Balance Others' Feelings with Your Own

It’s a very human reaction to feel deeply for someone else’s pain, a reaction referred to as empathy. Empathy can sometimes make it hard to separate your emotions from others’. Having difficulty balancing your emotions with others' can make you feel drained, and even threaten your physical and emotional health. Learn how to balance your feelings with others' by cultivating emotional intelligence to understand what others are feeling. Then, you can validate your own emotional state and practice self-care to bring yourself into balance.

Steps

Recognizing Others' Feelings

1. Practice active and engaged listening. One of the most powerful ways to tune into what others are feeling is by actively listening. This skill helps you hear their message along with observing their body language and emotional expression. All of these elements should be considered in order to bring awareness about what others may be feeling.
   • Demonstrate active listening by orienting towards the speaker, relaxing your arms and legs at your sides, making occasional eye contact, and letting them finish their message before responding.
2. Paraphrase or summarize what the speaker said. A great way to show you're listening and can recognize others' feelings is by summing up their message or restating it in different way. You look for key words and phrases that represent the speaker's intended message and restate them. This helps affirm the speaker, and provides them with an opportunity to clarify, if necessary.
   • For instance, you are listening to your partner complain about their parents. They say, "My mom never listens. She just tells me what she wants me to do without ever asking for my input. It's like I'm not even living my own life."
   • You might paraphrase by saying, "It sounds like your mom doesn't seem to respect your opinion, or even ask for it. You don't know what to do about it. Am I right?"
3. Read their body language and nonverbal cues. Sometimes, people clue you into what they may be feeling by holding their bodies a certain way, by making facial expressions, or by using gestures. You need to pay attention to these aspects of communication in order to fully decipher others' feelings.
   • For example, if your friend has their arms crossed and a scowl on their face, they may be angry or frustrated. If their shoulders are slumped and their eyes watery, they may be sad.
4. Acknowledge others’ emotions without rushing to solve their problems. Empathetic people often jump in to help—sometimes, without being asked. This results in others’ emotions overpowering your own. Unless you are solicited, just listen. Don’t feel the need to “rescue” the other person.
   • You can demonstrate that you heard what they said by validating their emotional experience. Say something along the lines of “Sounds like you feel…”
   • For instance, your best friend tells you, “I’m freaking out. I have so much to do and so little time!” You might reflect the emotional experience by saying, “Sounds like you are a bit overwhelmed. Your new job seems very demanding.”
5. Notice how your own experience impacts your ability to listen. To listen effectively, you need to be aware of your own perceptions and how they color what you hear. Mindful self-awareness helps you separate your own experiences, feelings, beliefs, and biases from what others are saying.

Validating Your Own Feelings

1. Pause before making decisions. If you’re overloaded by your own or someone else’s emotional experience, it’s best to delay any decision- making. Take a moment to reorient yourself before acting.
   • When you’re caught up in an emotional reaction, it’s easy to say things you later regret or act impulsively. Ask for a break. Go outside and get some fresh air. Get a drink of water. Return when you’ve gotten your emotions back in check.
2. Express your feelings and needs clearly. You may often find yourself annoyed because others don't seem to respect your feelings, but you may not have conveyed them clearly. When you learn to clearly say what you are thinking, feeling, or wanting in a certain situation, you can avoid misunderstandings.
   • A great route to effectively stating your feelings is with "I" statements. This helps you convey your own experience without making the other person upset or defensive.
   • You might say, "I feel ignored. I really need you to listen to me right now. I need your support." This is far better than, "You are a terrible listener." or "You are always ignoring me!"
3. Learn to say “no.” It can be hard to balance your feelings with others’ if you say "yes" to requests that don’t benefit you. You need to know when to say “no” and have the courage and discipline to do it. This simple strategy is a hallmark in emotional self-regulation.
   • For example, your mom suggests you drive down for the weekend to attend the family picnic. But, you have a major essay to finish for a college course. It’s completely expected that you would feel guilty, but that guilt (or, your mom’s shaming you) shouldn’t force you to give in. The smartest response would be to say, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’d like to come, but I haven’t gotten started on my paper due on Tuesday. I can’t.”
4. Learn the art of compromise. One of the most important ways you can meet your own needs and others' is through compromise. This allows your own thoughts and feelings to be considered while also honoring those of others'. Compromise involves weighing the importance of a situation and coming to a mutual agreement.
   • You can weigh the importance of a situation by asking yourself how significant it is in the scheme of things. Will you care about this in a week, a month, or a year? If not, you might honor the other person's feelings or needs and set yours aside for the time being.
   • If you both care equally about the issue at hand, you'll have to find common ground. For instance, you and your friend both want to see a movie, but can't agree on a choice. You might ask a third party to select one or you might decide to watch whichever one starts next when you arrive at the theater.
5. Limit interactions with toxic people. No matter how hard you try, some people may naturally overtake your own feelings, causing you to act according to their whims. Perform a well-being check when you depart from others. Notice whether you are tense, angry, or bruised from the encounter. When someone raises a red flag within your own emotional experience, make the commitment to reduce the time you spend with that person.

Supporting Your Emotional Health

1. Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing your attention to the present moment, helping you notice your physical and emotional sensations. This is particularly helpful in order to recognize your own and others’ feelings.
   • To be effective, you’ll want to start your practice when you are not overwhelmed by strong emotions. Begin by setting aside just 5 minutes to sit and breathe. Focus completely on your breath. When your attention wanders, don’t pass judgment. Simply re-focus on your breath.
   • You can enhance your emotional well-being by incorporating mindfulness into your daily life. For example, stopping at a red light, hearing a telephone ring, or even purposely setting an hourly bell or alarm, can help you remember to pause and engage in mindfulness for a few minutes.
2. Learn to identify and label your emotions with a body scan. Mindfulness helps you slow down to become more in tuned with your emotional experience. A body scan meditation helps you dig deeper, to recognize the way you experience these feelings in your physical body.
   • To do a body scan, you’ll start from either the top of your head or the bottom of your feet. Work your way up through each body part, assessing what each part feels like. Is it relaxed, tense, numb, etc.? If you notice tension or discomfort, imagine breathing in relaxation and letting the discomfort melt away. Engage in deep breathing throughout the exercise.
3. Schedule daily me-time. You need time to decompress from your own emotional experience and release any emotional contagion that you absorb from the world around you. A great way to perform self-care is by carving out time each day to do something you enjoy.
   • During this time, you might listen to music, read a book, go for a run, take a bath, or cook yourself a nourishing meal.
4. Begin a yoga practice. You may think of yoga as a form of physical exercise, but this ages-old practice can also help with emotional self-regulation. Yoga promotes mind-body awareness and can help you relieve conditions such as anxiety and depression.
   • Sign up for a yoga class in your area. Or, view yoga videos on YouTube to start your practice.
5. Unplug often to prevent emotional overload. If you are constantly plugged into the news, social media, and television shows, it can be hard to tell which emotions are yours and which have been absorbed from various media sources. Regular unplugging can offer a release from this ambush of emotional energy.
   • Dedicate 30 minutes or an hour each day to unplugging. Go outdoors, take a nap, or simply sit and enjoy the silence.
6. Journal. If you are having problems balancing your own feelings with those of others, journaling may help. See it as an outlet for you to pour out any thoughts and emotions that are inside of you. As you develop your practice, you may start to see trends in your entries that explain why you are feeling or behaving a certain way.

Sources and Citations

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