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If you've ever walked into a room feeling fine and left feeling anxious or drained, you're likely absorbing other people's emotions without realizing it. This is especially common for sensitive people and leaders who hold space for others. Here's how to ask 'whose emotions are these?', why this happens, and practical ways to protect your energy so you can show up grounded and centered.

Hello and welcome to Find Yourself, Change Your Life. I'm your host, Mary Clavieres. This podcast is here to help you rediscover yourself and become the leader of your life, however you want that to look.

All right, for today's episode, we're talking about emotions and understanding where they come from.

Have You Experienced This?

Maybe you've had a situation where you've walked into a room and you felt fine before going in, but then the longer you stayed with this group or in this place, you felt anxious or nervous in some way, or just had this heavy feeling and you didn't know what it was from.

Or maybe you've been on a phone call or had a conversation in person, and afterwards you felt really drained from it. Like completely exhausted, even though you weren't doing anything physically demanding.

These are situations where you were likely taking on other people's energy and not even noticing or realizing it. And if you're someone that likes to help other people or just show up and support in some way, there are a lot of times where what actually happens is you end up taking on and absorbing from the other person. You kind of make this energetic connection and then you end up receiving all those things that you don't necessarily want to receive.

When I Started Noticing the Pattern

This has happened for me before, and I've noticed it sometimes if I look back at certain friendships. I'll notice that each time I talk to a specific person, I kind of felt out of sorts after, or agitated or even negative. It wasn't even necessarily something that I felt in a way that's easy to pin, like stress or anxiousness. But sometimes what I realized afterwards is that it was just an overall negativity kind of just putting me in a lower state of mind or lower frequency in some way.

And this was before I understood more about how some of these energetics work and how it works with emotions and all these feelings. But as I look back, I can recognize it more easily now and I say, oh, that's what was happening there.

Why This Matters for Leaders

This is something that comes up quite often for me with my clients, especially working in the leadership and executive advisory space, or even with business owners too. As we talk about working with other people and managing teams, there are times when you end up maybe taking on other people's emotions or taking on something in the situation that's not really yours.

And when you do this, it can leave you out of sorts. It can leave you stressed. It can leave you feeling down about things or negative in some way. And it impacts how you show up. It impacts your leadership. And then that has a ripple effect into the next conversation that you go to or the next meeting that you show up at.

I don't think it's really out there and in the forefront and really conscious with most people in terms of how they're showing up and then how they're managing their energy and their emotions compared to when they're interacting with others.

So I wanted to bring it up today as a way to say, hey, if it's something that you're not sure about or you haven't thought a lot about, it's something that you can really pay attention to because it ties so much into all of this work around mind-body connection and showing up in the world differently and how you manage and stay grounded for yourself.

Heart-Centered Leadership and Energy Management

I talk a lot in my work too about heart-centered leadership. I'll be using that phrase more often in the podcast now, but it's really about working with these different parts of you and bridging the masculine and the feminine and the practical or tangible and the intangible, and working with all of that together instead of staying only towards one side or the other side. Because we actually need both. We really do. We all need both. And most of us are not operating with both. We're operating with one or the other.

When we talk about emotions in this way, it links a lot for me with energy management too. But what we're talking about is you may be taking on things from other people when you're not paying attention to it.

Why Some People Take On More Than Others

At the end of the day, we all are very connected. Some people are more in tune with that and more sensitive to it on a regular basis than others. And I'd say some of that also can connect back to your Human Design chart and how much openness you have in your chart.

If you're not familiar with Human Design, I have a Human Design 101 episode that I'll link in the show notes that'll start to give you a flavor. But the part of the chart that I'm talking about is the openness that you have to receive and kind of amplify from other people. And just some of us generally are more open than others.

What happens when you're more open is that there's more opportunities for you to take on from other people and to not just observe it and let it go, but actually take it on and then integrate it within yourselves. And you don't want to do that. You don't want to take on other people's stuff like that because it's just going to drag you down. And it's going to leave you feeling heavy and have you feeling not like yourself.

The Question That Changes Everything

I've had this come up with a few leaders recently where they started to say, you know, I really don't feel like myself, or I don't consider myself an emotional person, and now I'm feeling like all these emotions and all of this stuff happening. And so we talked through it a little bit to say, okay, well, what's the situation? And also going back to this question:

Whose emotions are these?

What am I feeling right now?

