Have you ever stepped into a room and the mood just brought you down? Or been enjoying a gathering until a certain person walked in — even someone you didn’t know — and suddenly, you just felt unsettled? 

You might be absorbing the moods and emotions of other people — or their “energy” —  and if it happens often, it can leave you feeling stressed, exhausted, or emotionally frazzled. It can also feel like it’s out of your control — something you can’t turn off — but the truth is, there are ways to protect yourself.

And they start with understanding why it’s happening in the first place.

The Science of Absorbing Emotions

Scientists refer to the process of absorbing emotions as emotional contagion. According to a 2021 paper by social psychologist Carolina Herrando, emotional contagion is often positive — it helps us communicate excitement and spread good moods, not just bad ones. (Herrando points out it’s even used in advertising to help sell products.) Even when emotional contagion spreads negative emotions, the effects aren’t always bad. It’s actually the first step in empathy, for example, which improves nearly any situation and is the foundation of morality.

Everyone has the ability to absorb emotions, but it’s especially common for highly sensitive people (HSPs), who have higher levels of empathy on average, and empaths, who are likely at the high end of the empathy continuum even among HSPs. And this ability tends to be heightened when they’re at a social event, around coworkers, or in crowds — places where there are more emotions to be “caught.” If HSPs and empaths are around people or places filled with peace and love, their bodies assimilate these emotional “energies” and flourish. However, absorbing negative emotions and attitudes can feel like a physical assault on their senses.

(Throughout this article, I’ll use the common shorthand “energy” to refer to the emotions and attitudes of people, or the atmosphere and mood of a place, all of which can be picked up via emotional contagion.)

If you’re someone who absorbs energy, the only way you can fully enjoy being around others is to learn to protect your sensitivity and find balance. As an empath myself — and as a medical doctor and researcher — I want to help you cultivate this capacity, be comfortable with it, and start seeing it as a strength.

Personally, I’ve always been hyper-attuned to other people’s moods, both the good and the bad. Before I learned to protect my energy, I felt those strong feelings lodge in my body and stay there. After being in crowds, I’d leave feeling anxious, depressed, or tired. When I got home, I’d just crawl into bed, yearning for peace and quiet. Can you relate? If so, here’s what actually works to stop it.

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6 ‘Rules’ to Protect Your Energy as an Empath or HSP

Here are six tips for sensitive people from my book, The Ecstasy of Surrender, to help you manage your sensitivity more effectively and stay centered without absorbing negative energies.

1. Move away from the source of the negativity.

This is simple yet extremely effective. Distance yourself by at least twenty feet, and see if you feel relief. Don’t err on the side of not wanting to offend anyone — we’re talking about your energy and sanity here. If you’re at a social gathering, try not to sit next to the identified “energy vampire.” Physical closeness will only increase the absorption of negative feelings.

2. Surrender to your breath.

If you suspect that you’re picking up someone else’s energies, concentrate on your breath for a few minutes. (here are tips on mindful mediation and breathing.) Focusing on your breath is centering, and it connects you to your power. In contrast, holding your breath keeps negativity lodged in your body.

To purify fear and pain, exhale stress and inhale calm. Picture unwholesome emotions as a gray fog lifting from your body, and wellness as a clear light entering it. Trust me, this will produce quick results.

3. Practice “guerilla meditation.”

Before the loud, crowded social event, be sure to meditate, centering yourself, connecting to your spirit, and feeling your heart. Use this time to get strong mentally and emotionally. If you encounter any emotional or physical distress while at the event, act fast and meditate for a few minutes.

You can do this by taking refuge in the bathroom or an empty room. If it’s public, close the stall. Meditate there — this is what’s known as “guerilla mediation,” a five-minute act of mindfulness that can be done anywhere at any time. Calm yourself. Focus on positivity and love. This has saved me many times at social functions when I began to feel completely depleted by others.

