Other people's moods

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I live with someone who is prone to anxiety, as am I. When she is behaving in an anxious manner I find it very difficult to not be affected by it, if I can't remove myself from the situation I usually start feeling irritable, and gradually become anxious myself.
Since I talked with her about it she regulates her anxiety more often than not, and this helps, but I want to be able to be tolerate undesirable moods in other people without being affected in this way i.e. its not possible or realistic to limit my interactions with everyone that experiences anxiety.

Can anyone relate to this?

I don't know if you can stop being affected by other people's moods... I haven't figured out how yet, anyway. I'd be interested in knowing how though!

Yeah, I can definitely relate. I'm super sensitive to my wife's mood, to a point that starts to get on her nerves sometimes. I don't really have any advice. Just wanted to relate.

I don't know how to I can increase my tolerance for anxiety, it worries me that I'm so sensitive to it in others. I have to be able to manage this if I am going to participate in life the way I would like to, maybe with more time I will feel it less intensely.
Thanks for letting me know that you understood/could relate .

My husband and are the same - I thinks it's natural. I guess you need to balance being supportive with taking yourself away for a bit to "recharge". I hide in the bedroom and play 3s on my phone (stim?)

I can relate. One of the reasons why I would suck as a therapist is because I tend to take things too personally. I have trouble with objectivity. People who are anxious, imho, need objectivity and detachment as well as compassion.

Hence: friends AND therapists.

It seems as if I should just continue to remove myself from the anxious situation, and keep working on managing my own anxious reactions. Therapy does help... but I'm in a rush to get back to where I want to be, was hoping some here knew of a 'short cut'.

I'm thinking: if the other anxious person responds positively to your compassion, and her anxiety lessens as a result, wouldn't that aid in YOUR recovery? I have found that many people's anxiety revolves around feelings of inadequacy. Your ability to assist in this could, possibly ease YOUR anxiety, thereby "killing two birds with with one stone", so to speak.

If it's super bad emotionally distance yourself.

Yes I get that. If I'm close to them, then when they feel negative, I feel negative too. It's not so bad if I can think of solutions to offer, but I gather that's often not what they want. They often just want to vent. I can let them do that with me a little bit these days, but I'm still not very good at it. It still seems really weird to me that sometimes all I have to do is just listen, somehow I still feel convinced that it doesn't do any good, which I guess is why their negativity can bring me down. I would simply go away, but I hate abandonment and I feel I'd be letting them down in their hour of need.

Different emotions affect me differently though. Anger is often easier than most bad feelings, for some strange reason, as long as it's not really intense and long-lived. Grief and frustration are the hardest. If somebody actually cries, I'm prone to feeling guilty as if I've caused it. And the problem with grief is that it can cycle round between us and get worse.

Personally I don't seem to get much out of sharing my negative emotions with others, apart from it feeling faintly good that somebody knows I'm feeling that way and that they're around for me. But mostly for me I want practical help and solutions. At least I think I do.

Thanks for the responses.
I can be understanding of someone being anxious for significant issues, its harder when they are anxious about 'it might happen' things as well as the real/present issues.

She recently had an ongoing experience with someone else being highly anxious about all sorts of imagined things, and she felt it impact her particularly when I completely withdrew from the situation. I explained why I had to, and used the situation as a working example of how her unbridled reactions unintentionally impact on my well being. I think she understood, because its been a notable turning point in how she reacts to stressful events.

All strong emotional reactions in others that I am personally close to affect my mood, I think this is normal though, but when the residual affect remains, it makes me more aware that I need to make some adjustments.

That's what living life is all about--adjustments.