Is this mine or is this someone else's?

And those are very powerful questions that you can ask yourself in any given moment. And sometimes, yes, okay, the emotions will be yours. Something happened that was really challenging, or you're navigating something that's really hard. You might have had a really tough conversation with someone, or something sad or tragic happened, and you have a reaction to that. That's fine. We're not robots, so you're meant to feel the things.

But in certain cases, when you're going about your day and then you start to slowly feel more heaviness, I would say invitation to look into it and kind of check in with yourself to see whose is this. Is this really mine or not?

Because especially if you have a lot of openness or you are someone that is more in tune with the collective, you might feel that more often. And if you're not aware of that and then protecting yourself and protecting your space, it's going to impact how you show up. It's going to impact your leadership. It's going to impact how you make decisions and the conversations that you have and all of those things.

And chances are it's pretty safe to say it will not impact them in a positive way if you're holding on to heaviness from other people. And so just having an awareness around this as the first thing and being able to then ask yourself some of these questions and inquire and tune in:

Whose emotions are these?

Is this mine?

That can be a very powerful way to reset yourself.

Simple Practices to Reset Yourself

Okay, then there are other things that you can do. You can also—I love mind-body practices. I have a lot of them listed throughout my book, Mind-Body Connection Unlocked, because there are so many things that you can do even in just 1 to 3 minutes that are very powerful that can shift your day.

So you can ask yourself those questions first, and then you can also check in with your body and see, is there something that you need to reset yourself in some way? Do you need to take a walk outside? Do you need to ground yourself? What will allow you to help come back to center?

Maybe you need to take a few breaths. Or put on a song that you know always helps for you to regulate your body, your emotions, your nervous system. Do the things that work for you. And help yourself to get back to that state.

And the more you become aware of this, the more you recognize and start to say, oh, whose emotions are these? Oh, this doesn't feel like mine. How do I reset myself? It'll be easier for you to do that in the future.

Preparing Before and Clearing After

And then what you'll start to do is you'll start to also realize and pick up some energy practices to support yourself before and after you meet with people.

Me, for example, when I have client calls, I prepare my space energetically before I have the call, and then again afterwards I kind of cleanse and clear and disconnect myself from that call because I don't want to hold on to all of that. Especially because I create containers and hold space that people share things that are challenges for them or may feel heavy in some way. And they want to talk through it and work through it, which is great. I love it. I love my work so much and I love that I get to do that on a daily basis.

I feel incredibly lucky and I want to make sure that I show up in the best way for the first client, the second client, the fifth client. So throughout the day I do that as part of my practices. I make sure that I'm centered and grounded before. I cleanse, clear my energy after. I usually try to make sure I have time for a walk or just a little bit of something outside because that also really helps me personally.

So then you can start to incorporate these other things to help you before and after. If you're going to have a difficult meeting or a challenging conversation with someone, how do you prepare your space energetically before that with either the breathwork or the grounding or something to make sure that you're in your center and that you're working from your center and you're not out of sorts?

Because then when you go into that conversation, if you're out of sorts before you go into the conversation, the conversation's not going to go well. Trust me, I've had that kind of thing happen, and you won't be able to receive information in the same way. You won't be able to observe what's going on in the same way. So it's really important to take a few minutes before, take a few minutes after, and take care of self in that way.

The Energy Bubble Practice

It's very similar—I tell my daughters when we travel, when we go to the airports and get on the airplane. One of my daughters is very sensitive to her environment and all the people and the emotions and everything around her. So I started with her from a young age to talk to her about making an energy bubble. Just like imagine a bubble around you so that people aren't energetically coming into your space, especially when you're somewhere like at an airport where there's tons of people everywhere and it's very crowded.

So we talk about make your bubble. Put yourself in your bubble, and just even the intention of that is very supportive.

You could be thinking right now, oh, well, that's very silly. Why? You can't see the energy that way. That's not going to do anything. That's fine. Maybe this episode isn't for you. And just because we can't see something in a certain way doesn't mean we can't work with it and have it be powerful and useful for us. And that's something that definitely over the years I've learned so much about because there's really so little we actually know in the grand scheme of things. And so much does actually operate on energy.

Energetic Hygiene

Going back to the bubble thing, I tell her to make this bubble so that she can feel protected in her space so other people are not encroaching on her space and she's not taking on and carrying things from them. Because it's just like our personal hygiene. We take a shower, we get clean, or you brush your teeth and you wash your face. I like to think there's also energetic hygiene that you can do just to make sure that you're in your own space, that you're not crowded with other people's stuff.

