How To Stop Mirroring Your Spouse’s Negative Emotions

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Hello, my beautiful friends, I am so glad to be here with you today to talk about how to stop mirroring your spouse’s negative emotions. Before we dive in, I just want to say how are you and hello. You can always email me at the [email protected] or send me a DM over at mom.onpurpose. I’ve been connecting so much more with all of you lately and it’s been so rewarding and fulfilling and it kind of makes the podcast a little bit more of a two-way street.

You know, I’ve mentioned before, but I’ll mention it again, that you can call the podcast hotline anytime. Eight three three three, ask Nat. That’s 8 3 3 3 2 7 5 6 2 8. But if you just want to say hello, if you want to kind of, connect in any other way, tell me anything about you or what you find valuable on your journey of personal growth or what you’d like to hear more of, just all the things that we dive into inside Mom On Purpose, feel free to reach out to me via email or on Instagram as well. I tend to spend most of my time in those places aside from listening to the messages that I get on the podcast hotline. Alright, so today I actually am not reading a question or playing back a message because this is a topic that I came up with based on so much coaching I’ve been doing lately.

So whenever that happens, I take it as a cue to bring the topic to you on a podcast episode, and that’s exactly what happened here. I’ve done, I don’t know, a handful of coaching sessions inside the Mom On Purpose Membership on group coaching calls, as well as inside our 24/7 written coaching platform called Ask A Coach. And then it’s also coming up inside my mastermind, which we’ll be launching again this January more to come on that. And I just took that as a sign that I should bring this topic to you here. I think that it’s something that comes up in most of our marriages, and that’s because we spend the most time with our spouses. We get in habits with our spouses, we kind of do a dance as I like to call it, and for better or worse that can result in mirroring and it’s for better when we end up mirroring our spouse’s positive emotions.

But what happens when we end up mirroring our spouse’s negative emotions? That’s what I want to talk with you about today and just offer you some tools, some strategies, some tips, some stories that I think will be really impactful for you on your journey, inside your marriage. Which by the way, I do think that marriage is one of the best personal growth journeys that you can go on. Just like becoming a mom and motherhood and just like lots of other journeys like weight loss or starting a business, all of these different journeys provide ample opportunity for personal growth. So as all of my clients know, it only takes one. You my friend, are the one you are listening to this podcast. You are a member of this community, and that’s what I want you to know. You don’t have to convince your spouse or get him on board.

All you have to do is work on yourself. The title of this podcast, how to Stop Mirroring Your Spouse’s Negative Emotions presupposes that you know what I’m even talking about. So I do want to just jump in right there and mention what mirroring is without going into too much of the science of it, just as sort of some background so we’re all on the same page with respect to what I’m even talking about. So emotional mirroring is when you unconsciously mimic the feelings of the people around you, especially people like your spouse, people who you’re closest with. And this is a very natural, normal, primitive response driven by the brain’s social wiring. You have mirror neurons in your brain, and that means when you walk into a room and there’s a handful of people there who are feeling amazing, it’s much more likely you’re going to feel amazing.

Where we get into trouble with mirror neurons is when we find ourselves walking into that same room and everyone’s feeling negative or down, and then we take on those emotions as well. It’s not that other people’s emotions are jumping into your body, it’s just that your brain is taking a cue from its social wiring that it’s a good idea to feel however they’re feeling. So you have some sort of, thought very quickly that creates the same emotion that they’re experiencing as well. So in the example with your spouse, if your spouse comes home stressed about work, you don’t feel stressed about his stress, but you feel stressed about him. So spouse is stressed about work, you are stressed, that spouse is stressed, and so you end up feeling upset that your spouse is upset, thinking that he needs to feel better in order for you to feel better.

But the truth is that you can just learn some of the tools I’m going to teach you in this podcast and you can actually stop mirroring. And that’s what I want you to know. Mirroring is the default automatic response, but it’s not the only way. There is a way for you to stop mirroring your spouse’s negative emotions, and that’s really what I want to empower you with the tools to know. I don’t, I wouldn’t say it’s like the easiest thing to do, but it’s very simple. And through repetition and practice, you can get really, really good at it. And everything I’m talking about here today applies to your kids as well. We often do this with our kids. If our kids are unhappy, then we’re unhappy as well. And that comes about from mirroring. So just know that with any relationship, whether it’s your spouse, your kids, or someone else, you don’t have to mirror them.

