Why do others affect us so much? - Episode 3

How can we feel others without losing ourselves in them?

Imagine that someone comes into the room and says almost nothing. Their face looks slightly different from usual, their voice seems a little clipped, their movements less fluid. They put their things down, then sit.

Without your having noticed it, almost immediately, something has happened in you. A signal. A silent warning: « Something is going on… »

And a few seconds later: « They're upset… », then, « Maybe they're annoyed with me… », and soon: « What on earth have I done? »

All of this happens before the person has explained anything at all.

So we observe more closely: their gaze, the way they answer, their silences.

We replay the last conversation in our head. We look for what we might have said, or not said.

Finally, we ask: « Are you all right? »

And the person replies: « Yes, why?»

And there we are, in a strange situation. We really did perceive something. But do we truly know what it means?

This is perhaps where one of the most subtle difficulties of our relationships with others lies.

Because we are capable of detecting a great deal of relational information.

But between what we perceive…

…and what we believe we have understood…

…there lies a whole world.

And that world is above all our own.

We sometimes feel before we understand

We saw in the first two episodes (« Episode 1 - What we copy without realising it » and « Episode 2 - The words we confuse: sympathy, empathy, compassion ») how sensitive we are to others.

We imitate certain postures, certain gestures, certain ways of reacting; we sometimes adjust our attitudes unconsciously. We can be drawn into an emotional state, feel sympathy, experience an empathic resonance, or turn that sensitivity into compassion.

But our system does something else as well: it draws conclusions.

And it does so extremely fast.

In 2006, the psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov, of Princeton University, showed in « Psychological Science» that only 100 milliseconds of exposure to a face was already enough for participants to form impressions concerning, among other things, trustworthiness, aggressiveness, likeability or competence. Their study obviously does not show that these impressions are correct. Above all, it shows how quick we are to produce an interpretation from very little information.

And this is probably where our story begins: something is perceived, then immediately interpreted.

And a few moments later, we have sometimes forgotten that there was a difference between the two.

Between what I observe… and what I make of it

For example, if your partner answers you: « All right», but with a slightly different tone in their voice.

What is actually happening?

The word is the same as usual, but the tone has shifted, and inwardly this sets off a series of reactions and interpretations: « Their tone is cold.», then: « They're upset.», or even: « They're upset with me.», and finally: « I've done something again.»

And sometimes, one last step arrives almost immediately: « I have to fix this.»

But look at the distance travelled: it all starts with a sound, and a few seconds later we find ourselves responsible for an emotional state about which the other person has said nothing at all.

And in between, our brain has filled in the blanks.

This is not a malfunction; we work like this all the time.

But it becomes interesting when we stop seeing the joins.

When the interpretation resembles reality so closely that it ends up becoming reality.

A face never tells the whole story

We sometimes have the impression that a facial expression gives us direct access to someone's emotion, but what we perceive also depends enormously on the context in which that expression appears.

In 2008, Monika Sommer, Katrin Döhnel, Jörg Meinhardt and Göran Hajak, in a study published in « Neuropsychologia», examined precisely how we integrate a facial expression into an emotional situation in order to attribute an affective state. Their work shows that the brain does not simply process an isolated face: it relates that face to the scene in which it appears.

In other words, we do not read an emotion the way we read a road sign: we interpret.

A silence may suggest anger, but it may also come from tiredness, from sadness, from a migraine, from worry, from intense concentration, or from a thought that has absolutely nothing to do with us.

We may therefore be right about one thing: « Something is different.», and completely wrong about the next: « I know what it means.»

Because « I feel it» does not always mean « I know it »

And this distinction is essential: a feeling can be perfectly real and the explanation we give it perfectly false.

If your stomach tightens when someone speaks to you, that tightening exists, it is not imaginary — but that sensation alone does not prove that the other person is rejecting you, lying to you, angry with you, or a threat.

It teaches you first of all something far simpler: something has just happened in you.

The neuroscientist Tania Singer and the psychologist Claus Lamm, in their review published in 2009 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, insisted precisely on the fact that empathic responses are not simple mechanical copies of another's state. They are modulated by the context, by the relationship with the person, and by the perspective adopted.

