What kind of events are these, and what is your relationship to the people anxiety-ing at you?
I have some friends who are like this at social gatherings. I address it ahead of time by talking about the emotional labor they are implicitly asking for when they externalize their anxiety into me. And I remind them that it's way more annoying to manage an adult's emotion than to deal with "oops someone took too many cookies" or whatever.
If it's more professional or community organizing that is open to the public, that obviously doesn't work. I have less experience there, but laying out expectations and clear roadmaps at the beginning can at least attenuate it. I really like the scripts Indywind gave in an earlier comment.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2024-12-06 06:06 pm (UTC)I have some friends who are like this at social gatherings. I address it ahead of time by talking about the emotional labor they are implicitly asking for when they externalize their anxiety into me. And I remind them that it's way more annoying to manage an adult's emotion than to deal with "oops someone took too many cookies" or whatever.
If it's more professional or community organizing that is open to the public, that obviously doesn't work. I have less experience there, but laying out expectations and clear roadmaps at the beginning can at least attenuate it. I really like the scripts Indywind gave in an earlier comment.