How to Stop Absorbing Other People's Energy and Emotions?

For highly sensitive individuals (HSPs) or empaths, walking into a crowd of people, a business meeting or even spending time with a distraught friend can feel like getting an assault instantly. You may approach a certain situation fully grounded and leave it with a headache, a heavy feeling in your chest or inexplicable anxiety that strikes you out of nowhere. This constant over-emotional attunement is certainly not going to help HSPs and empaths maintain their psychological well-being and can lead to exhaustion, frustration, lack of boundaries, and self-sabotage. 

If you want to stop absorbing other people's energy and emotions, you need to know that in order to do that, you must build structural strength inside of yourself and not isolate yourself emotionally. Continue reading and discover how you can create psychological boundaries between you and other people, distinguish their feelings from yours and keep your energetic integrity intact.

The Structure of Emotional Absorption: Why You Feel Everything

In order to stop doing something, you must know what provokes your nervous system to be extremely over-attuned to the surrounding world. Being a highly sensitive person implies certain biological traits in your nature, such as deep information processing and highly active mirror neurons that enable you to mirror actions and feelings of other people.

However, sometimes, emotional absorption can become habitual and goes beyond biological reaction to the environment and becomes a psychological response related to codependence.

Learn More: The Impact of Emotional Suffering on Your Energy Field!

The Survival Mechanism of Over-Attunement

Many people who struggle differentiating their feelings from those of other people learned to do so in their childhood. In case your parents were emotionally unstable and it seemed to you that it was dangerous to be in a situation of tension or conflict, you taught your nervous system to be extremely over-attuned to their mood shifts, body language and tone of voice.

As an adult, this mechanism can manifest in a constant state of emotional entanglement. You can hardly resist the desire to make other people feel better, suffer from the terrible feeling of guilt for taking care of yourself and feel physical discomfort because of the other person's distress, although this person does not have anything to do with you.

Steps to Take in Order to Build Emotional Differentiation

Emotional differentiation is the ability to be able to relate to the other person's experiences while maintaining your identity in the process. It is the difference between saying "I understand what you are going through" and "I will suffer with you". These are the steps you can take to differentiate your emotions from those of others:

1. Identify the Change in Moods Instantly

The instant that you become aware of the fact that you are feeling nervous, irritated, sad and the like, stop, and identify the emotion. It gives you a moment of psychological distance from your emotion. The question to ask yourself is: Is this emotion mine or somebody else's? Most likely it is the latter if your mood changes instantly after interacting with a particular person or in a particular situation.

2. Energetic Separation Technique

If you feel that you carry the burdens of your family member or colleague, you may apply a small psychological trick to help you out. You need to imagine that this person is well and happy, full of light. Through making the separation between the person and the situation, you convert yourself from being an anxious healer to being a calm observer. See how the tension melts away as you see your loved one or your workmate as a whole, not a broken, person.

3. Implement the "Observe, Do Not Absorb" Principle

Whenever somebody is complaining or radiating stress, do not allow yourself to absorb it but rather say to yourself "I observe, I don't absorb". This small limitation will help you to stay grounded in your own emotions. You can apply this technique in order to sympathize with someone's troubles without taking them onto your own nervous system.

4. Find a Neutral Spot in Your Body

In a state of emotional overload, your mind is likely to panic. Anchor yourself physically by focusing on the neutral spot in your body, for example, your feet flat on the ground, your hands or breathing. You focus only on the spot where you are anchored and leave the outer emotional storm rage around you.

5. Give the Energy Back

Sadly enough, carrying someone else's emotional burden is not helpful to anybody. Neither does it relieve their pain, nor does it leave you with any strength left. Carry out the ritual in your head: you say to yourself "I release this emotional burden which is not mine. I give it back to its owner in peace". Do not forget that every individual needs to go through their own emotional process in order to grow.

Practical Grounding Techniques to Shield Your Energy

To preserve your energy balance throughout the day, it is necessary to implement some physical techniques that will serve as signs of security for your nervous system. Here are few of them:

Hand Movement Technique

If you are involved in a conversation with an emotionally exhausting person, perform some small physical action as a reminder to yourself who is responsible for each anxiety. Relax your arms, and then discreetly bring your hands down below your waistline or place them on your lap, turning your palms either forward or performing a pushing-away movement in your imagination. Physical activity will be a strong reminder that their anxiety belongs to them and not to you.

Visualization of a Protective Bubble

Before you enter a challenging environment, spend 30 seconds closing your eyes and imagining a protective bubble or a shield of light around your body. Deliberately decide that this bubble admits only love and connection to pass through it but repels everything else.

Sensory Grounding

In case you start feeling absolutely submerged in the emotional burden of others, perform sensory grounding right away in order to break the loop. Submerge your hands in cool water coming out of the tap, go outside and feel the touch of air with your skin, put your feet firmly on the floor. Realistic sensations will help to distract you from the emotional haze and anchor you in your physical body.

Conclusion

Learning how to release yourself from the constant influence of surrounding emotions is a lifelong process of respecting yourself and performing specific techniques. The high level of empathy and sensitivity are not your weaknesses and mistakes; these are your amazing gifts allowing you to get connected with the world in a deeper way than most people can. Using physical grounding, labeling your emotions, and protecting your boundaries will help you to save your nervous system from getting exhausted.

Take control of your emotional energy today. Connect with AuraHeal experts to learn personalized techniques for protecting and balancing your aura.