What we feel in someone's presence is therefore an encounter, between what they express and what we are able to receive of it.

With our history, our expectations, our fears, our memories, our state of the moment.

So: « I feel a tension» is a piece of information.

But: « I feel that you're annoyed with me» already contains an interpretation.

And: « I know that you're annoyed with me » has just turned it into a certainty.

When our history fills in the blanks

Imagine now that you grew up in a house where silence often preceded conflict.

No one shouted straight away; first, the atmosphere changed, someone spoke less. Gestures became sharper, a door closed a little harder. The storm rumbled. Then came the argument.

And after a while, it was no longer necessary to wait for it to break.

Silence was enough, because your system had learned: « When silence comes, something may follow.»

Years later, a situation resembles the old one closely enough for the alarm to go off. Your system recognises a familiar configuration. And from that moment on, the other person's silence is no longer only a silence.

It meets a history, and that is often precisely where « perception» and « projection» begin to merge.

But be careful: projecting does not necessarily mean inventing everything. We may perfectly well have detected something real in the other person.

A tension, a distance, a change of tone — and then we complete what we do not know from what we already know.

In other words, we perceive a few fragments, and our history writes the rest.

• If silence has often meant danger, silence becomes particularly visible.

• If distance has often preceded abandonment, the slightest distance can become alarming.

• If an adult's anger once had significant consequences, a micro-variation in someone's voice can today draw our attention immediately.

So we tell ourselves: « I know that look, that silence, that distance.»

Perhaps…

But perhaps what we mostly recognise…

… is what it awakens in us.

When feeling others becomes a matter of safety

In a study of 2,511 children and adolescents, published in 2023 in « Developmental Science», Julia Luiza Schäfer, Katie McLaughlin and their colleagues observed in particular that exposure to childhood experiences involving threat was associated with increased attentional orientation towards angry faces at the time of assessment. Importantly: this association did not imply that all exposed children develop the same profile, and it did not predict how this bias would evolve over the following three years.

Another study, carried out in 2022 by Benjamin Iffland and Frank Neuner, found that experiences of emotional maltreatment and relational victimisation during childhood were associated, in their adult participants, with certain attentional biases towards faces that had been paired with negative information.

This obviously does not mean: « If you notice other people's moods, you have been traumatised. »

That would be a crude shortcut, but it does help us understand something.

In certain environments, knowing very quickly what state another person is in can become a protective skill.

We might speak of the « emotional weather forecaster » child

Now, imagine a child coming into a kitchen.

Before asking for anything at all, they look at their mother's face, their father's posture. They listen. The tone, the silence. The way the cutlery has been laid on the table. Is this a good moment? Can they ask for something? Should they wait, or make people laugh, keep out of the way, be nice, be useful? Is someone about to get angry?

At that moment, they do not say to themselves: « I am developing a strategy of relational surveillance. »

They live, they learn, they adapt — and sometimes, they become very good at it.

• And years later, they may be the one who notices that a colleague is not doing well when no one else has seen anything yet.

• The one who senses immediately that a family meal is starting to become tense.

• The one who notices a minute change in their partner's voice.

This fineness of perception can become a genuine relational quality.

But it also has its reverse side: when feeling turns into feeling responsible…

When « I can see that you're not well.» becomes « I have to do something», then: « You're still not well, so perhaps I haven't done enough. », and finally: « For me to be at peace, you have to be at peace too.»

This is where the boundaries really begin to blur.

We soothe, we anticipate, we avoid difficult subjects, we watch our tone, we find solutions, we organise, we become funny when the atmosphere grows heavy, we become calm when someone is agitated, we become solid when the other collapses.

But sometimes it goes much further: some children genuinely take on responsibilities normally reserved for adults (caring emotionally for a parent, acting as mediator, protecting siblings, becoming a confidant, or helping to maintain the family balance).

This phenomenon has a name: “parentification”.

