Countertransference outside the therapy room: what your feelings tell you about others

You come home from coffee with a friend completely drained. Nothing special happened — you talked, laughed, she told you something about work, you told her something about the children. And yet you sit down on the sofa feeling as if you have run a marathon. And it is not the first time. It happens almost every time.

Or: a colleague says something perfectly innocent in a meeting, and you feel yourself starting to boil. The others don’t notice him. You can’t stand him. And you don’t know whether it’s because he really is like that, or because something is wrong with you.

This is the last, fifth post in a series on countertransference. In the previous four I wrote about what a therapist feels with a client — what countertransference is, how it becomes a message, where the therapist takes it and when they disclose it. Here I look beyond the therapy room. Countertransference is not a special therapeutic phenomenon. It happens in every relationship — and each of us can use it to understand ourselves and others better.

Feelings travel faster than you think

In 2000 the Swedish researcher Ulf Dimberg and colleagues showed people photographs of happy and angry faces on a screen — so briefly that they did not consciously notice them at all. Each face was on screen for only 30 milliseconds before being covered by a neutral image. The participants swore they had not seen any emotion. But electrodes on their faces told a different story: at happy faces the smiling muscles unconsciously tensed, at angry faces the frowning muscles did.

So the body responds to other people’s feelings before we consciously perceive them. Elaine Hatfield and colleagues called this emotional contagion: we unconsciously mimic one another’s expressions, posture, tone of voice and breathing rhythm, and through that mimicry we begin to feel something similar. Countertransference rests on this too. When a therapist senses a sadness the client does not show, nothing mystical is happening — something is happening that every human body does, only the therapist is trained to notice it.

Two layers in every feeling

What I wrote about therapists in the first post applies to everyone. Every feeling we have with another person has two sources, and they need to be told apart.

The first source is us. Our history, our wounds, our sensitive spots. If your father was loud and unpredictable, you will tense up around a loud colleague, even if he is perfectly harmless. If you grew up with a mother who complained all the time, a friend’s moaning will drain you faster than it would someone else. Then your feeling is real, but it says more about you than about her. In psychology we call this part projection — experiencing our own inner state as if it came from outside.

The second source is the other person and the relationship between you. The friend who drains you may really be carrying something heavy that she does not mention. She talks lightly, but beneath it is an exhaustion your body picks up. The colleague who makes you boil may really be quietly belittling others — and your anger is an early perception of something the others have not yet put into words.

Most often it is a mix of both. And that is exactly why it is so useful to learn to ask before we judge: what of this is mine, and what might be theirs?

Where it shows up most

In parenting. When a child is raging in a shop, a parent often feels anger stronger than the situation would justify. Part of that anger may be the child’s overwhelm passing to them — a child who cannot yet calm their own feelings unconsciously “hands them over” to the adult. Part may be the parent’s own history: a memory of how people responded when they themselves were an angry child. I wrote about this in the post on the child who wasn’t allowed to be angry. When a parent separates one from the other, they can respond to the child in front of them, and not to the child they once were.

In couples. Partners often find themselves in feelings neither of them understands. One is always anxious, the other always calm — and when the calm one gets unsettled for a moment, the anxious one is suddenly calm. As if there were only a certain amount of anxiety in the relationship that they pass back and forth. I wrote about this dance in Why the same fight keeps coming back.

At work. A manager around whom everyone feels incompetent. A colleague around whom everyone becomes protective. A team whose atmosphere changes after a new member joins. Organisations have their own countertransference, and those who can read it often understand the dynamics better than anyone.

In friendship. People with whom we feel clever, light, funny — and people with whom we become heavy, tired, careful. The first are not necessarily good and the second bad. But it is worth noticing what happens in us with whom, and asking why.

Why some people feel more

If, reading this, you recognise that you pick up a lot of other people’s feelings — that you need time alone after every social occasion, that you know what mood someone is in before they speak, that the atmosphere in a room floods you — you are not alone. And it is no accident.

Some people are by temperament more sensitive to stimuli, including emotional ones. The psychologist Elaine Aron described this trait as high sensitivity and estimated that between 15 and 20 per cent of people have it. It is not a disorder, but a way the nervous system processes the world — more deeply and with more nuance.

