Why Can't I Relax Until Everyone Else Is Okay?

You finally have a quiet moment. No one needs anything from you. By every external measure, things are fine. And yet your body won't settle. You're scanning - a tone of voice, a text that felt flat, the look on someone's face when you walked in. You can't fully exhale until you've confirmed that everyone around you is okay. This isn't generic anxiety. It's a nervous system that learned, somewhere along the way, that other people's emotional states were yours to monitor, manage, and fix.