Anyone else overwhelmed by other people's emotions?

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I have this weird thing where other people'e emotions rub off on me.. For example during exam season I was in a room filled with other students who were desperately trying to cram information.. I was pretty confident.. Well until their anxiety rubbed off on me and I too started to feel very anxious. It was so overwhelming I had to leave.

It is even worse when I am surrounded by many people.. Because there are so many conflicting emotions all occurring at the same time. In one corner someone is sad, in the other corner one person is a nervous wreck and on the other side of the room there is a sense of hostility and anger because an argument has just occurred.. All of these emotions, I can feel them.. And they are not even mine to feel, if that makes sense. I am merely an observer of what is happening, most of the time I am not even involved.. It has nothing to do with me. But somehow I am still impacted. What is even worse is that these emotions seem to linger long after the individuals who initially experienced them in the first place have gotten over it. I struggle to deal with my own emotions.. Let alone other people's. It is strange.

I get the emotions from movies or the news very strongly. I haven't watched the news for that reason for about 6 years no.

I watch movies, some of my favorites really hit me emotionally. Sometimes I just cry it out. Now that I understand why I react to these scenes I try to push through and treat it as a character building thing. I'm trying to learn to deal with my emotions, and what transfers to me through movies.

In public as you describe, I can usually switch it off and be a passive observer. Most of the time I can anyway. Sometimes it gets to me and I quickly get overwhelmed. And it does happen quickly. One minute I'm doing fine then something happens and I get hit with an emotional wave. It's all down hill from there. It takes an hour or more to recover my composure after I do get overwhelmed.

What you're describing is called empathy. Many Aspies have the opposite issue, but I can relate to what you're saying. I absorb other people's emotions very easily. When I was in college, it took me a while before I understood that it was much easier for me to be the last for a presentation in front of the class. If I went first, I got not only my own anxiety, but everybody else's! When I was able to go last, my anxiety was somewhat lessened because I could absorb the other students' relief at having finally been through it. To this day, I'm careful when someone around me is down and I have to protect myself or else I go down with them.