Here's everything you need to know about emotional monitoring

Because we believe we must continually please others, we occasionally try to subtly match their emotions. As we go through this process, we are constantly scanning the moods of those around us to determine how they are feeling and how we may help. We refer to this as emotional monitoring. This typically occurs when we are raised in homes where we did not feel safe and around parents who frequently treated us silently when they were in fits of fury. As a result, humans evolved emotional monitoring as a coping strategy to help us feel secure. 

This is how emotional monitoring looks:
Continually asking about others' well-being: We continually try to determine whether someone is feeling okay; if not, we want to become involved to help them feel better.

Extreme anxiety when another person is distressed: We experience considerable anxiety when a close friend or loved one gets injured.

Focus on other people's mood swings: We pay great attention to other people's mood swings and work to adjust to them.

Replaying social encounters: We have a persistent tendency to analyse our interactions with others to see flaws in ourselves.

How may this pattern be broken?
Recognise: We need to pause and go more slowly. We need to be conscious of how frequently we attempt to read the emotions of others and how that influences us. Introspection is difficult to conduct while we are preoccupied with the emotions of others. We ought to try journaling our thoughts and attempting to respond to them for a change.