EPI 61 - Stop Emotion Dumping on Your Friends

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Here's the thing. Our energy isn't invisible. When we enter a room, we affect others.

It lingers. It ripples. Whether we mean to or not, our energy affects those around us.

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Welcome to The Habit Within. This podcast is for high-achieving women, 35 and older, who seem to have it all together, but feel like they're constantly running on fumes, struggling to balance it all, and losing sight of the woman they used to be. I'm Camille Kinsler, a former physician assistant turned transformational coach, blending science, positive psychology, and a metaphysical approach to habits, health, and vitality.

If you've ever asked yourself, why am I so exhausted even after a full night's sleep, or I feel like I'm juggling so much, but I'm just barely keeping my head above water, you are in the right place. Each week, we'll explore the real reasons behind feeling overwhelmed, trapped in the cycle of overworking, and constantly running low on energy, and how to break free from the patterns keeping you stuck in survival mode. It's time to stop living on autopilot and to start feeling like yourself again.

Let's dive in. Hey there, friends. Welcome back to The Habit Within.

Today, we're going to talk about emotion dumping, how so often we dump our emotions onto others, or others' emotion dump onto us, when we aren't prepared, when we're not ready. I want to have an open, honest, and of course, loving conversation about this, because here's the thing. Our energy isn't invisible.

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When we enter a room, we affect others. It lingers. It ripples.

Whether we mean to or not, our energy affects those around us. Imagine this. You're hiking through the Dolomites, which, by the way, is a place that I'm planning to go for my 50th.

It's on my bucket list. You hike from one chalet to the next, and they're all different calibers. Some are really fancy, and some are super basic, but in each of them, they feed you a fabulous feast once you get there.

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I'm imagining myself hiking in the Dolomites. I want you to come there, too. Come along with me as we imagine hiking in the Dolomites.

You're hiking through this beautiful mountainous country with a group of friends. You have trained to be here. You packed really smartly.

You looked at all the YouTube videos on how to pack your backpack just perfectly, where the weight is distributed. And you're pacing yourself. You're feeling great.

But every hour, one of your friends takes something out of their packs and drops it into yours, and you don't really even know. Or you kind of are like, all right, this is happening, but it's fine. I'm strong.

I trained for this. And you want to help out. But what happens after 12 hours of that? They might feel a lot lighter, but you can barely make it up the trail.

And that's what happens when people are continuously offloading their emotional burdens onto others without awareness. They might not be aware of it. They don't know that they're doing it, or they think that you can handle it.

But if you're anything like me or the other women I work with, you want to be there. You want to be there to help, love, and support your partner, your friends, your adult children, your young children, too. But we can, you know, we're there for the emotional dumping of our young children, but our adult children, our parents.

But it can become a huge problem when it's uninvited, unacknowledged, or unexpected. And that's where energy management and boundaries come in. So let me give you a real story, a real personal story.

And I've talked about my partner quite often. And I love this man. And I just want to say here and now, thank you, man.

Thank you, husband of mine, for allowing me to use you as examples in scenarios like this. But if you've listened for a while, then you know that my partner works in the immigration law field. And he carries a lot of emotional weight.

He hears stories of trauma daily. And understandably, that heaviness sometimes comes home with them. And there was this time, y'all, where he would come through the door, and the whole energy of the house would shift.

The kids and I would be in our after-school flow. And then suddenly, there's this tension in the air, irritability, withdrawal. And to his credit, he has done so much inner work.

And he's grown in his ability to take responsibility for his own emotional state. But I share this more to illustrate something very important. Most of us don't realize just how much our mood affects those around us.

We think of our closest people as our safe spaces, which they are. But safe space doesn't mean we can just dump. It doesn't mean they're just our dumping ground.

There's a huge difference. And this matters because most of the time, we don't know the weight that somebody else is carrying in that moment. We don't know what happened to them that day.

We don't know if their pipes broke at their rental property, and it flooded their entire floor. And so now they have to have everything ripped out while the house is on the market. True story happened to us.

We don't know that that is happening to somebody when we come to them and we want to unload our burden onto them without asking. And what happens is, is that when we offload without asking, we risk transferring our pain instead of transforming it, transmuting it. We really want to co-regulate when we're in partnership with other people.

And co-regulation, let's just talk about that for a second, is when two nervous systems come into connection and safety with one another. When a kid injures himself, and then you run over and you give him a hug, and your nervous system of being like there and safe and protective calms the kid's nervous system. And so that's co-regulation.

Or let's say that you're short-tempered and that you yell at your kid, and then your kid yells back. That's co-disregulation. So it's basically where you come into this connection and safety with another person, and it has nothing to do with fixing.

It has nothing to do with advice. It's more about being present, being emotionally attuned, grounded, open, and connected with the other person. And when we co-regulate, we show up with intention and mutual care.

We build our relationship. We strengthen our relationship. We create space for each other to exhale without one person having to absorb all of it.

We build trust when we're in this co-regulation state. We build intimacy. And we model emotional maturity for the people around us, especially our kids.

So you can feel the difference, right? So let's give you another example. So a friend calls you after a really rough day, and she's spiraling. She's venting.

She is emotionally charged. And if you're in this co-regulating space, then you pause, and you check in with yourself. And you're like, hey, do I have the capacity right now to be present in this moment? And if yes, then you drop into your body.

You might take a deep breath, and you make space in your heart for this person, in your head, in your heart. And you respond from this more of a calm, grounded space. And it's not to fix or to change the situation.

It's just to be with her. And you say things like, I've got you. Let's breathe together.

And slowly, the energy that she brings into the space changes. That's what co-regulation is, two nervous systems syncing together in safety. But let's say that you skip that check-in.

