What to do when someone else's bad day is becoming your bad day

Burnout is contagious. Frustration is contagious. Fatigue is contagious.

Most people have no idea it's happening to them until they're already in it, sitting in a meeting, a conversation, a staff room, a family dinner, absorbing someone else's exhaustion without realizing they've taken it on as their own.

So before we talk about how to help that person, the first question is simpler and more urgent:

How do you protect yourself?

The fastest way is to pause and ask: what choices do I have right now?

Not what choices do they have. What choices do you have, in this exact moment. If you’ve been around these weekly resilience emails for a while, you know that the best way to unlock your own resilience is to ask this exact question. It calms your amygdala by engaging your decision-making.

You can listen or excuse yourself. You can match their energy or hold your own. You can get pulled into the spiral or change the subject. You can show empathy or ask a question.

None of this is about dismissing what they're going through. Their exhaustion is real. This is about remembering that you are a separate person with your own agency and that distinction, between what's theirs and what's yours, is exactly where your resilience lives. Even if it’s your business partner. Or your child.

And if you want to go one step further and actually shift the energy in the room, tell them something you genuinely admire about them.

Here's the part most people don't know: when you give a sincere compliment, you get the dopamine hit. Not just them. You.

You have just used their bad day to create a positive experience for yourself and you may possibly lift their load as well. You don't have to catch what they're carrying. You get to choose.

When have you done this? Have you felt the lift?

All my best,

Dr. G