Kate Murphy

in turn helps you interpret the other person, how they're feeling and what they're doing.

We do this all subconsciously, but again, as you rightly point out, it breaks down if you're divorced from your own body and your own sensations.

You can't pick up the other person if your receiver's down.

I think we can all relate.

I talk about this in the book, the bad apple effect, where you've got one person, whether it's in a work team or a social group or a volunteer organization, that tends to really drag everyone down with that person, whether it's through their anger or complaining or being very...

depressed, that kind of thing.

And so the moods and attitudes and beliefs and behaviors are all very contagious because of this sinking instinct that we have.

Psychologists call it emotional fusion or enmeshment.

It can happen in couples.

where they can be very much in love and a very in sync couple, but it can work against them where like one of them gets stressed and then the other one gets stressed, which boomerangs back on the first one.

And so you have this climbing the ladder of escalation of arousal till there's like a big blow up.

And the two of them don't even really know where it came from when it was really this magnified reaction of,

these physiological states that both of them were in.

So a way to deal with that, which I have found this incredibly helpful in my own life, is first of all, being aware that this has happened, that you take on other people's emotions, feelings, and that physiological aspect.

All these terms of phrase like getting under your skin, a pain in the neck, all of these things are really true.

or they've really gotten in my head.

Yes, that's all very true.

And there's, first of all, the awareness piece, but then also when you're in those moments where you feel like you're ricocheting, whether it's anxiety or anger, back and forth off of one another in these particularly fraught conversations.

One technique that a clinical psychologist who specializes in these being synced or over-synced

relationships is he says to imagine there's a mute button on the other person at that moment and really think about their level of arousal versus what they're actually saying and how you might be unwittingly matching that level of arousal and to try and pull back from that.