Do you feel like you absorb the emotions of others?

Emotional contagion is something that usually affects people who are very empathetic. Find out how you can protect yourself from it.

Surely you have ever met a friend who was very happy and excited about a project and their enthusiasm overwhelmed you so much that it motivated you to put into action one that you had in mind. But then maybe you ran into an old classmate who told you how bad everything is going for him and that he’s long since thrown in the towel. After this encounter, you decided that it was better not to risk it just in case. Have you realized that this can mean that you absorb the emotions of others?

When you absorb the emotions of others you allow their emotional state to influence how you feel.. If you are surrounded by pessimistic people, you will start to be pessimistic too. It doesn’t matter how good everything is in your life or everything you have achieved. 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 the emotions of others you may think you are too empathetic and you are not entirely wrong.. However, you should know that there are big differences between empathy and emotional contagion. Let’s look at some of them:

Empathy: You are able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, take their feelings into account and understand their perspective on what they are experiencing. But this understanding does not make you get rid of your own emotions.emotional contagion: you take another person’s feelings as your own. This affects your life and has serious consequences. You get involved in an emotional swing in which it is the emotions of others that direct your life.

“I can understand what is happening to you, understand it and even feel it. However, I must not appropriate your feelings, because doing so will impact me.”

mirror neurons

Empathic capacity arises in mirror neuronssomething that Daniel Goleman mentioned in his book Social Intelligence: the new science of human relationships. According to this author, in people’s brains there is a group of neurons that activate the same when they perform an action as when they observe it in others.

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This activation is what allows you to empathize with another person and be able to understand what they are feeling. This is not a negative thing, in fact, it helps build much healthier relationships. However, you must be careful and not start absorbing the emotions of others.

Can I avoid emotional contagion?

If you are asking yourself this question, the answer is “yes”. However, it is not something easy to achieve. You have let yourself be carried away by your empathy to the point of not knowing how to set limits on it, so the border that separates your emotions from those of others has blurred. So… what should you keep in mind?

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, they better be positive.. The fact that you feel motivated, eager to undertake and start new activities is something fantastic.

In addition, choosing the people you want to surround yourself with will prevent that emotional swing that you can feel when in one day you meet four positive people and four negative people. It is true that you will not always be able to escape from the latter, but if there are more people than the former in your life, you will enjoy greater balance.

Empathy helps you understand what others feel so you can understand their situation. This ability allows you to put yourself in the other’s place, not appropriate it.

Reflect on what you feel

When you absorb the emotions of others, it is important that you reflect on what you feel. Why does this motivation to start my project flood me when someone else tells me about their success? What is the reason why I get sad and depressed when a friend tells me how bad things are going for him with his partner?

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Many times That emotional contagion you experience speaks a lot about you.. In the case of the first question, what you want to do but have not yet put into action due to your insecurities. In the second, perhaps because of your fears or because it reminds you of a relationship that left a bitter taste in you.

Understanding your emotions will allow you to put that distance that will help you avoid absorbing the emotions of others. Because they are not yours, although perhaps at the time they were. You are not living the same experiences as others. Therefore, although you can understand and empathize with those people, you should not make feelings that do not belong to you your own.

Emotional contagion wears out and produces exhaustion. Have you ever felt like you absorb other people’s emotions like a sponge? Have you known, today, how to set limits?