others in early life—possibly as a way to stay safe.
What Are Mirror Neurons?
Although scientists do not fully understand them yet, mirror neurons are essentially special brain cells that help you understand someone else’s experience by comparing others’ behavior with your past behavior. This ‘similarity’ helps you understand what is happening to them. This system allows us to feel another person's joy or pain and empathize with them.
Additionally, mirror neurons help in learning new things. For example, they are used when you watch someone perform a new yoga pose and then try it yourself. Moreover, they are the reason why the laughter culture and its contagious effect spread.
To be clear, being highly sensitive does not imply having more mirror neurons than other people; rather, it indicates that the person's mirror neuron system is more active. Brain imaging studies conducted a few years ago revealed that highly sensitive people's brains are connected somewhat differently from others.
The study found that highly sensitive people consistently exhibit higher activity levels in key brain regions linked to social interaction and emotional processing. These exceptionally high activity levels were seen even in tests conducted with strangers. This highlights the highly sensitive person’s ability to show empathy to strangers. However, the effect was stronger with loved ones, as expected.
Because highly sensitive people have high levels of empathy due to mirror neurons, we may absorb other people's emotions and feel stressed, angry, or depressed even on good days.
Difference Between Being Empathetic and Absorbing Others’ Emotions
Empathy is a natural human emotion that helps you connect with others and allows you to put yourself in their shoes. According to Dr. Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University in California, “It's a question of the sensitivity degree. We probably all want to live in a society where people care about each other and are empathetic, compassionate, and caring.”
However, we must also be able to protect ourselves from absorbing others’ emotions. “It's just a balance, and having good and safe boundaries is important for many people,” says Plante.
Some signs that you may be absorbing others’ emotions beyond the limit include:
- Your emotions interfere with your quality of life quality.
- You leave events feeling exhausted and drained.
- You keep your relationships with unkind people.
- You avoid social interaction because it is too draining for you.
- You find it difficult to distinguish between your emotions and those of others.
Empathy and Anxiety
If you suffer from anxiety, you may find yourself dwelling on negative thoughts or worrying a lot about the future. You may worry about a decision you made and its impact on a friend, or you might think about larger concerns.
You might wonder, ‘How would I feel if I were in this situation?’ This thought can trigger your desire to help and make imagining yourself in a similar situation easy. However, when you have high empathy, your current anxiety can absorb energy from the emotions of those around you, leading to greater deterioration.
It might get difficult for you to separate yourself from their suffering if you become overly attached to it. Also, it might be difficult, if not impossible, for you to "turn off" this growing empathy and the anxiety it causes.
There is a positive correlation between anxiety and emotional empathy, according to a 2018 study examining the relationship between the two. As one increases, so does the other. This may happen because sharing emotions often triggers distress. You might feel guilty about your loved ones' suffering if you cannot help them.
Guilt feeds your anxiety about disappointing them or losing their approval, and these perceptions ultimately cause you to withdraw or take other negative actions that damage the relationship. So, the dominoes keep falling as your concern for the relationship's stability increases.
Finding Strength in Sensitivity
Reminding yourself of the advantages of being sensitive and empathic may be helpful when you feel overwhelmed by the world around you. It enables you to:
- Enjoy various activities more fully.
- Understand your own boundaries better.
- Handle challenging situations more easily.
- Communicate with people from diverse backgrounds.
- Inspire you to serve and support those in need.
“You can use it to improve your own life by using your skills to connect with others. For example, join a support group, volunteer, or invest in your skills to connect with others in your work,” says Dr. Erin Miers, a clinical psychologist in New Hampshire.
In Conclusion
One of the most crucial steps to lead a healthy emotional life is to stop absorbing others' emotions. An individual strikes a healthy balance between empathy and self-defense by employing methods and strategies to establish boundaries and improve equilibrium.
A person can remain firm and preserve a healthy balance in their emotional life by knowing when to set boundaries and by engaging in rituals and activities that help them distinguish between their emotions and those of others.
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