You take other people's pain home

What this means

Of the three parts this test scores, carrying stands out in your answers. Other people's pain does not end when the conversation does. You lie awake over a problem that belongs to someone else. Days after a friend's bad news, you are still replaying it and feeling low. A sad story about a stranger stays with you through the week. In the moment you may cope well. It is the afterwards that costs you.

This is a different mechanism from being flooded. You may be perfectly calm while someone tells you something terrible, and you may help them well. The weight arrives later, when you are alone, and it stays.

Why it stays

Carried pain usually stays for one of three reasons. The first is that it has no ending. You heard the problem but not the outcome, so your mind keeps the file open and checks on it at two in the morning.

The second is responsibility. If part of you believes that you should have done more, or that you still might, the problem stays live because it is still, in your mind, partly yours.

The third is that you have nowhere to put it. People who are good listeners often have nobody listening to them. Everything they take in has to be processed alone, which is slow.

What this is not

It is not the same as overthinking in general. Overthinking loops on anything, including your own life. Carrying is specific to other people's pain. If the loops run on everything, the overthinking test is the closer fit.

It is also not a weakness. Carrying is often a sign that you take people seriously. It just needs an exit.

What to do next

Give the carried thing an ending. When someone's problem keeps coming back to you, decide on one concrete step, a message later in the week, an offer you will make, or nothing at all, and write it down. Then tell yourself the file is closed until that day.

Find a place to put it. Say it out loud to someone who is not involved, or write it down before bed, so it does not have to live only in your head.

And check the news habit. If strangers' stories are staying for days, read the news at a set time and not in the hour before sleep.

If you want somewhere to set down what you have been carrying, Lovon is there at any hour, including the late ones.