Emotional contagion — positive and negative impact
Your state of mind may be influenced by the emotions of others (partners, co-workers, or “someone online”). You may inadvertently impact others’ emotions too.
It is nice if the “contagion” is positive. Your confidence and enthusiasm inspire the team, and everyone is happy. But what if your worries triggered team members prone to anxiety and down-spiraled their performance? Or your own mood and choices are suboptimal because of the 3rd-party impact?
Most of the people you interact with online or personally may unconsciously (or intentionally) push your buttons. The ones Emotional Hygiene is bound to protect or better remove.
Let’s unpack both:
- Managing external negative contagion on you, making yourself immune to it
- Managing your own emotional contagion on others
1. Managing external emotional contagion on you
1.1. Information diet / managing exposure to contagious sources
Even if you think your practice is stable: manage your sources. Reduce your exposure to destructive, polarizing contacts and increase the share of constructive ones. Your skill of discerning between constructive and destructive exposure (plus immunity to contagion) will improve after you start monitoring your reactions and removing vulnerabilities.
1.2. Managing the impact and your immunity
Awareness: put your introspection guard on alert — protect your vulnerabilities. Especially, when consuming clickbait content or during emotionally charged interactions.
Post-awareness: it is usually easier to notice the impact after the contact rather than during the meeting, phone call, or digital interaction. We may experience a mood change, emotional “aftertaste”, rumination, or even physical discomfort (blood pressure, heart rate changes, etc.). The influence may last for quite a while unless we attend to our own concepts/reaction habits that resonated.
Pre-condition: it is best to make sure there are no buttons for others to push. Still, if the contagion happened, it means there were emotional predispositions that got triggered.
Situational management: if you have an established practice, you monitor your state of mind and catch unwanted reactions early (and prevent them from permeating your mind).
Post-processing: if you maintain Emotional Hygiene and process emotions you noticed (reframe their causes) – you become immune to emotional contagion. At least within the scope of emotions you have processed and verified via real-life experiences.
Bonus protection (from lies, manipulations, fake news)
Emotional Hygiene and regular trigger removal are your shields against deceptions that exploit your vulnerabilities. A balanced mind with no buttons to push ensures critical reasoning and reduces cognitive biases.
2. Managing your own emotional contagion on others
Sometimes, despite your best intentions, you can become a source of unwanted emotional impact. Your anger and worries may inadvertently impact others. When this happens, a common strategy is to hide or suppress negative emotions while demonstrating positive behaviors… But there is a catch.
Don’t demonstrate, be
What happens when you play a good boss, employee, or partner (but really don’t feel like it)? We may get tactical wins but lose strategically. Even if you are successfully faking it, you are under the influence. Consequences will follow.
Demonstrating vulnerability
Transparency about your struggles is nice. But it does not nullify the impact of your distress. Just allows others to understand its source (if they trust it is not a manipulation by you).
Integrity via mental stability
People who’ve been around you are usually very good at recognizing your emotions. And then – inventing your reasons for it. Emotionally, they may even start acting on them…
This is why integrity supported by Emotional Hygiene is so precious. You can track interfering emotions, unpack/clear their [artificial] causes, and stabilize. Regain 360° awareness, clarity about all of your motives, and engage with genuine compassion. Your reasoning, words, and actions will not conflict with your emotions.
Build trust, not uncertainty.
So:
1. Consider emotional contagion (the 3rd party and yours)
2. Monitor and regulate what’s possible in the situation (e.g. by using STOPP)
3. Routinely reframe the causes (to prevent unwanted emotions/contagion in the future)
If you “don’t have time for this” (you choose to ignore, mask an emotion, suppress it, or distract yourself) — congratulations, you are under the influence. The causes of the emotion, dysfunctional habits, and beliefs, impact your judgment.
