If It Isn’t Yours, Don’t Take It

a purple flower with rain falling down on it.

You know that person at the office who’s always sick with whatever bug is going around and chooses to go to work anyway? No matter how hard you try to avoid making contact, you somehow always end up catching whatever he or she’s got. It’s unnerving, uncomfortable, and seemingly unavoidable. Unpleasant though it may be, it’s the nature of office culture and contagious illness: if someone catches something, everyone else is likely to catch it also.

But the common cold isn’t the only thing that gets spread this way. Emotions, moods, and attitudes are just as contagious. Whether it’s a negative person in the workplace or a family member who’s perpetually on edge, there’s always going to be someone whose energy can contaminate you—that is, until you learn to immunize yourself from it.

Years ago, one of my mentors shared something with me that forever changed the way I conduct therapy and relate to other people in my life. We were having a discussion about one of my clients and the particularly challenging family issue she was working through in our sessions together. Week after week, this client arrived to our sessions distraught, anxious, and desperate for things to be different. The 60 minutes we’d spend together every week—during which she’d spend most of the time complaining, and I’d spend most of the time shrinking into my chair—felt like torture for me; by the time each session ended, I’d be worked up and bent out of shape. Noticing this, my mentor said the following to me: “If you absorb the emotional energy she’s emitting, you’ll be in no position to support her. You have to keep your emotional and energetic space clear if you’re going to have a shot at helping her clear hers.” “That makes sense,” I told him. But how do I do that?” “It’s simple,” he answered. “Whenever you’re in her presence—or in the presence of anyone whose emotions are affecting you—ask yourself this question: Whose emotion is this?” Time stopped the moment I heard those words. The question struck me as so powerful, so profound in its simplicity, that I had to pause for a moment and center myself. What this question has yielded for me and the clients I’ve shared it with over the years has made all the difference in the world.

You see, human beings are wired for connection, and certain cells in our brains—known as mirror neurons—cause us to automatically react to other people’s emotions. It’s the reason we instinctively cringe when we see someone get injured; it’s why we cry when the protagonist in a film experiences something painful. We can’t help but be affected by each other; we’re contagious in this way. So it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish other people’s emotions from our own. But, thankfully, we have the ability to choose how much we want to be affected by the emotions we come in contact with in the course of our relationships with others. The more skillfully we can do this, the less susceptible we are to getting weighed down by other people’s emotional baggage.

Here are some tips for developing that skill:

  1. Practice mindfulness. The more grounded and centered you are in your own experience, the easier it will be for you to distinguish your emotions from those of other people. Practice checking in with yourself on a regular basis, noticing what you’re thinking, feeling, observing, and experiencing in the moment. The more familiar you get with what’s going on inside you, the more quickly you’ll notice when you’ve absorbed someone else’s stuff.
  1. Set clear boundaries. It’s possible to have empathy for people without burdening yourself with their emotions. This requires setting firm boundaries and maintaining a clear sense of where others end and you begin. Sometimes, of course, that’s much easier said than done. No doubt, some people will challenge your ability to keep your emotional space clear, but it’s your responsibility to keep the boundaries in place. If you notice yourself getting worked up on a phone call with a perpetually pissed off relative, it’s okay to lovingly end the call. If the coworker you have lunch with always spends the time complaining, and you find yourself returning to the office in a bad mood, it’s okay to tell her you won’t be joining her for a few days. Caring about others and being supportive doesn’t require you to take on their emotions. The clearer your boundaries are, the clearer that distinction will be.
  1. Practice the catch and release method. Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid catching emotions that didn’t originate from you. But the quicker you notice that it’s happened, the quicker you can do something about it. Whenever you see that you’ve been affected by another person’s energy/mood/vibe, inhale deeply, say to yourself, “I’ve picked up something that doesn’t belong to me,” and on the exhale, focus your attention on releasing it. The more regularly you do this, the better you’ll become at it. Before you know it, you’ll be letting other people’s emotional energy pass right through you without it getting stuck, and you’ll be in a much better position to stay in connection with them without being negatively affected.
  1. Make your emotional health a priority. When you commit to being emotionally well, you build your immunity from other people’s emotional junk. So make your wellbeing a priority. Take care of yourself, manage your stress level, keep company with people who make you feel good. The healthier you are, emotionally speaking, the less likely you’ll be to absorb other people’s emotions.

Vitamin C, rest, physical exercise, and a healthy diet will help you maintain your body’s immune system. To keep your emotional immune system healthy, mindfulness, self-care, and clear boundaries will do the trick. The next time you notice yourself picking up someone else’s emotional baggage, ask yourself “Whose emotion is this?” If the answer isn’t “Mine,” gently set it down. Because if it isn’t yours, why would you take it?

