Rough Draft

Have you ever been in a situation where you intended to help out your friend when all of a sudden, their relationship problems became yours too? You might be a little too sympathetic. Hi, I’m William Bouchard, and I would like to thank you, the school counsellors, for attending this meeting on the stress level and workload of students. I wish to persuade you that too much sympathy is a bad thing. Specifically, I want to speak about the problems that come to an over-sympathetic individual who tend to take on other people’s problems. I will go over how easily people communicate feelings, how many people get stuck in these kinds of situations and how problematic they can become.

Martha Beck, a Harvard graduate, explains that humans are naturally very good at perceiving the emotions of others. She calls this phenomenon Emotional Sponginess. We are so good, in fact, that it was stated in a study by biologist Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, called Telephone Telepathy, “When subjects were asked to guess which friend or relative was calling them, they were far more accurate than would be expected by chance.” The belief in the study was that the subjects could tell which friend was in need of their support, love, or sympathy before said friend or relative called (Beck). If you want an executive summary of this study, it is that we know how our friends and family are feeling even when they aren’t in the same room as us.

According to Beck, many people have a tendency to pick up a lot of emotional energy. This means that they take on the emotional feelings from the people or general feelings around them. If we take a step back, we realize that this happens in a lot of the things we do. For example, fashions, fads and financial strategies are all co...

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...ith anxiety, sadness, indignation and other inexplicable feelings.” Beck attributes her unhappiness to the idea that Virginia was too much like an emotional sponge, and didn’t protect herself well from the feelings of others. 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. Although 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. February 26, 2014.

Collingwoood, Jane. “The Physical Effects of Long-Term Stress”. Psych Central. 2007. Web. February 26, 2014. < http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-physical-effects-of-long-term-stress/000935>