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Emotional Contamination Explained · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode two in the series Emotional Contamination and how emotional contamination happens.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I should apologize because I've had a whole host of technical difficulties that have prevented me from posting more podcasts.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think I had ideas above my technical ability, and as a consequence, I've been uh paying the price for it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where is a small technical computer literate child when you need one?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so this is a three-part series, and this is the second episode.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: What motivates me to write about emotional contamination and I think the behavior of others, whether they're avoidant, narcissistic, or they are people who have a a narrow sense of the awareness of others, either because they have difficulties with mentalization, whatever those things are, they they leave a trail in their wake of people who get damaged, who uh can sometimes get stuck uh and who don't realize what's going on.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see it, they just know that things aren't right.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in every like in every relationship, it doesn't matter what kind, uh emotional contamination occurs.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So this series is about understanding what that really means, as we you know looked at in the first episode.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh looking at it at the, if you like, the dynamics of how it happens.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the final episode, how we protect ourselves from it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we are emotionally contaminated, we are holding on to something that doesn't belong to us.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not aware.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're just aware of the reverberations, the the way we end up feeling, and how sometimes we become temporarily sort of emotionally disabled as a consequence.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: But in the first episode, we we kind of explored the idea that emotions can be a kind of contagious.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't because we don't just communicate with words, we communicate through feelings, expressions, expectations, and unconscious signals and also patterns of behavior.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we leave some kind of interaction feeling lighter and more hopeful, but at other times we can walk away carrying all manner of feelings concern, anxiety, shame, anger, self-doubt, and it wasn't there before.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But so how does it happen?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer lies in something we all do without realizing it.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Human beings are constantly communicating emotionally beneath the surface of conscious awareness.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, from the moment we're born, we rely on other people to help us make sense of our emotional world.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is about mentalization.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a distressed baby has no way of understanding fear, frustration, or loneliness.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, those feelings are absorbed, interpreted, and soothed by a caregiver.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And over thousands of such interactions, the child gradually learns the feelings belong to them and they can survive them.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: When this process goes well, emotional resilience develops.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: But when it doesn't, something very different can happen.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And some adults struggle to tolerate their own painful emotions.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Feelings such as shame, inadequacy, envy, rage, or fear become unbearable.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes such people will be constantly racked with anxiety and overcompensatory behaviors.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: They will also quite often project the negativity that they feel about themselves onto others.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of recognizing these feelings as their own, they they just try and place them somewhere else.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And usually that somewhere else is another person.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, psychotherapists describe one aspect of this process as something we call projective identification.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the name sounds technical, but the extit the experience is remarkably familiar.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine spending time with someone who constantly doubts themselves.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before long, you begin questioning your own decisions, or perhaps someone repeatedly treats you as though you are selfish, uncaring, or incompetent, despite little evidence that this is true.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Gradually you begin wondering whether they may be right.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Even though nothing has necessarily been said directly, something has been transferred.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is emotional contamination.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that I think is sometimes when things are unacknowledged, that you are somebody who is attentive, giving, caring, and loving, if that isn't acknowledged, even though there's no direct criticism, if that's not acknowledged, then uh inevitably you can either say, Well, this is about the other person, but before you eventually do that, you'll be saying this is about me, I'm not good enough, I'm not, I'm I'm not getting it right.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, what's happened is you've been manoeuvred into that position, whether the other person intended it or not, but that really isn't the point.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: The consequence is you internalize it.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it may very well be that the other person is feeling that way.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're not good enough for me, or I can't cope with you, or something, but the result is you internalize it before you realize that there has been some kind of manipulation.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's not manipulation in the ordinary sense.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, people aren't consciously aware of what's happening, and they ignore the pattern that they have been acting out, both with you and with other people.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the individual carrying the painful emotion experiences temporary relief because now someone else is holding what they can't.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the recipient begins experiencing emotions that seem strangely unfamiliar, yet increasingly convincing.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, children are especially vulnerable because they naturally assume that adults understand them better than they understand themselves.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if a child is repeatedly the recipient of messages like you're too sensitive and you're the difficult one, and you always cause problems, they rarely question the message.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, they absorb it.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, these repeated emotional experiences become part of the child's identity.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: They no longer feel like opinions expressed by somebody else, they feel like facts.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: They are the child's lived reality.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the same process occurs in adult relationships.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm reminded of a man who was constantly told he was narcissistic, was constantly told he was uncaring, that he was absent, that he would got everything wrong.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And oddly enough, that wasn't true.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was described as true frequently, but he ended up feeling like that was the case, and he was very damaged by it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it was because he had internalized this constant message, and he began to uh doubt himself and just held on to this pervasive sense of not being good enough, despite the fact that everybody else in his world said he was great and he was fine.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that can happen.