- Hi I'm Dr. Tracey Marks and I make mental health education videos. Today's video is talking
about how you can take on other people's emotions
and how to stop doing it. And this is based on a
viewer question from Kelly and she says, "Hi Dr. Marks. "I don't know why I always seem to attract "emotionally intense people. "I get overwhelmed by
them and then I shut down "and don't have anything
to do with anyone. "So now, I don't have anyone in my life. "I don't know why I end
up with these people. "How do I stop doing this?" Thanks Kelly, for your question. I would start out by saying on the issue of attracting these people,
I think you should see the attraction as a two-way mirror. There's something about you
that makes the intensely emotional person want to be around you and handoff their emotions to you. But there's something about them that draws you to them and allow you to tolerate their behavior. Now what I'm going to say is not aligned with any specific theory
of being an empath or highly sensitive person. Those are terms that have
been researched and defined by others and have
specific meanings to them. What I'm talking about is my opinion based on general psychodynamic principles. I think one of the reasons you absorb other people's emotions is having a low emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is
the ability to recognize and manage your own emotions and recognize the emotions of others. With high emotional
intelligence, you're able to distinguish between your
emotions and someone else's. Making that distinction
is really important if you don't wanna take
on someone else's emotions and make them your own. To recognize your emotions, you must have a certain degree of self awareness. And it's one thing to
recognize that you feel bad. But bad is vague and non-specific. You can feel ad because you're angry, insulted, bored, or feel empty. And all of those emotions are very different from one another but can be put under the umbrella of bad. So at any given time, if you're not clear on how something affects
you, it's easy to take on the emotions of someone else
and assume what they feel. Then, once you assume that
other's person's emotions, you have trouble managing it on your end. Here's an example. Suppose you're taking a break at work and you're sitting at your desk watching a funny TikTok Video, your coworker, who you consider a friend, comes up to you and starts ranting
about how she's so angry because her boss gave her a bad review and she didn't get her raise. So she doesn't see how
anyone can work in this place with this kind of boss who
doesn't care about anyone. And she doesn't know how
long she's gonna stick around at this place. Two minutes ago, you were
laughing at the dog video you were watching. But now you feel overwhelmed with anxiety about your position at work. Should you stay in this job? Is it even a a safe place to work? Later on that night, you
have trouble sleeping because you may fear
you may lose your job. Now no one told you that
your job is in jeopardy. But you just have the
sense that maybe it is. Back at work, your friend settles down and you even see her laughing with your boss about something. So your anxiety subsides
and you start to feel that all is well. And things start to return to their usual. But you still lost a couple of weeks of poor sleep and feeling anxious. Now part two of this scenario is that this person is your friend and when she got this bad news, you're the only person she ranted to, probably because you're the
only person who would listen. But if you're someone
who doesn't always know what you feel, or doesn't
feel strongly about things, at some level, you may
be attracted to people who have strong, clear opinions. It's not a deliberate process
of saying to yourself, I don't know how I feel
so I feel whatever you do. Instead it's an unconscious process, meaning that it's beyond your awareness that helps you deal with your
own emotional uncertainty by assigning someone
else's emotions to yours. It's unsettling to feel vague about how something affects you. And it's reassuring to have
someone who's more resolved about how they feel, swoop
in and show you how to feel. And this is an automatic process
that happens like a reflex. And what's the evidence for that? The fact that you keep attracting people with strong emotions that overwhelm you. You have to be drawn to them in some way. Another reason you may be drawn
people with strong emotions that overwhelm you is
being a people pleaser and needing to fix people. If you don't wanna disappoint someone, it's easy to take the
handoff when they present their intense, negative emotion to you. Here's an example of this. Suppose your partner tells you that he had this horrible
thing happen to him where he felt exploited
in some way, like people were taking advantage of him. And then he explodes about
it and then storms off. You're left standing there feeling upset about what happened to him
and you feel bad for him. Nevertheless, you have
plans with your girlfriends to go to the movies later that evening. So you start to get dressed and he asks, "Where the heck do you
think you're going?" You remind him that you have
plans with your girlfriends. He explodes at you about
how could you even think about going out with your friends after what he's been through. If you cared anything about him, you wouldn't be able to go have fun. You think, gosh, I guess that
is pretty insensitive of me to go our and have fun