Don’t Tread on Me: The Essential Nature of Relationship Rules

padlocks on a railing near a lake with mountains in the background.

We don’t tend to enter romantic relationships with the intention of getting our hearts stepped on, but at some point or another most of us have felt that pain. There are few things more agonizing than reflecting on a romance turned sour and wondering what could have been done differently. However, there’s also a lot we can learn from looking back at what went wrong. One thing that’s really helpful to look into when exploring our past relationships is the way we dealt with rules and boundaries.

All relationships, romantic and otherwise, operate based on certain rules. Each person comes into the relationship with a personal set of rules, and together the couple establishes rules that dictate what works and what doesn’t in the relationship. While we tend to put some of the rules on the table, many of them go unspoken. We communicate those unspoken rules—with varying degrees of subtlety—through our actions and interactions in the relationship. For example, if a man gets agitated and rigid every time his partner attempts to show affection in public, he’s silently communicating one of his personal rules—in this case, that PDA is off limits. But if his partner doesn’t pick up on this nonverbal communication, it’s almost a guarantee that the interaction will generate some unpleasant friction. A single instance of this may not cause much damage, but if it happens often, it could unravel the relationship.

That’s why it’s so important to be clear about our personal rules and boundaries. We need to know what they are and maintain them firmly, ensuring that whoever we enter a relationship with is willing to respect them as much as we do. When processing breakups in therapy, many of my clients come to realize that they and their partners failed to speak up about their rules, which set in motion negative patterns of interaction that destroyed the relationship.

I recently worked with a client who was devastated after breaking up with a woman he thought would become his wife. When we explored the series of events that he identified as the cause for the breakup, he started to get agitated and experience feelings of anger and resentment. The further he went into these feelings, the closer he got to understanding where they were coming from. He realized that he felt disrespected and taken advantage of by this woman. This is how he put it: “I did everything for her and didn’t ask for anything in return. There were tons of things that she did that I wasn’t okay with, but I let her do them because I didn’t want any problems. And she didn’t appreciate any of it. She just took and took from me and then ended things without considering what I wanted.”

My client’s feelings of resentment and anger were understandable. His pain was justified. But for him to learn from what went wrong in that relationship, it was important for him to look at the role he played. By examining this in therapy, my client came to realize that he had specific personal rules he never communicated to his girlfriend and, more importantly, didn’t uphold or respect himself. He came to acknowledge that while he wanted respect from his girlfriend, he wasn’t showing much respect for himself by allowing her to do things he wasn’t okay with. By violating his own rules, he was silently telling his girlfriend she could violate them also.

How we treat our own rules sends a message to our partners about how they can treat them. Think about it this way: If you have a no shoes in the house policy in your home but walk around with shoes on, you can’t expect your guests to know the rule and follow it. By breaking the rule yourself, you’ve given them permission to break it as well.

Nobody’s perfect, and no relationship is perfect either. But most of us do strive to have intimate relationships that are as healthy and harmonious as possible. It’s important to remember that harmony at the relationship level starts with clarity at the individual level. Take some time to identify your personal rules and boundaries, and be intentional about respecting them so your partner will respect them too.

Why Even Kindness Needs Constraints

a woman standing in a field of tall grass.

The New York Times recently featured an online piece entitled “A Daughter Too Kind for Her Own Good.” The compelling article, written by a mother about her elementary school aged daughter, introduces a subject that women, in general, and mothers, in particular, are likely to find meaningful. In essence, the author raises the question: How much kindness is too much?

Most of us would agree that kindness is a desirable quality. We tend to want others to be kind to us, so we practice the Golden Rule, treating others as we would like to be treated. But, as the author of the article suggests, this kind of compassion has its limits when it means lacking assertiveness with others. By observing her daughter’s response to an interaction with one of her peers, she recognized that her daughter’s kindheartedness—the same virtue that she, as a mother, had taught and encouraged— was leading her to tolerate meanness from others. It was causing her to neglect her own feelings and needs.

This article is an important cause for consideration among all of us, but especially those of us who have been taught to be kind at all costs. While being generally loving and accepting is an asset, it’s important to recognize when it’s appropriate to set boundaries with others. We must learn when to assert ourselves and be deliberate about practicing it—especially when it doesn’t come naturally.

There’s no denying that we are at our best when we are good to others; we just can’t forget to be good to ourselves.

Check out the article here.