Learning to take responsibility for our own feelings can be hard work. Our culture certainly doesn’t help given its propensity for encouraging a “victim” mentality. People seem to “take offense” readily at just about anything. And too many encourage that by acquiescing to that weak stance rather than challenge it. I remember a pastoral counseling session with a young lady who would respond to my observational and interpretive comments by saying, “You hurt my feelings when you say that.” When she said it the third time I responded, “I’m not responsible for your feelings.” She stopped using that phrase (one she’d learned to use in her family) and started listening differently after that.
As Edwin Friedman pointed out often, challenge, rather than empathy, is a better stance for promoting responsibility and maturity.
People who are working toward taking responsibility for their own emotional functioning tend to:
- pay attention to their feelings
- remind themselves that their feelings are their own, and not someone else’s
- accept that no one can “make” them feel something
- accept that no one is responsible for their feeling but themselves
- remind themselves that some emotional (feeling) responses are learned (and therefore, can be changed)
- remind themselves that some feelings are helpful to a certain extend, but not beyond (guilt, for example).
Like anything involving growth toward maturity, taking responsibility for our own feelings is hard work. And for many, it may be lifelong work. But when the goal is maturity and the capacity to function in more self-differentiated ways, the work is worth it.