In 2023, Jacinda Dariotis, Frances Chen and their colleagues published a systematic review of 95 studies devoted to parentification. Their synthesis shows something particularly interesting: its consequences are not uniform. Some young people develop coping capacities or draw a sense of competence from certain responsibilities; in others, parentification is associated with more internalising, externalising or physical difficulties. Context, available support, and the way these responsibilities are experienced all play an important part.

Once again, no destiny, but a possible learning:

« The state of others determines what I must do. »

And by dint of sensing everyone, some end up no longer quite knowing…

…what they themselves feel.

Self and other are not one single thing

This capacity to distinguish what belongs to oneself from what belongs to another is now studied under the term « self-other distinction ».

In 2024, Ekaterina Pronizius, Henryk Bukowski and Claus Lamm, in Royal Society Open Science, compared this distinction across three different domains — motor, cognitive and affective — in 243 participants.

Their result is particularly interesting: they did not find a single general self-other distinction capacity working the same way everywhere. The motor, cognitive and affective measures appeared largely distinct. In other words, being able to distinguish one's own movement from another's, one's own perspective from another's, and one's own affective state from another's does not seem to depend on a single psychological « switch ».

We may perfectly well understand intellectually: « This emotion belongs to the other person.», and nevertheless feel it physically with considerable intensity.

The boundary is therefore not decreed; it is recognised, it is learned, it is felt.

And there is a very simple way of positioning oneself and observing a relationship.

By recognising three distinct spaces.

• Me.

• The other.

• And what happens between the two.

The other person becomes silent:

→ Their silence belongs to them.

→ My worry belongs to me.

The effect their silence produces in the relationship belongs to what happens between me and the other.

And this changes a great deal, because we step out of two extremes.

The first: « Everything I feel is caused by the other person. »

The second: « Everything comes from me, so what the other person does is of no importance. »

Both are false.

Understanding what belongs to us is therefore not a way of excusing the other.

It is a way of seeing the whole scene.

Returning to oneself without leaving the other

So the next time something happens in you on contact with someone, perhaps you will be able to observe the sequence.

Not as a technique, but as a movement of consciousness.

First:

« What did I actually observe? »

• A lower voice?

• A silence?

• A look?

• A posture?

Then:

« What did I conclude from it? »

• « They're annoyed with me. »

• « She's avoiding me. »

• « Something is wrong. »

Then:

« What does this conclusion produce in me? »

• A tension.

• A fear.

• An anger.

• An urge to repair.

• An urgency to be reassured…

And finally:

« Do I really know what is happening in the other person, or am I still trying to guess?»

It is from there that we can come back to them.

No longer to obtain an answer that calms our own anxiety.

But to discover.

Feeling with the other without disappearing

We began this series with something extremely ordinary: a yawn.

Then we followed the thread, and we discovered that we copy others more than we imagine, and that certain ways of reacting are learned simply because they were seen and repeated.

Then we went deeper still into relationship.

• Sympathy.

• Empathy.

• Emotional contagion.

• Distress.

• Compassion.

And now, something else appears.

Distinction.

• What I observe and what I interpret.

• What the other feels and what that provokes in me.

• Their history and what it awakens in mine.

• What belongs to them, what belongs to me, and what happens between us.

Perhaps relational maturity begins precisely there.

Not when others stop affecting us.

But when we become conscious enough to recognise how they affect us.

• We can be shaken without being swallowed.

• We can understand without claiming to know.

• We can accompany without carrying.

• We can love without rescuing.

• We can be deeply present without disappearing.

So the next time someone comes into a room and a small voice says immediately: « Something is going on…»

Perhaps you will simply be able to listen to it.

Then ask yourself:

• « What did I actually perceive? »

• « What did I add? »

• « And what does this awaken in me?»

Before returning to the other.

And asking.

Because truly feeling someone perhaps does not consist in entering their world deeply enough to lose ourselves in it.

It perhaps consists in staying present enough in our own to be able to genuinely meet them.

At bottom, that is perhaps where all of this leads.

Others affect us so much because we are made to be in relation.

But being in relation does not mean merging.

And sometimes, the deepest form of closeness begins exactly here:

Where I can be with the other without ceasing to be myself.