When their mood becomes your mood: Breaking the cycle and shifting your focus

By: Marissa Pollet

Have you ever noticed how one comment, one look, or one bad attitude from someone else can completely shift your entire day? When we allow other people’s actions and behaviors to dictate our mood, we give away our emotional power and chip away at our own inner peace. Over time, that pattern becomes draining because we’re constantly reacting instead of living from a grounded place within ourselves.

Why It’s So Draining

• You’re always on alert. You become hyper-aware of tone changes, facial expressions, and subtle shifts in energy and are on guard waiting for the imminent shift.

• You internalize what isn’t yours. Someone else’s bad mood starts to feel like your responsibility and you want to fix what they are projecting.

• You lose stability. Your emotional state rises and falls depending on external circumstances. Your mood is dependent on their state of mind.

• You feel powerless. When your peace depends on others behaving “correctly,” you’re never truly in control. You lose yourself by allowing other people’s mood and reactions to dictate how you feel which gives away your power.

Living this way is exhausting because you’re trying to manage something you can’t control: other people.

The Hard Truth

You cannot control:

• Other people’s reactions and responses

• Their tone

• Their emotional regulation

• Their choices

But you can control:

• Your interpretation

• Your response

• The meaning you assign

• The boundaries you set

Inner peace begins when you stop confusing responsibility with empathy. You can care about someone without absorbing their emotional state. You allow them to feel and react how they choose, but you are not responsible for their emotions only how you allow their choices to affect your well-being.

How to Break the Pattern

Start small and intentional:

• Pause before reacting. Ask yourself: Is this about me, or is this about them? Their responses and emotions could be about something they need to work on and is not a personal reflection.

• Name what’s happening. “They’re stressed.” “They’re projecting.” This creates emotional distance.

• Check your self-talk. Replace “What did I do wrong?” with “Their mood is not my burden.”

• Strengthen boundaries. It’s okay to say, “I’m going to step away until we can talk calmly.” Take time to disengage to protect yourself

• Ground yourself physically. Take a breath, unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders. Your body often absorbs tension first.

Protecting Your Inner Peace

Inner peace isn’t about controlling the room. It’s about staying steady inside it. When you stop allowing what you can’t control to define how you feel, something powerful happens:

• You become less reactive.

• You feel more emotionally stable.

• You stop personalizing everything.

• You conserve your energy for what truly matters.

You Can’t Change What You Can’t Control

You are not responsible for regulating everyone around you. Regulation takes self-growth and exploration. It is a skill that most people need to fine tune so be aware that at the end of the day, what matters is your own personal response and not absorbing what you can’t control.

The more you practice responding instead of reacting, the more you protect your emotional energy — and that protection isn’t selfish. It creates consistency and self-protection.

It’s healthy.

And it’s necessary.

Our team of caring professionals at Inspired Wellness are here to provide support and guidance towards your path of mental wellness. We believe that every individual has the ability to be the best version of themselves and our goal is to set you up with the tools to maintain a well-balanced life that will place you on the path towards lifelong change. We strive to create a non-judgmental environment coupled with therapeutic practices that are tailored towards each individual. At Inspired Wellness our team aims to do exactly as our name says, inspire you towards a beautiful life of strength and wellness!