4. Set healthy limits and boundaries.

Limit the time you spend hanging out with — and listening to — stressful people; you don’t have to make a big deal out of it, simply choose to spend less time with them. And get comfortable saying “no,” especially when someone asks too much of you. Set clear limits and boundaries with others, nicely cutting them off at the pass if they get critical or mean. Remember: “no” is a complete sentence; it’s not necessary to explain why, unless you choose to do so.

Need to Calm Your Sensitive Nervous System? 

HSPs often live with high levels of anxiety, sensory overload and stress — and negative emotions can overwhelm us. But what if you could finally feel calm instead?

That’s what you’ll find in this powerful online course by Julie Bjelland, one of the top HSP therapists in the world. You’ll learn to turn off the racing thoughts, end emotional flooding, eliminate sensory overload, and finally make space for your sensitive gifts to shine.

Stop feeling held back and start to feel confident you can handle anything. Check out this “HSP Toolbox” and start making a change today. Click here to learn more.

5. Visualize protection around you.

Research has shown that visualization can heal both the mind and the body. And it’s a practical form of protection that many people use, including health care practitioners. One of my favorite visualization techniques involves imagining an envelope of white light surrounding your entire body, protecting you from negative energy. Or with extremely toxic people, you may want to visualize a fierce black jaguar patrolling your energy field, keeping out intruders.

6. Define and honor your empathic needs.

Safeguarding your sensitivity is one of the best tips for HSPs and empaths. In a calm, collected moment, make a list of your top five most emotionally rattling situations. Then formulate a plan for handling them — with specific action steps — so you don’t fumble in the moment. Reflective and ever thoughtful, HSPs and empaths benefit from advanced planning.

Here are some practical examples of what to do in situations that might stymie you as an HSP and/or empath:

• Even extroverted highly sensitive people and empaths have a social limit! If your comfort level is three hours max for socializing — even if you adore the people — take your own car or have some other alternate transportation plan so you’re not left stranded. This is especially important if your partner is not highly sensitive and has no problem chatting for hours.
• If crowds are overwhelming, eat a high-protein meal beforehand (this grounds you) and sit in the far corner of, say, the theater or party, where there’s less stimulation — avoid the dead center.
• Some empaths are highly sensitive to scents, so if you’re overwhelmed — for instance, by perfume — give yourself permission to do what you need to do. You might nicely request that your friend refrains from wearing it around you. If you can’t avoid it, stand near a window or take frequent breaks to catch a breath of fresh air outdoors.

If all else fails and you absorb stressful or negative energy, take a bath or shower when you get home. My bath is my sanctuary after a busy day. It relaxes me, washing away everything from bus exhaust to long hours of air travel to pesky emotional symptoms I’ve taken on from others.

Want to learn more? Check out my book, The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People.

You might like:

• How I Learned to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions
• 13 Signs That You’re an Empath
• Why Do HSPs Absorb Other People’s Emotions?

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The self-care practices, perspectives, and meditations I present as daily offerings in my new book, Thriving as an Empath, will support you in being a compassionate, empowered empath without shouldering the suffering of others or trying to “fix” them. They offer gentle day-by-day reminders about how you can be loving without becoming codependent or a martyr — and I’d like to offer two of them below. 

As a psychiatrist and empath, I am fierce about my own self-care practices and teach these principles to my patients. I feel so strongly about them because I want to keep enjoying the extraordinary gifts of sensitivity — including an open heart, intuition, and an intimate connection with spirituality and the natural world. Shallow emotional waters don’t appeal to me. I love going deep — and my sensitivities take me there. 

Still, a big challenge for all sensitive people is how to be compassionate without absorbing the stress of others and the world. We don’t have the same filters as most people. We are emotional sponges who feel everything and instinctively take it in. This differs from “ordinary” empathy, where your heart goes out to others in pain or happiness, but you don’t take on their feelings.

We empaths are helpers, lovers, and caretakers who often give too much at the expense of our own wellbeing. Research suggests that our mirror neuron system (a part of the brain responsible for compassion) is hyper-active, which can burn us out. This is not how I choose to live. I want to be loving, but over-helping or absorbing someone’s distress just puts me on sensory overload, which is painful to my sensitive body and soul. It also doesn’t serve the other person in any lasting way.