And on a very practical level, what that looks like is being able to manage situations, show up in meetings, have conversations, and be working from a centered, grounded place instead of just walking around all frazzled and everything, and then it just doesn't end well.

So if you have a hard time thinking about it from the energetics of it, that's okay. You don't have to take that part, but just know that if you set some type of intention and just check in with self before you're walking into a certain situation and then again after to clear things, that can already do so much for you.

What Leaders Have Told Me

And I've had leaders tell me that they were skeptical at first, but when I introduce some of these things or when we talk about some of these things, they actually tell me after that, oh, I wasn't sure how that would go, but it turned out to be really impactful. And I actually pay more attention to that now, and I ask myself, whose emotions are these? Or who does this belong to? Because it's not mine.

And when I heard that, I just felt so happy because it really is so impactful, even if sometimes it seems a little weird. Especially again, in the business space or the corporate space. Some of this stuff can seem a little bit out there. It's not actually so out there. It's just about finding the ways that it lines up and makes sense for you where you are and ways that you work with it so that it feels good to you and feels correct for you.

I'm not going to ever ask you to do something that you don't feel comfortable with. It's your choice always. So depending where you are on this scale of really into the energy side of things or really not, where do you land on there? And then always take what resonates and leave the rest.

So what do you feel comfortable with, with thinking about how you prepare before a meeting or a conversation and how you clear or close out afterwards? It might be full on in the energy part, or it might just mean, okay, I take a few breaths and that's it. I just kind of lock in for this meeting and go and I'm done. So there's a lot of different ways to say the same thing. So make sure you're saying something to your brain in a way that makes sense for it and that will allow it to say, okay, yeah, let's do this, let's try this, because it's all about being open.

Your Invitation to Reflect

Invitation for reflection today is maybe take a look at what are some of those situations or scenarios where you feel like your emotions do get very heightened, and is there something you can do to prepare yourself beforehand next time and kind of take a look at, check in whose emotions are these. This isn't mine. All of that again in a way that feels good to you and feels aligned for you. That's the most important part.

If you're looking to take this work deeper in any way, I do have the Decision-Making Accelerator session where we go through learning how you best make decisions. But in that, we talk about where you may be taking on from other people or not, because it's such a big part of how we operate. And it does influence also how we make decisions.

I also have the decision-making series, so if you haven't checked that out yet, go check out Episode 48, give it a listen, find your decision-making style. You can follow along there. But if you want to take it deeper, the Decision-Making Accelerator session is there for you too.

Thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate you. And I just love having you here and love having this podcast with you as a way to connect. So if you ever need anything, please don't hesitate. Feel free to reach out and I'll talk to you next week. Thanks so much.

Common Questions About Taking On Other People's Emotions

How do I know if emotions are mine or someone else's?

Ask yourself: 'Whose emotions are these?' If you were fine before an interaction and suddenly feel heavy, anxious, or negative afterwards, those feelings likely aren't yours. Another sign: if the emotion doesn't match your actual situation or circumstances, it may be absorbed from someone else.

Why do I feel drained after certain conversations or meetings?

You're likely absorbing other people's energy and emotions without realizing it. When you hold space for others or support people through challenges, you can make an energetic connection and end up receiving things you don't want to receive—their stress, anxiety, negativity, or heaviness.

Why do some people take on more emotions than others?

Some people have more 'openness' in their energetic system (in Human Design, this shows up as undefined centers in your chart). People who are naturally sensitive, intuitive, or attuned to others tend to absorb more. It's not a weakness—it's just how you're wired. But you can learn to protect your energy.

What's the 'energy bubble' practice?

Imagine a protective bubble around you before going into crowded places or difficult conversations. Even just the intention of creating this energetic boundary helps protect your space so you're not taking on other people's emotions. It's like energetic hygiene—similar to how you brush your teeth or wash your face, but for your energy.

What should I do before and after challenging conversations?

Before: Take a few breaths, ground yourself, set an intention to stay centered in your own space. After: Clear your energy (take a walk, spend time outside, use breathwork, listen to music that regulates you). Ask yourself 'whose emotions are these?' and release what's not yours. This helps you show up grounded instead of frazzled.