Emotional laundry

December 27, 2023

If there’s one thing highly sensitive people (HSPs) are good at it’s taking on other people’s stuff, this makes us empathic listeners, friends and colleagues, but it can be exhausting. Especially if you didn’t actually give that person permission to offload their problems onto you.

The truth is that as an empathetic HSP you don’t have to be in a conversation with someone to be affected by their energy. And, if you’re not aware of what’s going on, you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed and feeling ‘out of sorts’ without any idea why.

So what can you do about it? Well you can start by doing a little emotional laundry at the end of each day. A good way to start doing this is to write down on a piece of paper exactly how you’re feeling, without judgement. Next to each emotion or feeling you can also make a note of any physical sensations in your body, for example tension or pain in the chest, back or jaw.

Once everything is written down take a look at the list and ask yourself who this energy or emotion belongs to; just like sorting whose socks are whose in the laundry. Sort the emotions into groups  that belong to me, those that belong to other members of my close family, and emotions that belong to others. You might be interested to discover who these ‘others’ are. They could be colleagues you work with, people you sat next to during your commute to work, they could even belong to news items or social media reels you've watched.

What you do with it after that, is up to you. Personally, just going through the process of being aware and sorting the feelings helps me have a different relationship with them. What I do with it after that depends on who it belongs to. If it belongs to me I’ll own it and try to find out what it’s purpose is. If it belongs to a member of my close family, I’ll acknowledge it’s presence and then depending on who exactly it belongs to and what it is I might allow it to stay. But if it’s from some ‘other’ person, I’ll definitely try to let go of it.

It takes training and perseverance to be able to recognise and let go of stuff that isn’t yours, but often just sorting things as own or other is enough to change your relationship with it.

So next time you’re not ‘feeling yourself’ take a few moments to do a little emotional laundry for yourself. And, if you routinely feel exhausted the end of the day by other people’s stuff it might be time you started to make emotional laundry part of your daily routine.