How to Go From Absorbing Everyone’s Emotions to Feeling Safe Inside Yourself

Issue 153, February 6, 2026 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

When Other People’s Feelings Feel Like Yours

For most of my life, I felt other people’s feelings. I’ve seen this with clients and fellows in recovery too.  

This is hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.

It’s like being permeable. Other people’s feelings penetrate you, almost like there’s no membrane between you and the emotional world around you. Other people’s emotions aren’t just there. They enter. They move through you and sometimes take up residence.

When that was my experience, I believed, “If they’re not okay, I can’t be okay. And if they’re not okay with me, I really can’t be okay!” 

Even if you don’t literally feel other people’s emotions in your body, many of us still act as if we’re responsible for them.

If someone’s upset, we rush to fix it. If someone’s disappointed, we scramble to soothe them. If someone’s uncomfortable, we bend over backwards to make it better.

That may look kind from the outside (sometimes it is). But not when they haven’t asked for support!

When people need space to grieve, or when discomfort is actually part of their process, it’s not kind to jump in and support them. 

If this is you, try asking them, “Do you want to be cheered up right now?”

More importantly, ask yourself, “Am I responding to their pain… or mine?” (i.e., am I reacting to my discomfort because of their discomfort?”) 

That question alone can change everything.

What Changed When I Built Emotional Boundaries

As I built healthier boundaries, something unexpected happened. I stopped feeling other people’s feelings the way I used to.

The best way I can describe it is this: It felt like an energetic force field developed around me. Other people’s emotions didn’t seep in. They didn’t penetrate me. They didn’t hijack my nervous system.

When I started naming this with clients and with others in recovery, I heard the same thing over and over.

“That happened to me too.”

Which told me there’s something real here. Something experiential. Something embodied.

I believe we all have an energy body. And I believe emotional boundaries strengthen that energy body. One pivotal moment for me happened in my first year of recovery.

I was really upset about something my brother was going through. I was completely consumed by what was happening in his life. A recovery friend came over, gently put her hand on my shoulder, and said quietly,

“Barb, it’s not happening to you.”

And my whole system stopped. I was like, “Holy shit! She’s right. It’s NOT happening to me!”

But I had been experiencing it as if it were. From that moment on, I’d regularly tell myself, over and over,

“It’s not happening to me” when I found myself in similar situations.

Sometimes I’d even hold my hands up, almost like a physical barrier, as if I were pushing the energy away. It might sound strange, but that was the beginning of my energetic boundary. I internalized that message deeply.

A Metaphor That Changed Everything

Recently, while talking with a client about energetic boundaries, a metaphor came through that really clicked. Keep in mind, I’m a sociologist, not a physicist, so this is a layperson’s explanation.

Gravity exists because of mass. The more mass something has, the stronger its gravitational pull. Earth has more gravity than the moon because it’s bigger. It has more mass.

So what if something similar happens with our energy?

When our focus is constantly outward on other people, their needs, their moods, their crises, the world, politics, chaos, the news – our energy is diffused. Scattered. Leaking everywhere.

But when we start pulling our focus inward, something changes.

Our energy becomes concentrated. It gathers weight. It gains mass.

And just like gravity, that concentration creates a kind of force field. A magnetic boundary that keeps other people’s emotional energy from flooding our system.

Your energy goes where your attention goes.

When your attention is everywhere else, you’re drained. When your attention returns to you, you’re refueled.

You start asking different questions, like…

What do I want and need right now?
What would bring me peace in this moment?
What’s my part here, if any?
Is this actually my business?

That internal focus isn’t selfish. It’s stabilizing.

When Someone Else’s Crisis Is No Longer Yours

Early last year, I was profoundly grateful for these boundaries.

I learned that things with my brother had gotten far worse than I realized. He hadn’t paid his property taxes. Our childhood home was headed toward auction. He was extremely isolated. He was living in deplorable conditions.

A childhood friend told me all of this and said, “You need to help him. He’s your brother.”

And I said, calmly and clearly, “Nope. Not happening. I spent my life rescuing, fixing, and saving people. I don’t do that anymore.”

I still help people. All the time. But I help people who help themselves.

My friend eventually said, “I hear that you’ve got to take care of yourself.” He chose to support my brother because our house holds meaning for him. It was the only place he felt safe as a kid. I support him in that choice.

For me, I prayed for my brother. I asked others to pray for him too. That’s what I was willing and able do. And that was enough.

I wasn’t sure whether I’d reach out to my brother directly. I paused until I became certain what I wanted to say, if anything.

That pause is a boundary too.

An important update, since this story unfolded last year: my brother and I have since reconnected and reconciled, and I’m deeply grateful for that. I want to be clear about something though. That reconnection didn’t happen because I abandoned my boundaries. It happened because I kept them.

Emotional boundaries don’t prevent connection. They make healthier connection possible.

Living On Purpose Means Feeling What’s Yours

I know some people will judge me for not stepping in at the time this was all going down. They get to do that. I can handle it.

Because I live my life on purpose. I’ve taken the reins of my life. I’m not waiting around for someone else to save me. I’m the one saving me. One day at a time. And that’s what emotional boundaries make possible. Not numbness. Not indifference.

But the freedom to feel what’s yours and let the rest belong where it actually belongs is everything.

Thank God for recovery.