Others learned it. A child who grew up with an unpredictable parent — someone who drank, who was depressed, who exploded without warning — had to learn to read the atmosphere in order to get by. Whoever noticed in time that something was building up could step aside, calm things down, look after the younger ones. That skill stays into adulthood, only now it is switched on all the time, even where there is no danger. In the profession we call this hypervigilance.

People with such a history are often exceptionally empathic — and for that very reason often exhausted. Their inner receiver for countertransference is always open. The good news is that they can learn to use it more deliberately: not to shut it off, but to notice when it switches on and consciously decide how much of someone else’s feeling they will carry.

How to look after yourself

Therapists have supervision, their own therapy and peer consultation to take what they feel to. In everyday life we don’t have these, so we need other tools.

A name for the feeling. Simply saying to yourself “this is her tiredness, not mine” creates distance. You don’t have to be sure it’s true. It is enough that the possibility opens up that not all of it is yours.

A bodily transition. After a difficult encounter, do something with your body that brings you back to yourself: a walk, a few long exhales, washing your hands in cold water. Therapists often describe small rituals between clients — precisely so that one relationship does not spill into the next.

A boundary. If someone constantly drains you, it is perfectly fine to see them less, for shorter periods or differently. Understanding that they carry something heavy does not mean you have to carry it for them.

Exercise: three columns

This exercise is adapted from the way therapists in supervision separate their own reactions from their clients’. Choose one person with whom you often feel something strong — anger, exhaustion, guilt, unease. Take a sheet of paper and divide it into three columns.

1. First column — what I feel. As precisely as you can: where in the body, what emotion, when it starts. Don’t explain, just describe.
2. Second column — what is mine. Who does this person or situation remind you of? What state are you in these days? Where have you felt exactly this before? Be curious, not strict.
3. Third column — what might be theirs. If your feeling were an echo of something in them, what would it be? Write it as a hypothesis, not a fact: “maybe”, “it could be that”.
4. Check, don’t accuse. If the relationship is safe enough, you can gently test your hypothesis — with a question, not a statement. “You seem tired. How are you really?”
5. Decide what you will do with your part. The part that is yours is yours — whatever the other person answers. What do you need? A boundary, rest, a conversation with someone else?

A similar exercise is collected in the knowledge base under What is mine, what is theirs.

How it sounds in conversation

A short example of how such an observation can open a conversation (a composite, not real people):

“I’ve noticed I’m always really tired after our coffees. I think part of it is mine — I’m sleeping badly this week. But it also seems to me that when you talk about work, you laugh, and it doesn’t sound funny.”
A long silence. “I don’t know how to tell you how bad it is. You’ve got enough on your plate.”
“Tell me.”

The friend was carrying a burnout she had admitted to no one. The tiredness travelled to the other person because she herself had pushed it away. Once it was spoken, the coffees continued — but differently.

Where the line is

Like any concept, this one can be misused. So a few cautions.

Not every feeling of yours is a message about someone else. If you start interpreting every bit of your own anger, tiredness or sadness as “theirs that I’m carrying”, you avoid responsibility for your own inner life. That is just as dangerous as the opposite — attributing everything to yourself and never noticing what others bring you.

“You make me like this” is not countertransference. When you tell someone “I always feel bad around you, so something must be wrong with you”, you are using your feeling not as information but as a weapon. The difference is whether you ask or accuse.

Take fear around someone seriously. If you feel fear around someone, tension, a sense that you have to watch every word, that is not necessarily an old wound to be explored. It may be an accurate perception of danger. Then look after your safety first, and understanding second. You will find a short explanation of how abuse shows up in a relationship in the knowledge base under violence in a relationship.

Don’t become your loved ones’ therapist. Recognising that someone may be carrying more than they show is valuable. Taking on the task of “healing” them is not. Countertransference is a tool for understanding, not a mandate to rescue.

What to remember

• The body responds to other people’s emotions within 30 milliseconds — before we consciously perceive them.
• Countertransference is not only a therapeutic phenomenon: it happens in every relationship.
• Every feeling we have with someone has two layers: our history and something the other person brings.
• The three-column exercise helps separate what is yours from what might be theirs — as a hypothesis, not a verdict.
• Take fear around someone seriously as a sign of danger, not as material to explore.