How To Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions

Written By:

Emotions such as fear, anger, frustration, and immobility are energies. And you can potentially ‘catch’ these energies from people without realizing it. Then, how to stop absorbing other people’s emotions?

If you tend to be an emotional sponge, it’s vital to know how to avoid taking on an individual’s negative emotions, or even how to deflect the free-floating negativities in crowds.

Another twist is that chronic anxiety, depression, or stress can turn you into an emotional sponge by wearing down your defenses. Suddenly, you become hyper-attuned to others, especially suffering from similar pain. That’s how empathy works; we zero in on hot-button issues that are unresolved in ourselves.

From an energetic standpoint, negative emotions can originate from several sources: what you’re feeling may be your own; it may be someone else’s, or it may be a combination.

Here is how to tell the difference and strategically bolster your positive emotions so you don’t shoulder negativity that doesn’t belong to you.

How To Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions?

1. Identify whether you’re susceptible.

The person most likely to be overwhelmed by negative energies surrounding you is an “empath”, someone who acts as an “emotional sponge”. Signs that you might be an empath include:

  • People call you “hyper-sensitive”, “overly sensitive”, etc., and they don’t mean it as a compliment!
  • You sense fear, anxiety, and stress from other people and draw this into your body, resolving them as your own physical pain and symptoms. It doesn’t have to be people you don’t know or don’t like; you’re also impacted by friends, family, and colleagues.
  • You quickly feel exhausted, drained, and unhappy in the presence of crowds.
  • Noise smells, and excessive talking can set off your nerves and anxiety.
  • You need to be alone to recharge your energy.
  • You’re less likely to intellectualize what you’re feeling. Your feelings are easily hurt.
  • You’re naturally giving, generous, spiritually inclined, and a good listener.
  • You tend to ensure that you’ve got an escape plan so that you can get away fast, such as bringing your own car to events, etc.
  • The intimacy of close relationships can feel like suffocation or loss of your own self.

Related: Are Empaths Signs of a New Human Evolution?

2. Seek the source.

First, ask yourself whether the feeling is your own or someone else’s. It could be both. If the emotion such as fear or anger is yours, gently confront what’s causing it on your own or with professional help. If not, try to pinpoint the obvious generator.

  • For instance, if you’ve just watched a comedy, yet you came home from the movie theater feeling blue, you may have incorporated the depression of the people sitting beside you; in close proximity, energy fields overlap.
  • The same is true with going to a mall or a packed concert. If crowded places upset or overwhelm you, it may well be because you’re absorbing all the negative energy around you.

3. Distance yourself from the suspected source, where possible.

Move at least twenty feet away; see if you feel relief. Don’t err on the side of not wanting to offend strangers. In a public place, don’t hesitate to change seats if you feel a sense of depression imposing on you.

4. Center yourself by concentrating on your breath.

Buddha Was Asked, What Have You Gained From Meditation

Doing this connects you to your essence. For a few minutes, keep exhaling negativity, inhaling calm. This helps to ground yourself and purify fear or other difficult emotions. Visualize negativity as gray fog lifting from your body, and hope as golden light entering. This can yield quick results.

Related: If Every 8 year Old In The World Is Taught Meditation

5. Flush out the harm.

Negative emotions such as fear frequently lodge in your emotional center at the solar plexus (celiac plexus).

  • Place your palm on your solar plexus as you keep sending loving-kindness to that area to flush stress out.
  • For longstanding depression or anxiety, use this method daily to strengthen this center. It’s comforting and it builds a sense of safety and optimism as it becomes a ritual.
susc-3

6. Shield yourself.

A handy form of protection many people use, including healers with trying patients, involves visualizing an envelope of white light (or any color you feel imparts power) around your entire body. Think of it as a shield that blocks out negativity or physical discomfort but allows what’s positive to filter in.