To stay healthy and happy, you must be prepared with an effective self-care practice so you’re ready to deal with stress. If you’re interested, you can learn more in my book about how to keep yourself balanced and whole by trusting your intuition, setting boundaries, and protecting your energy. 

The secret to an empath’s wellbeing is to break the momentum of sensory overload before it consumes you. The strategies and attitudes that I’ll share, which have been life-saving for me, will quickly bring you back to center when you’re overwhelmed or emotionally triggered. 

Here are two selections from the book that I hope you enjoy. Each of them ends with an intention you can set, which is a powerful way to guide your mind away from harmful habits and into transformative growth. 

Self-Care for Empaths and Sensitive Souls

1. The Gift of Being Different

Like many empaths, you may feel as if you don’t belong in this world. You experience life so intensely, and love so deeply, it’s sometimes hard to find kindred souls to whom you can relate. 

As a child, I always felt “different” from my peers. Other kids loved going to crowded parties and shopping malls whereas I preferred climbing trees with my best friend or writing poetry. As an only child, I was alone a lot and found companions in the moon and the stars. Often, I felt like an alien on Earth, waiting for a spaceship to take me to my true home.  

Similarly, Albert Einstein said, “I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged. I have never lost… a need for solitude.”

As I’ve grown as an empath, I can appreciate the gift of being different. I am moved by this anonymous quote: “If you feel you don’t fit into this world, it’s because you’re here to create a better one.”  

Sensitive people are meant to bring light into the world. Empathy is a strength, not a weakness. I applaud everyone who looks different, feels different, or thinks different. The world needs the difference you will make. 

Set your intention: I will honor the gift of being “different.” I will fully be my unique self and not let anyone take my power away. I will shine my light brightly.

2. It’s Not Your Job to Take on the World’s Pain

As an empath, you have an open heart. You don’t have the same emotional guard up that many others do. You feel people’s pain — both loved ones and strangers — and you instinctively want to take it away from them. In fact, many of us have been taught that being compassionate means it’s our job to remove other people’s pain. 

This is not true. You can hold a supportive space for someone without absorbing their distress in your own body. Finding this balance is the art of healing. Inwardly you can say, “This is not my burden to carry.” It is impossible to fix someone and it is really none of your business to try. More than twenty years of being a physician has taught me that everybody deserves the dignity of their own path.

Set your intention: I can be compassionate without becoming a martyr or taking on another person’s pain. I can respect someone’s healing process without trying to “fix” them.                                                         

The Empath’s Loving Heart

I wrote this book of days, this book of seasons, as my tribute to an empath’s loving heart and to the sacredness of time. My greatest purpose is to be in service to the goodness of empathy and love. As sensitive people, let’s marvel at our lives and our many openings to grow. Every day the mystery unfolds. No matter what: keep loving, keep taking deep breaths, keep looking at the starlit sky. Allow time to help you remember your timelessness.

Excerpts are from Thriving as an Empath: 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People by Judith Orloff, MD (Sounds True, 2019) and The Empath’s Empowerment Journal, the companion to this book.

You might like:

• 20 Self-Care Ideas for Highly Sensitive People
• 13 Signs That You’re an Empath
• How I Learned to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions

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The post The Art of Self-Care for Empaths and Sensitive People appeared first on Sensitive Refuge.

When triggered, you may either withdraw emotionally and simply feel hurt or angry — or even respond in an aggressive way that you will probably regret later. We’ve all been there. Your reaction is so intense because you’re defending against an extremely painful feeling that has surfaced.

For instance, if a coworker says, “You’re not qualified to apply for that great job,” or a relative says, “You’re too old to find a mate,” you might become triggered. And who wouldn’t get upset at these comments? You get emotional, doubt yourself, and feel inferior or even wrongly think that you’re “over the hill.” (Trust me, there is no “hill to be over.”)

On the other hand, if you thought, “That’s ridiculous. Of course I’m qualified for the job,” or “No matter my age, I can find a wonderful partner,” you’re not in a triggered state because you’re recognizing your true worth.