If you’re in the habit of mirroring them, you’ll probably continue to mirror them until you, you change that habit using some of these tools that I’m going to talk with you about today. I really think that the biggest problem with mirroring negative emotions is that you really feel like you’re at the effect of the people around you. So if your spouse is having a bad day or if he frequently feels stressed about work, then you feel like you can’t be happy, you can’t feel at peace, or you can’t feel content with your life and all of the wonderful things in it unless your spouse changes. And that’s a very disempowering place to be. You really want to work on this so that your spouse can be them and they might be going through a period where they want to feel stressed, and that’s okay. You can still be supportive.

It’s not that you’re going to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and be apathetic, but you are going to take back your power with respect to how you feel. The first step to stop mirroring is self-awareness. It’s noticing that that is what’s happening. Even if this step means that you actually continue to mirror for a little bit as you’re working on these steps, you still end up making progress just by noticing that it’s happening in the moment. I have tons of clients who tell this to me. They’re like, I’m working on it, and I notice myself still feeling that frustration when my spouse is frustrated, but I can see that it’s happening and that is growth, my friends. That is progress because you know, before even doing any of this work, there’s no awareness. It’s blaming spouse for feeling frustrated. When you’re in emotional blame, it’s so disempowering because there’s nothing you can do about it.

But for trying to get your spouse to feel better, which if I’m sure you’ve tried to do, does not work, they want to feel how they want to feel. And so what you can do is become more aware that that’s what’s happening. So just tell yourself the emotion that you’re feeling. Name it, call it out. Say, oh, I’m feeling really stressed right now. I’m feeling really frustrated. I see that I’m mirroring my husband’s emotions. And just that awareness alone creates a space between your feelings and your reaction. The upside of this is twofold. Not only do you get the benefit of working on mirroring and stopping mirroring more specifically, but you also then get the benefit of changing your response so that you’re not so reactive. Inside the Membership. I call this interrupting the thought model. So instead of feeling however you’re feeling and then acting however you’re acting, you interrupt that feeling action pattern, and you respond with much more thoughtfulness.

This is a game changer because you can feel frustrated without yelling, without snapping, without overreacting. But it comes from awareness of the feeling and going inward, not outward. Our thoughts, our brains love to spin a negativity, and mine is like this too, where you’re thinking it’s your spouse’s fault. Why is he doing this? Why does he always come home in a bad mood? And whatever it is that’s going on with your spouse, when you’re thinking those thoughts and you’re feeling frustrated or stressed, it just makes it worse. So through awareness, through naming the emotion and breathing through it, you not only work on your capacity to stop mirroring, but you also change the way that you show up in the moment. As a wife, the next step to stop mirroring is to decide what you want to think and feel instead. So let’s keep going with the example. Your spouse is really stressed about work and he comes home and kind of offloads all of that stress onto you. And typically kind of the dance you’re in is that you then feel stressed about his stress and that stress is coming from thoughts that you’re thinking something like, I wish he wasn’t so stressed, this isn’t good for him, nor for our marriage. I wish that his boss was different. I wish this didn’t impact him so much. Or maybe it’s other thoughts like, you know, I would handle this differently. Why isn’t he doing what I suggest? Who knows? But you have a plethora of thoughts that are creating your stress, your thoughts create your stress, your husband’s thoughts create his stress. So going back to this step, what do you want to think spouse is going to be, who spouse is going to be? So we’re going to assume that he’s exactly the same and he feels stressed when he’s feeling stressed.

How do you want to feel? I love this question so much because of course we want our spouses to feel happy. Of course, we want our kids to feel happy. We want everyone to feel happy. And yet we know that when we take a step back and we zoom way out and we think about life, we are all supposed to experience hardships, challenges and negative emotions. It’s just harder to remember in the moment. So instead of wanting to change the way your spouse feels, take more ownership of your feelings and work on changing yours, not because you know this makes you somehow a better person, it’s just what you have control over. So how do you want to feel when your spouse is feeling stressed or when your spouse is feeling angry or when your spouse is feeling whatever, fill in the blank. It’s such an important question to answer.

You’re probably not going to choose happy. You might, it depends. But I find that most of my clients want to choose something like connected, interested, compassionate, confident, something where you are are still maintaining your stability, and your, groundedness while at the same time listening and being there for your spouse. You’re just not disconnecting and taking on your spouse’s emotions like you had done when you were mirroring. So let’s say instead of feeling stress like you have been feeling with respect to your spouse’s stress, you choose that you want to feel content and supportive, you want to feel content with yourself, and also you want to feel supportive with respect to how you think about your spouse. The next question becomes, what do you need to think to feel those emotions? So remember, spouse is going to come home from work and think and feel the exact same way that he does and act the same way and say the same things.

