Ducks and Sponges
Anne Bogel, Modern Mrs. Darcy, wrote a post years ago that she recently linked to again about boundary setting. Some people are great with setting firm boundaries. I am not one of these people. I am good at the initial impulse to set the boundary, but then I start to worry—either about how the boundary will impact the other person or my future self. Or, more often, I don’t even realize that I’ve crossed a boundary point I should have set until I realize that things have become too much.
Which, she explains, means I’m a sponge.
She sums up a section of the book The Highly Intuitive Child: A Guide to Understanding and Parenting Unusually Sensitive and Empathic Children, explaining the difference between ducks and sponges. Ducks allow “other people’s emotions roll right off them, like water off a duck’s back. These people may be warm, caring, and sensitive, but they still have no trouble distinguishing other people’s emotions from their own.”
Their anger doesn’t have to be your anger. Their frustration doesn’t have to be your frustration. They can think and feel what they need to think and feel, but you don’t have to carry their feelings with you.
Sponges absorb other people’s emotions. They “soak up other people’s feelings, experiencing them as their own, and physically registering those emotions. This isn’t a choice; it happens automatically.”
And then she gives an example which I recognize in myself.
There are strategies in the book for navigating sponge-hood, which, like Modern Mrs. Darcy, I didn’t even realize was something I did until I read her post and narrowed my eyes thinking, “This feels very familiar.”
So are you a duck or a sponge?
5 comments
Sponge. Absolutely. And so are my daughters, especially my 9 year old. We talk about it a lot, thought duck and sponge are new terms. Being a sponge makes us empathetic and thoughtful (as ducks can be too), but also is draining and exhausting.
I am definitely a duck. Which has served me well in both my careers (nurse, then lawyer), where allowing myself to be affected by the emotions of others would adversely impact my ability to be effective in my job.
Interestingly, one of my twin sons is a duck, the other is a sponge.
It’s weird. I think I’m a sponge with some and a duck with others. I’ll have to think about what makes the difference.
This is such a helpful framework. Thank you for sharing it, Ms Sponge.
I switch between the two depending on the situation. Grief and loss? Sponge. Random favor because you didn’t plan or prepare well enough for something you could have prepared for? Definitely a duck. I often feel like I’m not a very good person because of my duck-ness, but I haven’t been motivated to make meaningful change. Which probably cements the fact that I’m not a very good person.
Oh, I’m definitely mostly a sponge. I can be a duck occasionally, and I’d love to be more duck-like. In fact, I have tried to train myself to let things go. My husband is a duck, and doesn’t really understand why I can’t do this all the time.