7. Manage the emotional overload.

You don’t need to be beholden to your ability to absorb other’s emotions; turn the curse into a gift by practicing strategies that can free you:

  • Learn to recognize people who can bring you down. People who are particularly difficult for emotional empaths include criticizer, the victim, the narcissist, and the controller. Judith Orloff terms these people “emotional vampires”. When you know how to spot these behaviors, you can protect yourself against them, including removing yourself from their presence, and telling yourself that “I respect the person you are within even though I don’t like what you’re doing.”
  • Eat a high protein meal before entering stressful situations such as being part of a crowd. When in a crowd, find places of refuge, such as sitting on the edges, or standing apart.
  • Ensure that you don’t have to rely on other people to get you out of difficult situations. Bring your own car or know how to get home easily when needed. Have sufficient funds to be able to make alternate arrangements if you start feeling overwhelmed.
  • Set time limits. Knowing how much you can stand and obeying that limit is vital to ensure your mental well-being. Also, set kind but meaningful boundaries with others who overwhelm you; don’t stand around listening to them talking for two hours when you can only cope with half an hour.
  • Have your own private place in a home shared with others. Ask others to respect your downtime during which you can rejuvenate. This is especially important to prevent you from taking on your partner’s feelings too much. A study, man cave, sewing room, reading nook, etc., all offer your own space.
  • Practice meditation and mindfulness.

Related: How to Understand your Emotions Better and Be More in Touch with Them

8. Look for positive people and situations.

absorbing other people's emotions

Call a friend who sees the good in others. Spend time with a colleague who affirms the bright side of things. Listen to hopeful people. Hear the faith they have in themselves and others. Also, relish hopeful words, songs, and art forms. Hope is contagious and it will lift your mood.

  • Cultivate positive emotions that boost your inner strength. If you’re surrounded by peace and love, you’ll flourish as strongly as negative emotions cause you to wilt. Respecting your own needs through healthy self-love will increase your ability to respect others.
  • Learn to use compassion as a way to defend yourself against overwhelming emotions. Compassion allows you to be empathetic to the plight of other people but also requires that you are compassionate toward yourself. This means that you don’t need to feel guilty about seeking respite from being overwhelmed; doing so ensures that you can be more engaged with others in the long run, rather than less so. It also means that you keep yourself whole by not immersing yourself in the world of negative people.

Related: 8 Positive Comebacks For Dealing With The Rude People Around You

9. Create and maintain a haven for disengagement.

Leave many paths open that lead to communing with the resonance of nature. Returning to your rightful home as a creature of nature switches off your victim mentality and recharges you energetically and spiritually.

  • Keep a picture of a waterfall or a lush forest with you and look at it when overwhelmed.
  • Step onto the quiet of a forest path or absorb the coolness of a gently babbling brook from beneath a weeping willow.
  • Maintain your personal space of a cozy retreat where you hook into your own personal power and energy.
  • Practise Yoga and breathing techniques. These draw upon emotional centering and provide safe harbor in times of storm.

What other things do you do to stop absorbing other people’s emotions? Leave a comment below.


Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions
How to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions
how to stop absorbing other people's energy

Published On:

Last updated on:

, ,

— About the Author —

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Up Next

5 Signs You’re Absorbing Other People’s Energy And What To Do About It

Beware! You're Absorbing Other People's Energy: 5 Clear Signs

You met someone new and they were on their best behavior; still, the interaction left you feeling agitated or exhausted – sounds familiar? You might be absorbing other people’s energy!

Is it possible to feel other people’s emotions and carry them inadvertently? Yes, both science and spiritual beliefs claim that those of us who are more sensitive than others pick up on other people’s energy and absorb them without even realizing.

If you are someone with codependent tendencies, an abundance of empathy, HSP (Highly Sensitive Personality) traits, or grew up in a household where your safety depended on reading other people’s changing moods, ton

Up Next

Is Your Energy Magnetic? 6 Signs You Have A Strong Aura

Is Your Energy Magnetic? 6 Signs You Have A Strong Aura

Whether you believe in energy or vibe checks, we all give off a certain “presence” that others can feel. You can feel someone else’s presence too. In this post, we’ll break down the 6 signs you have a strong aura, and how it shows up in everyday life.