What can you think, feel, and do as a thoughtful way of responding versus kind of reacting and then blaming and being in that mirroring loop that is so common, this specific thought that you’ll want to think will be unique to you because of course this is a podcast where I’m coming up with an example that I might coach on, but your situation is different and unique. So what is the specific situation in your household with your spouse? What is your specific thought on default? And your specific feeling may be stress, it may be frustration, it may annoyance, it may be anger, it may be something else. And then coming up with that thought that you want to think on purpose and the emotions that you want to think on purpose. So for purposes of this example, I came up with the thought my spouse is having a hard time at work and that’s okay, I can listen and support him through this.

To me that feels very grounding, very connected, very content and supportive. Now that may be a good starting point for you to come up with your thought or you might want to brainstorm some other thoughts. But the key is that out of the moment, this is what you do. You ask yourself, how do I want to feel? And then what do I need to think to feel that way? You come up with that thought that feels true and believable to you. And then my friends, you practice the thought. The thought does not happen to you. Just because you come up with a thought doesn’t mean you’re going to think it. You have to actually practice that thought. I cannot stress this enough. This is like 90% of the work. So often I’ll hear people say, you know, I’m listening, I’m liking your content, but I am not applying it when it comes to that moment.

I’m still, you know, mirroring in this example. And I’ll say, yes, you’ve got to actually practice it. That’s kind of why I think of Mom On Purpose Membership as like the emotional and mindset gym. You are coming inside and getting the tools to help you practice this work in your everyday life. So in this example, come up with that thought that you want to think and the feelings that you want to feel and practice, practice, practice thinking and feeling those thoughts and feelings out of the moment so that you create this new dynamic when it’s in the moment. When you work on the solution to mirroring in the method that I’m teaching you, you work on it from the root cause, which is so helpful because instead of following some random script that you read on the internet or see on social media, you actually do the foundational work of changing from the inside out, which means that you actually will show up differently.

Your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings drive your actions. So if you change your thoughts and feelings, your actions will be different. When you just read some random script that someone tells you to say to you know, support your spouse, that means you end up saying something different but you don’t think and feel differently. So you still feel stressed, but you are trying to kind of fake it and say words that are supportive and maybe in an attempt to get your spouse to not feel stressed. Either way it doesn’t work and it definitely isn’t going to get you the long lasting change that you’re looking for. This will though, when you work on your own thoughts and your own feelings, you absolutely will change the way that you show up. And by show up, I mean act. So the words that you say, the actions that you take will be so different in your marriage when you change the way you think and feel in the moment.

Now the next step here isn’t really a step, but more of a tool that I want you to be aware of. When you start to work on any sort of change, there’s the before, the during and the after. So you start learning about mirroring after you’re already mirroring and you notice it and then you’re working on the tools out of the moment, your new thoughts, your new feelings. And then in the moment, like I mentioned earlier in this episode, you start to notice, oh my goodness, I’m feeling stressed and I can see that it’s happening, but you still don’t remember to say your new thought and your new feeling. But I promise you, just like you know God or the universe or whatever you believe in, will give you this lesson until you’ve learned it. And so there will be another time for you to practice.

And so I never get frustrated when I don’t remember to use a tool in the moment. I just know, oh, I guess I’ll be using that tool the next time. So what I mean by before, during, and after is the process of change. Don’t get frustrated with yourself if you’re noticing the stress come up or the default mirroring come up even though you’ve learned this tool intellectually, it takes practicing it so much during the moment and then eventually you remember it before. So there’s the before, the during, the after, you notice it after, then you start to notice it more during. And then finally you notice it before and you stop yourself and you rewire your brain effectively so that you’re no longer mirroring. I do want to mention here that sometimes when you first start working on stopping your mirroring, it can almost feel irresponsible.

Like if my spouse is upset, shouldn’t I feel upset too? And the answer is no. Hopefully out of the moment listening to this, you know that the answer is no. But I often think that we think we should feel the emotional level that our spouse or our loved ones are feeling. This definitely comes up a ton with respect to kids. So if your kid is upset, you’re thinking, I should feel upset. But the truth is you can be a really supportive, loving, confident parent mom with without feeling upset and in fact adding more upsetness to their upsetness isn’t helpful. The same is true in your marriage. What I think most people do on default is go to that all or nothing thinking. It’s thinking that, okay, well if I’m not feeling stressed about my spouse’s stress, then what? I just don’t care. And that’s all or nothing thinking.

It’s going to two opposite ends of the spectrum. Either we’re mirroring our spouse’s negative emotion or we just don’t care at all and we’re like, sorry about what’s happening at work. See ya. I’m like living my best happy life over here. That is not what I’m saying. That’s really apathy where you just don’t care at all. And I would never suggest that you don’t care about what’s going on for your spouse, and I know you do want to care, but in the middle is a much more intentional, thoughtful response where you care genuinely and you’re supportive and you are open and you’re connected, but you sort of, you have this like bubble around you like to think of it that way visually where you are maintaining your emotions based on how you want to think and feel. And that means a lot of mindset work and feelings work out of the moment so that it becomes your new norm in the moment.

