At a cupcake bakery last year, Joe pointed out how our level of “upsetness” is determined by others.

“Did you see how the mother stopped the kid from crying?” Joe observed. “The mother assured the kid it was ok that the cupcake fell and he imitated her emotion almost immediately.”

And if the mother had shown a sudden distraught expression, the kid would have burst into tears and become more agitated and upset.

In improv class today, we went through an exercise of acting out different levels of emotion as a group. As we were exploring the depth of sadness, it became almost real with others playing out cries, screams of agony and despair…and I felt that familiar feeling of burden. It was as if I was imitating others and the feeling just came over me like a black blanket.