Emotional intelligence includes recognizing when somebody else’s mood has started becoming yours.

Moods are contagious, and the transfer is fast and invisible. You walk into a tense room and become tense, sit with someone anxious and start scanning for threats, absorb a colleague’s cynicism until you are the one saying it. Because the feeling now lives in you it presents as yours, complete with reasons you did not have an hour ago.

When your state shifts sharply, ask what changed and who you have just been with. If nothing in your own circumstances moved, you may be carrying something borrowed. You can care about someone without taking their weather as your climate, and noticing the moment of transfer is most of the work.