Humans Evolved for Emotional Contagion
Emotional contagion is the process by which one person absorbs the emotional state of another. Humans evolved for this ability. It’s is an adaptive mechanism that has helped us survive throughout our evolution. As a social species, we are wired to emotionally affect each other for good reasons:
Babies communicate their needs to their caregivers through emotions. Caregivers must be attuned in order to respond quickly and appropriately to the baby’s survival needs.
Humans in groups emotionally bond and band together to take care of each other and collaborate in their survival.
In a family system, emotions spread from person to person like electricity and influence its members as to act in unison. One person’s emotional state in a family activates every other member to one degree or another.
Emotional contagion is the essence of empathy, or the ability to attune to, ‘feel’ the emotions of others, and connect with them. It’s how we experience shared joy, parent-child bonds, and mutual love. This is a wonderful thing.
However, there is a dark side to this process when it’s not managed with healthy boundaries…
The Consequences of Emotional Contagion Without Healthy Emotional Boundaries
Gone out-of-whack, this important evolutionary mechanisms can lead to a lot of suffering in families, relationships, and even society at large.
We get stuck in cycles of drama and overwhelming emotions.
We sacrifice our well-being and authenticity to protect and soothe the emotions of those we acre about.
We get caught up in group reactivity and mob mentality, then end up acting out in destructive ways.
One family member’s emotional state can activate the whole family. This is often a result of poor emotional boundaries due to the family’s enmeshment. This often leads to reactivity, drama, conflict, and acting out. The helpers and fixers then jump in to emotionally caretake and bring the family back to balance. This also often leads to family members walking on egg shells or not being authentic and honest in order to protect from triggering an emotional reaction in the family.
This then leads to a lack of authenticity and true intimacy in family relationships. People become afraid to share the truth about who they really are because of an oversensitivity to the emotions of others. They protect others from discomfort as a way of protecting themselves from taking on the upset of others.
Emotional contagion can become problematic when it leads an individual to become overwhelmed and affects their physical and mental health. It can also be problematic when emotions spread across a group of people like wildfire over perceived — not real — threats. This is because people generally lose some ability to think properly and make good decisions when our emotions are highly activated.
Empathy and compassion without healthy separation can quickly become self-destructive. Emotional contagion without healthy boundaries can lead to emotional fatigue and exhaustion, distorted thinking, emotional decision-making, and even emotional burnout and dissociation.
If you grew up in a family system where you were the helper, fixer, peacemaker, or emotional caretaker, you might go through life being extra sensitive to the emotions of others and taking on the responsibility to help them feel better. This can lead to sacrificing your own needs in order to focus on others.
How to Keep Emotional Contagion At Bay
So, what do we do with such a paradox? The paradox that we evolved to emotionally affected and be affected by others, yet too much of it becomes maladaptive?
The best way to prevent the negative consequences of emotional contagion is to practice four simple steps: emotional awareness, discernment, healthy boundaries, and self-regulation.
1. Emotional Awareness
Simply being aware of how this plays out in our relationships with others can help us introduce a pause and reflection. Oftentimes, emotional contagion happens unconsciously and reflexively. Our instincts are programmed to do it naturally, so it often happens without us even knowing it.
However, by practicing the skill of emotional awareness, or becoming aware of emotions in ourselves in others, it becomes possible to interrupt the instinctual reaction.
2. Discernment
It’s important to ask ourselves in the moment of the pause whether or not it’s worth us getting caught up in the turmoil or not. Sometimes, it’s adaptive to do so because the situation is an emergency and it calls for reflexivity. Most of the time, however, staying calm will be a more strategic move. Discerning this in the moment will help you decide how to move forward.
3. Healthy Boundaries
If the answer to number 2 is no, we must set emotional boundaries with ourselves and others. Having boundaries does not mean that you need to block the emotions of others out. It simply means that you become thoughtful of when and how much you do let them affect you. In essence, the process is now drive by your conscious choice than your unconscious instincts.
Boundaries can be set two ways. The first is the emotional boundary you set with yourself. For example, if your partner comes home really frustrated from work, you set a limit with how much of that frustration you will allow yourself to take on. Your ability to remain calm in the situation and not take on her frustration might actually help her calm down as well.
The second is in setting a physical boundary where you choose to remove yourself from a situation. For example, if you’re at a family dinner and one of the family members start yelling angrily at each other, you might choose to leave the situation altogether.
4. Self-Regulation
The last step in this process is self-regulation. This is about the ability to calm yourself down once you know that you have become overly ‘energized’ by the emotions of others. There’s so much power in being the one who can stay balanced and clear-headed amidst the chaos and turmoil.