Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to help your friend when suddenly their relationship problems became yours too? You might be a little too understanding. Hi, I'm William Bouchard and I would like to thank you, school counselors, for attending this meeting on student stress levels and workload. I want to convince you that too much sympathy is a bad thing. Specifically, I want to talk about the problems that afflict an overly understanding individual who tends to take on the problems of others. I'll examine how easily people communicate feelings, how many people get stuck in these types of situations, and how problematic they can become. Martha Beck, a Harvard graduate, explains that humans are naturally very good at sensing the emotions of others. She calls this phenomenon emotional sponginess. We are so good, in fact, that in a study by biologist Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, called Telephone Telepathy, it was stated: "When subjects were asked to guess which friend or relative was calling them, they were much more accurate than we thought. you would expect." by chance." The belief in the study was that subjects could tell which friend needed their support, love, or sympathy before said friend or relative called (Beck). If you want a summary of this study, it's that we know how they feel our friends and family even when they are not in the same room as us. According to Beck, many people have a tendency to pick up on a lot of emotional energy. This means that they take on people's emotional feelings or general feelings around them Step back, we realize that this happens in many of the things we do. For example, fads, fads, and financial strategies are all accompanied by anxiety, sadness, indignation, and other inexplicable feelings.” idea that Virginia was too much like an emotional sponge and didn't protect herself well from other people's feelings. Instead, she let them take over. In conclusion, too much sympathy can be harmful to an individual. To our advantage, we have two branches in our nervous system. While we may feel like we are helping others with our sympathy, when we choose to use the wrong branch too much, we are only hurting ourselves. Works Cited Beck, Martha. “The sponge people”. Oprah. June 2006. Web. 26 February 2014. Collingwood, Jane. “The physical effects of long-term stress.” Psychological center. 2007. Network. 26 February 2014./000935>