One additional tool I do want to mention here that I think will be helpful with respect to mirroring when it comes to your spouse is the tool that I use in parenting. Sit, don’t solve. Sit with them in their emotions. Don’t try to solve their problems. The same is true with respect to anyone, with respect to a toddler, a teenager, or your spouse. When you try to solve their problems, they don’t feel heard. What they want to feel is heard and seen and validated and lucky for you, that does not require mirroring at all. All it requires is for you to sit with them in their negative emotions and be there for them. It might sound like saying things like, I hear you, I get it, I see you. That sounds super hard. Tell me more. You might ask like, is there anything I can do to help support you if it’s appropriate?

Depends what the challenges that they’re facing. Maybe not. But I like to remember for myself, I want to sit with my spouse. I want to sit with Steve in his feelings, in his challenge and just listen and be there and support him. I’ve become so good at this that I don’t even think of solutions for the challenges he’s going through anymore. I’m specifically thinking about work. Like if he wants to talk with me about work and what’s going on, I just listen and I’m there for him and I love hearing about it and I don’t go to the place where I’m trying to solve any of it. First of all, it’s not helpful. It kind of invalidates his feelings, but it also doesn’t empower him to be the leader of his life and it kind of disempowers him because it doesn’t show him that I believe in his capability to figure it out.

So I might say something like, oh my goodness, what’s going on there? Like, what are you thinking of doing about that? Or, tell me more. I’m just interested and caring and supportive. Now those are the actions that I might be taking, but those actions stem from the feelings that I want to feel. Calm, content, supportive, interested, and those feelings come from my mindset. I’m never thinking thoughts like, he shouldn’t be feeling this way. I wish he wasn’t so stressed about work. Work should be different. They shouldn’t be doing this, or whatever it is. Those thoughts just aren’t helpful. And I’ve been practicing this long enough to know the benefits of this are so helpful for myself and for my marriage because I’m never thinking I’m taking on his feelings. I’m never thinking that his emotions at work come into our marriage or that there’s anything gone wrong.

A lot of the time we think, okay, well if our spouse is feeling stressed or frustrated or angry or whatever’s going on for them, something’s gone wrong. They shouldn’t feel this way. We do this with our kids too, right? They shouldn’t feel upset, they shouldn’t have challenges, but the truth is they are supposed to feel that way. How do we know? Because they are. That’s their journey and their experience. And the better we get at turning our mindset inward and focusing on us, the better we will be able to show up as the partner, as the spouse that we want to be. The final tool I want to offer you is that when you are feeling really triggered or upset by something your spouse does, your brain is going to want to ask you a question about what they’re doing. So your brain might say something like, why are they being so difficult?

Or why does this bother them so much? Or why do they have to do it that way? Or why do they have to act like that? It will ask some question that is not really a question from curiosity, but sort of a judgmental question that will be outwardly focused. Whenever you feel triggered in that situation and your brain asks a question that’s outwardly focused towards your spouse, turn it around and flip it and ask yourself, why are you so triggered by that? So instead of the question, why does my spouse struggle to hold boundaries with our kids and feeling really frustrated and disempowered and trying to focus on your spouse, changing how we parents flip it around and ask yourself, why am I so triggered by my spouse’s inability to hold boundaries? This tool is one I have been playing around with and obsessed with lately because it’s a simple turnaround for you to get your power back, for you to feel so much better navigating any challenge that is happening, particularly in your marriage.

When your brain wants to ask a question about why your spouse is doing what they’re doing instead flip it around and say, why does it bother you so much? And you will gain so much insight. You gotta do the work and figure out what the thoughts are, what the feelings are. But I promise you, my friend, it will come back to so much growth and self-development that you can do on yourself that is within your control. That’s really the key here. So you get to a place where you let your spouse parent how he wants to parent, and you know that you are supposed to be a different kind of parent, and that’s okay. You respect each other nonetheless. The final thing I want to say here is that when you get really good at practicing creating your own emotions and your own responses to your spouse’s negative emotions, to however they’re showing up, you will feel so much better in your family, in your marriage, and in your everyday life because you won’t be so focused on, I hope they’re in a good mood. I hope they do this, this and this. You will be focused on you and what you can control and that my friends is such a beautiful gift that you can give to yourself and to your marriage. Have an amazing rest of your week, my friends. I will talk to you next week. Take care.

Thank you for being here and listening. Now, head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.