- 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.