You've had a really busy day already. You're running around. Your kids just got home from school.

They're screaming. Or you had a bad day at work. So you're feeling overwhelmed because you have all these projects building up.

You are empty. You are distracted. And then your friend calls, and you answer the phone.

And you meet her with the stress that you're bringing to it. So you interrupt her. You offer advice too quickly.

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You get really irritated because you really feel like you were ambushed. Or maybe you just absorb it all. You just take it all in.

And then you end the call feeling resentful and even exhausted. That's what happens when you try to hold someone else's emotions without grounding in your own. And it doesn't make you a bad friend that you don't want to be there all the time when your friends want to unload.

It just means that your nervous system wasn't resourced enough in that moment. And it happens to all of us. And I check in with myself on the daily, if not multiple times a day, to see how I am showing up.

How I'm showing up in almost every single moment of my life so I can resource myself. And for me, it's quick now. I can do that by just closing my eyes, taking some deep breath, stepping away, going on a walk, reading a fiction novel, petting my dog, drinking water, eating something good.

There's so many different ways that you can do it to where you can get in a more resourced state. But I'm not always in a resourced state. I'm human too.

But it does take practice. It does take noticing. It does take awareness to kind of shift when you notice that you're not in more of a calm, grounded state.

So noticing what your body is telling you before you try to hold somebody else's storm and chaos is super important. And the good news, this skill can really be trained. So at the end of this episode, I'll guide you through just a really quick, simple 60-second body scan that you can use any time to check in with your own energy before taking on anyone else's.

I didn't want to put it in the middle of the episode just in case you're driving or doing something else. You just know that's coming at the end. It's one of my very most favorite, quickest tools.

It's powerful and it's super easy to return to again and again. So we really need to take ownership of our energy. That's the whole thing with this is we can't control other people's energy, but we can control our own emotions, our own mood.

And when we recognize that it really does have this profound effect on other people, even if we don't use words, then I think that really gives us this motivation to really check in to see what our emotional energy is in the moment. Because being in a relationship means that we share this life with somebody, but we don't want that relationship sharing at the cost of our own emotional wellbeing. So my suggestion is before you vent to a friend or a partner, I want you to ask them, I want you to say, hey, do you feel like you have the capacity to hear something that's really weighing heavily on me? Or if you're like, none of my friends would know what capacity means, then you can say, you know, do you have like space or how has your, is your day been, if your day hasn't been too hectic, do you have time to really hear what's weighing on me right now? Or you can say, you know, I really don't need advice.

I just need a sounding board. Are you up for that? These questions are really rooted in respect because we're all carrying things and it's beautiful to lean on people, but it's even more beautiful when we do it with intention and with awareness. So as you move through this week, just check in and see, are you the emotional dumper or you're the one that gets emotionally dumped on and see how it affects you and what would life look like if it was, if it shifted a little bit, if you did ask these questions before you emotionally dumped on somebody else, or if you were able to maybe forward this episode onto somebody that you love and so they can recognize that their, their mood and emotions and energy actually affect you when you walk through the door.

And again, it doesn't mean that we're not willing and open to hear people's plights in the world. It just means that we want to be intentional when we do it. So I hope this episode helps.

I'm going to jump right into the 60 second body scan. So if you are driving, then maybe shut this off. Otherwise, I want you to get into a comfortable position.

Maybe that is, you know, seated with your feet on the ground or whatever makes the most sense to you. So now I'd love to move into the 60 second body scan. So if you're driving, then maybe shut this episode off right now and you can come back to it.

Otherwise, I would love for you to stay with me for a minute as I walk you through this short scan. And this is something that will really help you notice what your inner state is, inner state, where you are on the emotional spectrum, before you enter and engage with somebody else's energy. So this can be something that you do before you go into your go into the house after work or before you engage with a friend before you go out to dinner with somebody, you can do this quick little check in body scan.

And as always, reconnecting your body and your breath together. When we follow our breath and recognize our breath, it gets gets us back into our body. It reminds us that we have a body and the body is connected to the mind.

And yeah, just create 60 seconds to just do this quick body scan. So wherever you are, get comfortable and let your shoulders drop and your jaw unclench. So relaxing your jaw and the muscles around your eyes.

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Take a slow, deep breath in and a long breath out. Maybe take two more of those in through the nose and out through the mouth. And one more into the nose and out through the mouth.

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And now bring your attention to your feet, feel the ground beneath you. Now move that awareness up your legs, to your thighs, to your hips, to your lower belly, to your lower back. Is there any tension there? Just notice.

Now bring your awareness up to your chest, moving up your mid back to your upper back. Maybe you want to place a hand on your chest or some other part of your body. Whatever feels good or needs a little bit more attention.

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Checking back in with your breath. Is it slow and steady? Or something else? Move to your shoulders, to your upper arm, to your lower arm, to your hands. Connecting back to the breath.

Soften and release. Take another deep breath, moving your attention up your throat, around your neck, again back to the jaw and your face. Is it even more soft and released now than it was before? Take another deep breath and ask yourself, what do I need right now? No pressure to change anything, just notice.

You can return to this anytime before a conversation, after a long day, when you're about to hold space for somebody else, tending to your own energy first. As always, thank you so much for being here, for doing this inner work and for choosing presence. You're not here to carry everyone else's pack, but you can learn how to support others in a way that doesn't cost your own well-being.

And that's so powerful, that's so empowering. So until next time, I hope you enjoyed this episode. The world needs the vibrance and wisdom of a woman's intuition to help heal the world.

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When we learn to trust ourselves through leaning into and through discomfort, we learn to trust ourselves and in that space is our power and clarity.