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a controlling partner may leave the other person feeling irrationally guilty, and a narcissistic individual may consistently induce confusion and self-doubt to those around them.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So a chronically anxious parent may unintentionally pass their fear to a child who begins experiencing the world as dangerous without understanding why.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've seen many cases of this, that the child has actually internalized the anxiety of the parent, and then the anxiety that they experience almost becomes a condition in its own right, and it never needed to be there.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: The contaminated emotion begins to feel as though it belongs to the recipient.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes what I see is people, patients who come to me who've almost defined themselves as I am somebody who is.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: When in fact, when I look at it in a more systemic way, i.e.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: the family, I can see this child has learnt not necessarily through explicit instruction, but through emotional contamination.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most striking features of emotional contamination is how it changes our ability to think clearly.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, think, for example, a person in an abusive relationship, a person who has been in an abusive relationship for a long time.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's think about domestic abuse.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the person who is the victim in this internalizes and absorbs the voices and the behaviors of the abuser.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is extraordinarily powerful and it's very worrying.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it does consistent damage.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Even when the abuser isn't there, the victim will say, but he would say, or she would say.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: They will consider their actions and their wishes and imagine the reaction of the other person and they remain stuck.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And people outside who can think clearly because they're not in the situation will say, Well, if it's that bad, why don't you leave?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But actually the victim is saying, Well, is it that bad?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because their reality has been reframed.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: They've internalized toxic emotional contamination.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when we become emotionally overwhelmed, our capacity for reflection shrinks.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of asking, why am I suddenly feeling like this?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: we begin assuming this must simply be who I am.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Confidence fades, decision making becomes difficult, and relationships become more complicated because we begin reacting to feelings that never may never have originated within us.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Many people spend years trying to solve the wrong problem.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: They believe they are treating anxiety, inadequacy, or shame that belongs to them.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: But in reality, they've spent years carrying emotional burdens that originated elsewhere.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why insight matters.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because the moment we become curious about our emotional experience, something important changes.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of automatically believing every feeling we experience comes from us, we begin asking a different question.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So back in episode one, whose feelings are these?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: That single question can transform the way we understand ourselves.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the answer will be, this is mine, but sometimes the answer is more liberating.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I've been carrying somebody else's emotional world for far too long.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that is quite a realization to actually, when you've got some distance, to be able to look back and think, my God, what was I doing?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've been carrying this per the burden of this person for such a long time and it's damaged me.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Generally speaking, you can't do that until there's some distance because you're still in it.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, recognizing emotional contamination doesn't mean blaming parents or others, because most emotional contamination is passed from one generation to the next without intent.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: People often pass on what they themselves were forced to carry.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And understanding this isn't about assigning blame, it's about breaking the cycle.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because once we recognize that some feelings have been inherited, absorbed, or projected into us, this is the projective identification, we're no longer condemned to live by them.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where emotional freedom begins.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it asks, it starts with asking that question.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Who do these feelings belong to?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now it doesn't matter whether you can answer them or not in the first moment.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is the asking of the question because what you're doing is you're stepping to understand you're stepping to one side.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: The other important thing, and I talk about this a lot, is the difference between asking what, not why.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: What am I feeling?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Name it.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask why, you will travel down the pathway that took you there in the first place, and you will re-trigger yourself.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Asking what?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: What am I feeling?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling concerned.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling concerned about the other person.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling like a failure.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling desperate.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling isolated.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling, you know, whatever it might be, those things form a picture.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because they start to then point towards how did I get here?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a very important discovery because it is it is very telling.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I remember finding myself more and more reluctant to answer the phone from somebody who called me frequently.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And although I did, sometimes I would I would delay it.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that was because after every phone call, I felt powerless.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I felt drained.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I felt as if this person had simply projected everything in their life onto me.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this this this was a this was a beginning of what am I feeling?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm feeling drained, I'm feeling like God, not again.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I can't feel I can't cope.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Little by little the dots were joined over a period of some months, and uh the conclusion was this person's not good for me.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't I can't hold their life alongside my own.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think this can happen in families when you have in fact I know it happens in families.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hear patients telling me these things and carrying the emotional burden.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Again, contamination.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the final episode, I want to help you to explore how to recognize it in everyday life, reclaim your own emotional experience, and develop the psychological boundaries that allow you to care deeply for others without losing yourselves in the process.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening, and I will be back shortly with the next and final episode.