Your emotional triggers are wounds that need to heal. These beliefs are based on fears — and they are not reality. Let me repeat that: they do not reflect your real worth.

You don’t want to be frequently triggered. No one does. It’s exhausting and painful, especially for highly sensitive and empathic people.

Why? Because empaths and HSPs are finely tuned instruments when it comes to emotions. They feel everything, sometimes to an extreme, and are less apt to intellectualize feelings. Intuition is the filter through which they experience the world. Empaths and HSPs tend to absorb energy related to issues that they haven’t resolved more easily and deeper than others.

How to Heal Your Emotional Triggers

To heal your emotional triggers, you must begin to compassionately examine and shift any beliefs that you’ve carried around from your family or society. Those beliefs will be different for every person, but examples might be, “I am not smart enough,” or even, “I’m too sensitive.”

You need to begin gently addressing the parts of yourself that feel flawed, such as doubts about your body image or your worthiness to find a partner. When you heal the initial trauma or false belief, you set yourself emotionally free. Then you won’t become as easily triggered or drained in the future.

Your initial trauma or false belief is related to a hot button issue for you. For instance, if you have unresolved anger at your father, you may soak up other people’s anger at their fathers. Or your fear of chronic illness may even make you susceptible to absorbing the symptoms of others’ chronic illnesses! You are more prone to take on the emotional or physical pain that you haven’t worked out in yourself. The more you heal issues that trigger you, the less likely you’ll be to absorb emotions from others. You might sense them but they won’t cut as deeply or drain you.

Here are five strategies adapted from my book, The Empath’s Survival Guide, to help you start healing your emotional triggers.

1. Be aware.

In your journal, identify your top three emotional triggers which cause you to be most upset and thrown off balance than any others. For instance, when someone criticizes your weight or appearance? Or if you don’t earn a certain income? Or perhaps you feel unlovable and undeserving of a healthy relationship? Write these down to clarify the aspects of yourself that you need to heal.

2. Track the trigger’s origin.

Journal about where these triggers originated. For example, did your parents say that you were “too fat” or unattractive? Did a teacher tell you that you didn’t have what it took to succeed in school? Or were you neglected by your family, so you grew up feeling unlovable? Knowing where your triggers come from allows you to know yourself better. It may be painful to revisit old memories, so do so gently, and remind yourself that it’s all part of the healing process.

3. Reprogram negative beliefs.

Start with one trigger that has the least emotional charge and begin to compassionately reprogram it. Stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself, “This is not reality.” What’s actually true is, “I am lovable, capable, and smart.” Then slowly and deeply breathe. As you breathe, say aloud the same statement three times as a mantra in a tone that conveys you mean what you’re saying. This will help you substitute the negative belief with a positive, more realistic one. Call to mind your positive mantra whenever negative thoughts creep in.

4. Act as-if.

At the start of the healing process, you might need to act “as-if” when you haven’t fully integrated a new positive belief. That’s okay. For instance, simply saying to someone, “I disagree. I fully deserve this great job” (even when you don’t fully believe that) paves the way for a deeper belief later on. Or “I’m proud of my sensitivities. Please do not put them down.” Sometimes you need to practice a more enlightened behavior for it to sink in and become real.

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5. Work with a therapist or coach.

It’s often useful to seek guidance to help you find the root of the trigger and process the feelings involved. You may feel tremendous rage or sadness that your family never believed in you, so you never learned to believe in yourself. Expressing and releasing the feelings allows you to heal the trigger and move on to embrace your true power.

Healing your triggers is liberating because you won’t be thrown off or drained by people’s inappropriate comments. They may still be annoying, but they won’t have the power to zap you. The more you heal your emotional triggers, the more emotionally free you will be.

Want to learn more? Check out my book, The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People.

You might like:

• 6 Tips for Highly Sensitive People and Empaths to Protect Their Energy
• 13 Signs That You’re an Empath
• How to Be Happy at Work as a Highly Sensitive Person

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