AWJ07201:
When I see negative news, my emotional ups and downs may be stronger than those of the person concerned, and I am restless, angry, sad, anxious and fearful, and I am getting deeper and deeper, and I can't extricate myself.
AWJ06302:
When I read literature, I always "get too deep into the play" and can't detach myself from other people's stories and emotions for a long time.
AWJ05202:
When I came across helping farmers bring goods, I couldn't control my hands as soon as my eyes were hot, and as a result, there were a bunch of things that I couldn't use or couldn't use, and irrational empathy caused me too much waste!
AWJ04206:
Every time a friend pours bitter water on me, I feel empathy, and then the other party comes out, and I am still sad and depressed.
AWJ07108:
My boyfriend said all kinds of heart-wrenching things about him from childhood to now, and then I was like a fool, and motherly love overflowed. Later, the more we got along, the more wrong it felt, and I was very unhappy every day.
AWJ08209:
With a high degree of empathy, I just ran into a narcissistic personality, and every time the other party threw a bad emotion, it made me feel that I was at fault again, which was too suffocating.
A friend complained to me that before the epidemic, her position was upgraded by two levels, and her workload increased sharply in the three months of working from home, but because of remoteness, the salary increase of the position has been delayed.
A few days ago, the supervisor informed her that this part of the salary was directly cancelled, citing the impact of the epidemic, but according to the actual situation, the epidemic has no impact on her company.
I already feel angry just by listening to it, and thinking about the rampant capital and the situation of my friends makes me even more irritable and tired, and it is difficult to get out of such emotions for a long time.
This also makes me very curious, why is it difficult for me, a little psychological expert, to avoid the influence when my friends are sad?
Excessive involvement makes us more empathetic than ordinary people
Empathy, also known as being in, empathetic, empathetic, and empathetic. If the ability to empathize is too strong, it is easier to fall into the "negative emotional magnetic field" of TA, and many times it becomes wronged and pleasing others.
This almost reflexive over-involvement, the eagerness to eliminate our own anxiety and anxiety, makes us often ignore the most basic condition, that other people's emotions are sometimes not related to our own, and that there are natural boundaries between us and the other person.
Due to the cultural environment, we have a weak concept of boundaries, such as over-involved parenting patterns and interpersonal interactions, and participation in each other's emotions and lives, resulting in blurred boundaries and limiting our autonomy and independence.
The first is the "dangerous environment", where the emotional stability of the person is closely related to his or her own safety. People living in this environment are often forced to develop emotional awareness, and need to identify negative emotions that may explode at any time to protect themselves.
The second is the "critical environment", which links the emotional state of the person with his or her negative evaluation. For example, when the exam fails, the parents frown, the child internalizes and generalizes the evaluation and performance, and when he sees that others have emotions, he will first think if he has done something wrong?
But in fact, many times, we need to take a step back and leave boundaries for each other. Being overly involved means wanting to take responsibility for the emotions and behaviors of the person and ending up not being able to meet your own basic needs.
Excessive empathy can easily cause fatigue and even trauma
Empathy is an inner resource, and like our physical strength and endurance, it is limited in itself. When we are not aware of this, we are more likely to experience empathy fatigue when we overuse empathy ability, that is, feeling tired or even experiencing symptoms due to empathy, and eventually it is difficult to empathize.
This condition first appeared among medical staff, and researchers observed that due to the excessive emotions or perceptions of patients, some of them began to develop anxiety, numbness, despair and anger towards helping patients, and in severe cases, vicarious trauma.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-III., proposes to "understand that trauma in people with TAs can be trauma". Because of our empathy for the tragic experience of the TA, we feel as if we are personally involved in a traumatic event and become a secondary victim of the traumatic event.
Some people who over-consume empathy resources are often traumatized without realizing it. Even though I am tired, I still blame myself for not being considerate of the other person, and the state of high arousal makes it almost impossible to stop empathizing with the person, and finally overwhelms myself.
But our empathy is limited, and once it is overused, it can cause a lot of damage to ourselves. So how do we get just the right amount of empathy without getting ourselves too hurt?
Method 1: Be aware of how excessive empathy affects you
We who have too much empathy seem to have a kind of myth, always hoping that this emotional ability is as far away as possible from us, but we suffer because it is difficult to achieve.
In fact, instead of pursuing the idealization of "not being influenced", it is better to observe how your emotions are affected. For example, the next time you become sad, angry, sad, or afraid because of someone else's business, you might as well take a step back and ask yourself:
How does my body feel at this point? If you were to describe a feeling in a painting, what would it look like? What would my emotions look like, whether it was cold, hot, square, or round?
What is the reason why the other person is influencing me······? So······ How does this sentence unfold when it depicts the other person's impact on me?
What does it mean to me to be affected? It's human nature to be affected, and can we let go of some evaluations of our abilities and performance, and just gently and unjudgmentally return to our feelings.
We can also use pen and paper to record and use the phrase "because······ So······ And then ······ In daily life, the emotional impact is regarded as an object of observation and practiced and analyzed.
In the end, it helps us to clarify the connection between emotions and cognition, needs, environment, etc., better awareness and recognition of our emotional feelings, less "should" that makes us more self-blaming and powerless, and more respect, acceptance and affirmation as it is.
Method two: You really need intermittent apathy
The indifference mentioned here is more of an emotional rest. When we feel burned out of empathy, it is the body that is signaling: today the empathy resources have been exhausted, please rest in time.
Just like a bird flying in the sky, its wings can't be loose all the time, and they can't be tight all the time, which will exhaust the bird. You have to open and close to fly higher and farther.
SOURCE: PEXELS
In the same way, if we allow our overworked empathy to take a vacation, after regaining our rhythm of life, you will find that you can even care for and empathize with others better than before.
Here are 3 practical tips for your reference:
1. Set aside a fixed period of time to allow for empathy and disturbance. For example, 1 hour after dinner, you can only read relevant news and track the dynamics during this time. The rest of the time can be spent moving forward with activity plans or spending time with people who make you feel comfortable and warm to regain control of your pace of life.
2. Establish an exclusive empathy discomfort scale. For example, make a list of what the 1-10 scale corresponds to, and if a score of 8 is your bottom line, you can stick to this in your interpersonal interactions. When the other person crosses the line, you can explicitly say no, tell them that you are uncomfortable, or that you don't want to hear or do it, and sometimes, being less empathetic is a kind of protection for yourself.
3. Believe that the other person can take responsibility for themselves. The next time you have empathy overload, try saying, "I'm very sorry for you because you've been through this, but I still believe that you have the ability to deal with your emotions." You are still empathetic, but redefining the other person's main responsibility can help you save yourself the unbearable weight of life.
Writing this, I suddenly remembered that in the first season of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", Yuan Yonglin repeatedly proposed to give up the position of captain to Ah Duo because she was not confident.
At this point, Ah Duo was neither overly involved nor indifferent, but gently but firmly said to her, "This is your lesson."
Empathizing with people and still maintaining their own boundaries and attitudes is the best response I've ever heard.
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