Absorbing Other People’s Stress? Why It Happens and How to Set Boundaries

In high-pressure workplaces or when living with a partner who carries a lot of stress, it can feel like you’re constantly absorbing tension that isn’t yours.

You walk into a room and feel the weight before anyone speaks. You leave a conversation and notice you’re suddenly anxious or depleted.

This happens because our nervous systems are wired to tune into others — sometimes so tightly that we mirror their stress without even realising it.

But you are not powerless in this.

Think of yourself as the gatekeeper of your own nervous system.

Just like a gate protects a garden, your boundaries decide what comes in and what stays out. With practice, you can learn to stay connected to others without carrying the weight of their stress.

Why Stress Is So Contagious?

The idea that emotions are transferable isn’t new. Carl Jung wrote about it over a century ago, and neuroscience is now proving what many of us intuitively feel: stress can be socially contagious — and it’s not just emotional, it’s biological.

A 2014 study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology found that even just observing someone else in a stressful situation could raise cortisol levels in the observer. This was true even when participants watched a loved one from behind a one-way mirror. Researchers called it empathic stress — a measurable, biological stress response triggered by witnessing another person’s distress.

Our nervous systems are designed for connection. But sometimes that connection becomes so strong that we co-regulate with another person’s dysregulation. Their tension, posture, tone of voice, or even subtle hormonal signals can trigger your stress response before you’ve consciously realised what’s happening.

Why Some People Feel It More

For some people, this sensitivity is especially strong. Often, it traces back to childhood. If you grew up in an environment where you had to monitor a parent’s moods, walk on eggshells or stay alert to tension, your nervous system likely learned hyper-attunement as a survival strategy.

That skill - constantly scanning faces, body language and tone - kept you safe then. 

But in adulthood, it’s quite likely that level of attunement is no longer needed in your day to day life.  Yet your nervous system still has this survival strategy on ‘play’, so you automatically, without even realising it, mirror the stress of colleagues, partners or clients or find yourself pleasing/appeasing in order to keep the peace.  

Feeling the weight of their stress leaves you drained and disconnected from yourself.

Thankfully, the nervous system is plastic, meaning that it can change. Just because your body learned to be hyper-attuned in the past doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it forever.

How Somatic Work Helps Rewire Stress Patterns

Somatic practices - body-based methods of working with stress, can help you gently update old patterns and create new reference points for safety. Instead of unconsciously absorbing stress, you can train your system to remain grounded and separate.  With this, you’ll start to feel a much stronger sense of self and less ‘rattled’ by other people’s drama.

Some effective approaches include:

• Body Awareness: Notice where stress lands in your body (tight chest, clenched jaw, shallow breath).  Sometimes the light of your own awareness is enough to help that stress soften and other times you might take more purposeful methods to release it.  

  
  

• Grounding Techniques: Use breath, movement or touch (like placing a hand on your heart) to remind your system, “This moment is safe.”

  
  

• Updating Beliefs:  Sometimes these survival responses are driven by old, unhelpful beliefs that live beneath the surface. In 1:1 work together, we can safely explore and rewire those patterns so your nervous system learns it no longer has to carry them.

  
  

Through consistent somatic work, your nervous system begins to trust that you no longer need to carry the weight of everyone else’s stress to survive.

Why Boundaries Are Essential (At Work and at Home)

While somatic work helps shift the root, boundaries protect you in the moment.

Boundaries aren’t walls that shut people out - they’re healthy edges that keep you grounded while still connected.

Healthy boundaries will give you a stronger sense of self, allow you to feel safer in the world also helping you to access a healthy ‘no’.  Healthy boundaries will also help you expand your capacity to differentiate between your experience versus someone else's, making it less likely that other people’s stress will derail you.

Without boundaries, you risk fatigue, resentment and blurring where you end and others begin.  

This is especially important if you’re:

• Working in a fast-paced, high-pressure job.

• Living with someone whose stress often overwhelms the household.

• Supporting clients, colleagues or loved ones through difficult times.

