Therapists tend to be very empathic. And this is a good thing in a therapy session. But it can really wreak havoc on our personal lives.
I love the work I do and most of the people with whom I work. But I also have a tendency to absorb other people's emotions (something I tell clients not to do all the time - my bad). Yesterday I seemed to be entrenched in colleagues complaining about the work environment and other colleagues. They were outraged with injustices and inconsiderations by management and other staff. I was buying into this until I realized, "Wait a minute. I like that guy, and that guy, and her too. And I like where I work."
I had to mentally extricate myself from the dialogue and realize these people and this organization aren't bothering me. I then removed myself from the proverbial water cooler and went back to my office to regroup. I got quiet and tried to sort out how I felt about it and what I had absorbed from other people. Most of the negativity I had been feeling had been other people's. I had to mentally "unload" everything which I had allowed to be heaped on and get back in touch with how I felt and what I thought.
In my teens I worked in a factory with a lot of older women. They were very wise about a lot of things and I learned a lot about life from them. I remember looking up to see a cluster of heads on the opposite side of the factory. Some sage, older woman next to pointed out, "Look. They're warming up." And they were. A drama erupted not 30 minutes later. I don't remember what it was about, but I remember that site, of it "warming up". I've seen these in most of my jobs since then. There is usually a "cluster of complainers" who get incensed and outraged about injustices and inconsiderations by either management, fellow colleagues, customers, clients or whatever they can find. They start a rabble and get a drama going. This serves at least purposes: 1) it alleviates boredom, 2) it redirects stress or negative attention onto someone or something else. And it was working the same way yesterday at work. So what do you do?
Boundaries, boundaries. Therapists do love to talk about boundaries, don't we? But they are so important to mental health and so poorly understood or maintained. So today I must do my own work. I have to strengthen my boundaries on these things. One way to do that is to get up and leave when the stimulating conversation we are having turns into a diatribe against other staff members or management. Another way is to mentally visualize a clear glass wall between myself and the speaker. This way I can hear what they are saying, but it cannot get "on" me. It has to stay on their side of the wall.
I once had a very wise mentor ask me how I would go about saving a drowning person. "I would jump in and swim over to them!" He slowly shook his head, "Oh no. A drowning person is a panicked person. They will latch on to you and pull you under with them. The way you save a drowning person is to stand firmly on the shore, throw them a life preserver and pull them to you."
I must do a better job of keeping my feet firmly on the shore.