Absorbing other people's moods

On last week's This American Life, there is an episode about the personality types that negatively affect workplace behavior--The Jerk, The Slacker, and The Pessimistic/Depressive. Some guy did some research and found out that when you have one of these people in a group (any group), they consistently and dramatically bring the entire group down. This goes against the grain of contemporary research that says that a group tends to make individuals conform to the group dynamic. This research suggests that, for at least these personality types, it goes the other way.

This is interesting to me because the last few months I have been noticing just how much I absorb other people's moods. When I am with happy people, I am happy. When I read a happy or at least hopeful story or book, I am content. By contrast, when I read an upsetting story, I am upset. When I am with a complainer, I get into a bad mood. When other people aren't doing their job, I don't feel like doing mine. I totally absorb other people's moods. It doesn't happen for long--I don't keep it in me for days, but it is able to shift my mood for at least a couple of hours and up to a day. (The same is true for positive interactions.)

And this happens despite my awareness of this, despite my attempts to build emotional boundaries, despite my attempts to intentionally counteract the "bad mood," and despite using contemplative practices like meditation. I've noticed that awareness and emotional boundaries and intentionality and meditation really HELP, but not nearly as much as when I avoid those situations in the first place.

I also see this happening with my interactions with Dean. For example, several times I have noticed that, if I am tired or cranky, and I am close to Dean, he tends to suddenly get very tired or cranky too.

I'm not yet sure what all of this means. But it raises lots of questions for me. Like:

• Is "escaping" the bad stuff a good thing? (it doesn't seem so) And if so, how?
  
• how do those in the helping professions stay centered? I am by nature pretty good at detachment, but if this is happening to me, surely it is happening to folks in the helping professions even more
  
• Was Norman Vincent Peale on to something? (although I still think that the extreme version of that, like The Secret, is still way out there).

I find myself wanting to spend much more time intentionally absorbing "good moods" or at least finding ever more effective ways of counteracting the bad moods.