when he's so unhappy. So you cancel your plans. So to find something to
do 'cause he stormed off in a room by himself, you binge
watch something on Netflix and fall asleep on the couch. You see him the next morning and he says he didn't get a wink of sleep all night and he doesn't believe
you really care about him because how could you
even sleep so peacefully after something like that happened to him. The rest of the day, you
feel awful and think, maybe you don't care for your
partner as much as you should. You convince yourself
that you're insensitive and you wish you could be a better person and you start thinking
of ways that you could be a better partner to him. In this example, the
people pleasing part of you puts up with his need to see you suffer so that he can feel validated. In fact, you don't see it that way. You really buy in to his
assertion that the evidence that you care about
him is that you take on the same emotion that
he has and experience it for as long as he does. And as long as he's unhappy,
you should be unhappy as well. But because you don't
wanna disappoint him, you accept this assertion and own it. This scenario works a little differently for the person who wants to
fix or help instead of please. So the same thing happens. He comes home and tell us
about his upsetting experience that he had and you feel pain for him. He doesn't need to tell you not to go out with your friends because
you're not in the mood anymore. You're so upset that
you can't see yourself having fun with your
girlfriends or if you do go, you spend the whole time
with your girlfriends talking about his
situation and how horrible those people were to him. Even if you don't take
his side on the issue, you've taken on a project of healing him. And you're gonna heal
him through your love. But while you're working to heal him, you're also experiencing the emotions as if it happened to you. Now these are not the only
reasons that you can be an emotional sponge. We just looked at two reasons. But let's look at what
you can do about this. The first thing is to increase
your emotional intelligence. You start this by increasing
your self awareness. In a previous video, I talked
about getting into the habit of being specific about
what kinds of emotions you're experiencing at any given time. I created these emotions cards to help expand your vocabulary when it comes to identifying general
emotions and being able to make them more specific. You can download these cards from my website at MarksPsychiatry. The second thing you
can do is stop and think about whether what you're
feeling is coming from you or is it because the
way someone else felt? Is the negative emotion
you're experiencing something that was handed
off to you by someone? Did you only start feeling this way because the person you
care about felt that way. And keep in mind, it's not always bad to empathize with someone and
react the same way they did. That leads to the next
thing that you can do, which is learn to manage your emotions so that they don't overwhelm you. And there's many ways to do this. One way is to practice
mindfulness meditation. I have a video on
managing negative emotions that includes a mindfulness exercise that helps you observe
anger in a neutral way and accept it and let it pass. So the idea is that you
don't have to run away from every negative emotion
that you see coming. But you wanna be able to
build an emotional force field around you that allows
you to be in the presence of negative emotions, observe
them, interact with them but keep them from piercing your soul and taking over your
thoughts and behavior. The fourth tip would be
to ensure that you have proper boundaries between
yourself and others. Sometimes this is as concrete
as having a physical distance. So in this example that
I had of the co-worker yelling at you about her experience, in that situation, it may
be helpful to push back and let there be more physical
distance between her and you. And it sounds very basic but it really can make a difference. Watching someone rant from a distance is an entirely different experience than having them rant right in your face. It's as if the further away they are, the more that you can keep
what their experiencing separate from you. If they get too close
into your personal space, you can lose sight of what's
theirs and what's yours. The last tip has to do with
the need to save people. And there's different
reasons you may do this for some people, it helps
give them a sense of control. You can take control
of the negative things and make them positive. It could also be a way to
distract from your own pain by focusing on someone else's pain. For some people, they need
a damaged person to fix as a way of making
themselves feel validated. So there's lots of motivations behind the need to save people and it can get complicated. But suffice it to say that if you notice this pattern with yourself,
it's worth taking a step back and reflecting on what
you're getting out of it. What's the payoff to you to change the way this person thinks or to make
all negative things positive? And I'm not talking about
trying to save your child from experiencing the pain of growing up. I'm talking about a pattern
that shows itself, peer to peer with your adult relationships. Alright, that's it for now. I could go on, but I
don't wanna overload you. But if you haven't gotten enough, check out this video on
dealing with negative emotions. See ya next time.
