I had a revelation over the weekend: not only is my body spongy on the outside, but my psyche is spongy on the inside.

I read an article by sociologist Martha Beck on Sunday that describes people who are “emotionally spongy.” The term refers to a person’s ability to soak up the emotional energy around them. This can be a good thing: spongy people deeply enjoy and appreciate kind words, warm wishes, and good feelings from friends, coworkers, and others. The problem with being a spongy person is you also experience all the stress and negativity the people around you emit, even if you have no direct connection to the source of their bad vibes. Meaning even when people complain about events you’re not associated with, you feel stressed, as if they happened to you. It’s different from being empathetic to others problems, being spongy means you actually experience what the other person is feeling and are weakened by it.

That’s me.

In my first job out of college, I had a mercurial boss prone to outbursts. Sometimes he’d loudly chew someone out, other times he’d leave memos on your desk where you were verbally lacerated in silence. Most of the people in the office could listen to him spout off in a rage and then let that moment go and get on with their jobs.  Some could laugh about it. Me, whether I was the recipient of or the witness to his belittling comments, I felt sick, truly sick over them. I absorbed all his frustration and anger.

I’ve written about how I can’t watch emotional movies let alone full blown tear jerkers without paying a price. Long after the credits roll, I carry the character’s losses and grief with me. The more intense the movie, the longer and more acute my emotional hangover.

This is also why I’m not a regular at Web sites and blogs that focus on celebrity snark. Now I won’t pretend I’m not interested in celebrity gossip, but The Superficial, Perez Hilton and Go Fug Yourself can really bring me down. Sure, sometimes they make me laugh, but often I just feel the writers are just mean and not funny and their cruelty saps me.

While my husband isn’t an aggressive driver, he’s a verbal one. From the moment he gets behind the wheel, he’s prone to narrating all his gripes and grievances with other drivers. Not just dramatic incidents involving being cut off on the freeway or someone tailgating or running a light set him off, it’s smaller things too. Before we’re even out of the neighborhood, E will have complained about how people parked their cars, how so-and-so didn’t come to a complete stop back there, how cars veer to the outside on that curve, how people are driving too fast for a residential area, how the posted speed limits aren’t appropriate and on and on and on. For me, it’s unbearable.

All that complaining and negative energy fills me up and puts me in the worst mood. Sometimes I get physical symptoms, like a headache Most of the time, if I remind him, he makes a conscious effort to plug his word hole so I don’t get stressed out. I want him to let go of his narration, if not his opinions, on others’ driving. But sometimes he gets annoyed with me about it.

Because he’s not spongy, he doesn’t understand why he can’t talk about driving when he’s in the car. “What’s the big deal? he asks, “I’m just making some comments.” And to be fair, I want to make it clear he’s not yelling or cursing or shaking his fist. He’s just calling a crabby play-by-play of the driving scene. For me, all the irritability underlying the comments is contagious. When he starts his monologues, it’s like having someone sneeze in my face.

Years ago my daughter was on a soccer team. I didn’t know the other parents so I tended to set up my chair on the sidelines and flip through a magazine while E-Grrrl practiced. The first day I was there, the woman behind me aggressively castigated her daughter before the practice, and sighed for 15 minutes afterwards. Now everyone has rough days and rough moments, but I quickly learned this woman was ALWAYS mad at the world and tough on her daughter.

The irony—she was a Girl Scout leader and had been for years. Week after week after week she sat somewhere behind me and bitched non-stop about Girl Scouts, about the parents, about the kids, about the volunteers, and on and on and on. I left every practice exhausted by HER mood. E-Grrrl wasn’t even in scouting then, and I vowed she never would be as long as this person was involved. In my mind, this woman was like a smokestack that spewed soot over everything in her vicinity.

According to Beck, the sociologist who wrote the article I read, spongy people have to arm themselves against emotional assaults. She describes a long list of techniques that involve acknowledging and distancing yourself from the bad energy, visualizing happy moments or scenes when you’re under fire, and releasing tension and practicing peace through meditation.

What she makes clear is that spongy people are not neurotic, they don’t necessarily have unresolved issues, they’re not mentally ill—they’re just spongy. The key to dealing with it isn’t to see it as a fault but just as a trait. If you’re interested in reading the article and learning more about the research and treatments for spongy types, check out the June 2006 issue of O Magazine.

June 12, 2006