Practical Ways to Protect Your Energy

Knowing that stress is contagious is one thing. But the real shift happens when you learn how to work with your nervous system, rather than against it.

These practices aren’t about disconnecting from others or numbing your empathy. They’re about helping your body remember its own safety and balance, even when surrounded by stress. Each tool draws on neuroscience and somatic psychology: the nervous system can be retrained, and regulation can be cultivated.

At the same time, these practices strengthen your internal and external boundaries, helping you clearly distinguish your state from someone else’s.

Here are five nervous-system informed strategies that also reinforce boundaries:

🌀 Name It, Separate It

When your mood suddenly shifts, pause and ask: “Is this mine?” This simple act engages the prefrontal cortex (your rational brain) and interrupts the automatic stress response. By identifying that the stress may not belong to you, you are literally setting a boundary between your emotions and someone else’s. Over time, this builds a habit of distinguishing your state from others’ states, protecting your energy and creating emotional clarity.

🌬️ Use Your Breath to Come Back to Centre

Long, slow exhales activate the vagus nerve, stimulating your parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) system. Even 2–3 minutes of mindful breathing — inhaling through your nose, exhaling with a soft sigh — signals to your body: “I am safe.” 

This practice reinforces your boundary by anchoring you in your own physiological state, preventing someone else’s stress from hijacking your nervous system. Your breath becomes a personal boundary that helps you stay present without being pulled into external tension.

🌿 Create a Daily Clearing Ritual

Just as animals instinctively shake off stress after a threat, humans benefit from rituals that signal completion. Walking, journaling, shaking out your limbs, or taking a bath tells your nervous system: “The stressful input has passed. I can return to baseline.” 

These rituals strengthen your boundary by helping you release accumulated stress that isn’t yours, especially in high-pressure environments or when living with a stressed partner. They make it easier to enter the next day from a place of calm and clarity.

🪞 Visualise an Energetic Boundary

Your brain doesn’t distinguish between something vividly imagined and something real — which makes visualisation a powerful tool. Imagine yourself as the gatekeeper of your own energy, surrounded by a soft but resilient boundary, like a glowing gate or shield.

As the gatekeeper, you decide what comes in and what stays out. The gate isn’t a rigid wall — it opens to let in support and warmth and it closes when you need protection.

This practice reinforces your boundary in a felt, embodied way. You maintain connection and empathy while creating a safe “container” for your own emotions, so you can stay present without absorbing the dysregulation around you.

🤲 Seek Out Regulated People and Spaces

Co-regulation is the nervous system’s built-in way of restoring balance through connection. When you’re around someone steady and calm, your system picks up their cues of safety and begins to mirror them — and the same is true when others are around you.

Spending time with regulated people or in safe environments acts as both regulation and a boundary: it provides a protective buffer against constant stress while giving your nervous system a live model of safety.

Over time, this helps you not just survive stressful spaces, but remain steady and present within them.

Each of these practices is a dual tool — regulating your nervous system and reinforcing your boundaries. Over time, they train your body and mind to stay compassionate and connected without being overwhelmed, helping you reclaim your energy and presence in high-stress environments and relationships.

Becoming the Gatekeeper

Feeling other people’s stress isn’t a flaw — it’s a sign that your nervous system is exquisitely tuned. But tuning in doesn’t mean you have to be taken over. When you build boundaries, you step into your role as the gatekeeper of your inner world.

A good gate is strong yet flexible. It opens to let in love, connection and calm, and it closes when stress or overwhelm shows up at your doorstep. By practicing nervous-system informed tools like naming, breathing, clearing rituals, visualisation, and co-regulation, you train your system to recognise: “This is mine, and that is not.”

Your sense of peace, energy and overall wellbeing are worth protecting. And when you guard them well, you not only feel safer in your own body — you also become the kind of steady, grounded presence that helps others regulate too.

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Have you noticed yourself absorbing other people’s stress—at work or at home?

How do you set boundaries to protect your energy?

Please share your experience in the comments below.