Emotional Swapping

When an EIP feels a strong emotion, something that requires a bit of emotional labour to process, they start involving other people to compensate for their emotional deficit. There are different ways of doing this, but typically it results in one person becoming the emotional dumping ground of the other.

Emotional swapping is the act of forcing your own emotions onto someone else, so that they experience them too, then process them instead of you, and through that, you no longer have to feel them. It is one of the weirdest quirks of emotional immaturity. One might think oh this is just venting, or sharing feelings, but it is not. Research shows these people are actually completely blocked from processing their own emotions until they have projected them onto someone else. They have to 'swap' emotions in order to let them go and move on.

An innocent way this happens is for example when the EIP is in a good mood, has a good day because they achieved something, and they want to share this joy with other people. They prop up others' moods with their own positive emotions. They tend to be that fun friend, partner or family member that everyone likes, because they bring so much energy and positivity.

The more common, less innocent way this happens is when the EIP experiences a strong emotion, such as guilt, shame, sadness, anger, or fear, and they involve other people to process them. But the more this happens, the more the threshold of what a strong emotion is, shifts and expands. Soon they will be emotionally dumping every tiny thing on everyone around them. We call them immature because they act like a child screaming over not being allowed to lick a pile of dirt.