Ever had someone tell you, “There’s something about you…” even if they can’t quite explain what it is? That “something” might be your aura, the unseen energy you carry everywhere you go. It’s real, and we all have it.

Your aura reflects your emotional, mental, and spiritual state. When it’s strong, you feel grounded, others feel drawn to you. But when it’s weak, you may feel drained, anxious, or disconnected from yourself and others.

Up Next

How To Celebrate Beltane In 2025? A Witchy Guide To Traditions And Rituals Of May Day

How To Celebrate Beltane: 7 Surprisingly Easy Rituals

Spring is at her peak and summer is nigh – it’s when Pagans, Wiccans, and Witches celebrate divine union, fertility, and all the riches of life. But how to celebrate Beltane living in the modern world?

First, What is Beltane?

Beltane is an ancient Celtic celebration. Pastoral people of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man aligned their lives and animal rearing practices with the changing seasons.

At the midpoint between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, these earth-dependent people celebrated the abundance and fertility of nature by putting their animals out to pasture.

Up Next

Entity Attachment: 6 Signs That Something Negative Is “Latching On”

6 Signs Of Entity Attachment Or Negative Spirits

Do you feel like you’re not yourself, without any clear reason? It might be more than stress. Some believe these unexplained changes could be signs of something deeper: a dark spirit or negative entity attachment.

This might sound like fiction, especially if you don’t believe in ghosts or spirits but the feeling that something unseen is weighing you down can be hard to ignore. Whether you see it through a spiritual, emotional, or psychological lens, it’s undeniable that negative influences can affect us in profound ways.

Let’s explore how these attachments happen, the signs to look out for, and how to protect yourself from them.

Up Next

Ancient Pagan Origins Of Easter: 5 Hidden Truths

Pagan Origins Of Easter: 5 Strong Connections Of New And Old

Every Easter thousands of kids hunt for treats left behind by the Easter bunny, hot cross buns fly off the shelves, and Christians worldwide celebrate the day as the resurrection of Jesus, oblivious to the pagan origins of Easter. Read on if you want to know the truth!

So, if Easter celebrations commemorate the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion, where do the bunny and eggs come from?

Is Easter a Pagan holiday? Are you celebrating the ancient festival of your ancestors?

Believe it or not, the roots of Easter are connected to the ancient Paganism and Pagan traditions that predate Christianity. Let’s explore the Pagan roots of Easter.

Pagans worshipped nature and natural forces.

Up Next

The Wild Woman Archetype: 5 Signs You’re Untamed, Unapologetic, And Free

Wild Woman Archetype: 5 Signs You're Untamed And Free

In a world where women are constantly told to be everything, sexy but not “too much,” ambitious but never intimidating it’s easy to forget that we are not here to fit into boxes. Learn about the wild woman archetype and how she is the source of all your primal desires.

A wild woman is not a girlfriend. She is not chaos, she is something deeply intuitive. She is untamed. Raw. Deeply connected to something powerful, and sacred.

She is a relationship with the earth, the moon, the howl in your chest. She is instinct. She is emotion. She is a healer and a hurricane. She cannot be contained because she was never meant to be.

Here are five potent signs of a wild woman archetype, that suggest you may n

Up Next

Earth Magick: 5 Rituals To Ground Your Abundance This Earth Day (And Any Other Day)

Earth Magick: 5 Simple Rituals To Ground Your Good Fortune

Do you want to bring forth Earth Magick into your life? What would be a better way to celebrate Earth Day 2025 than harnessing the power of elemental magick to ground your abundance!

Before we get into earth magick spells and practical elemental magick, let’s understand why now is a potent time to practice earth magick, more than ever.

The recent Aries energy still feels pulsating. Due to astrological transits happening since March 29, there’s a palpable shift in the energy for the collective. Almost all of us can feel an increased sense of purpose, drive, and energy.

Those who went through a Dark Night of the Soul are getting their Karmic rewards. Some have learned valuable spiritual lesson