Some people are more vulnerable to being affected by emotional tones than others. The ability to empathize can make it hard to recognize whether emotions are truly your own or just the impact of perceiving what is happening with another. It’s important to have a process for figuring out what is yours and what is lingering from exchanges with others. It's good to have an awareness of this impact so you can choose how deeply it will affect you.
Research shows how the process of connecting, empathizing, caring, and emotionally reading people is fundamentally necessary to our survival. This is a finely tuned skill that begins as babies when we learn to recognize and read what is happening with our caregivers and continues on through life. This ability serves many purposes from helping us determine if someone is safe to seeing when someone we love is hurt.
Much of this emotional reading and sensing of emotions happen on a subconscious level. There are many impressive mechanisms of the brain that are constantly assessing facial expressions, body language, and voice tones. We are always noticing and observing what is happening with others around us. It’s important to consider how this impacts you on a daily basis. The emotional state of those around you affects you.
Dr. Judith Orloff is a psychiatrist who writes and speaks extensively about how these unseen exchanges affect us. Sometimes the symptoms of depression and anxiety are not symptoms of a mental health problem but rather an ability to “pick up” on what is happening in the environment. Having ways to manage this perceptive ability is important for mental health and feeling good.
Tips for protection.
Nothing is wrong with you. You are an impressive make-up of endless ways to perceive the world around you. It’s remarkable. Part of personal growth is understanding more about your particular way of understanding and how this impacts you. You are a grown up and get to be selective about who influences you. It can be fun to learn how to shield yourself from the situations that used to harm. Live it up. Protect yourself. Enjoy your life.
Research shows how the process of connecting, empathizing, caring, and emotionally reading people is fundamentally necessary to our survival. This is a finely tuned skill that begins as babies when we learn to recognize and read what is happening with our caregivers and continues on through life. This ability serves many purposes from helping us determine if someone is safe to seeing when someone we love is hurt.
Much of this emotional reading and sensing of emotions happen on a subconscious level. There are many impressive mechanisms of the brain that are constantly assessing facial expressions, body language, and voice tones. We are always noticing and observing what is happening with others around us. It’s important to consider how this impacts you on a daily basis. The emotional state of those around you affects you.
Dr. Judith Orloff is a psychiatrist who writes and speaks extensively about how these unseen exchanges affect us. Sometimes the symptoms of depression and anxiety are not symptoms of a mental health problem but rather an ability to “pick up” on what is happening in the environment. Having ways to manage this perceptive ability is important for mental health and feeling good.
Tips for protection.
- Find a way to spend some time focusing on what is happening with yourself so you can get a clearer idea of your emotional state and tension level.
- Notice how you feel after spending time with certain people.
- Develop some mental techniques for protecting yourself from the fear, anxiety, judgment, and anger of others that you will come in contact with.
- Take care of your physical body because this is where the tension ultimately goes.
- Breathe.
- Explore ways to let go of the things that are out of your control.
- Become good at recognizing when someone is aiming a negative emotion at you so that you can think more rationally about it before internalizing it and reacting.
Nothing is wrong with you. You are an impressive make-up of endless ways to perceive the world around you. It’s remarkable. Part of personal growth is understanding more about your particular way of understanding and how this impacts you. You are a grown up and get to be selective about who influences you. It can be fun to learn how to shield yourself from the situations that used to harm. Live it up. Protect yourself. Enjoy your life.