You Made Me Feel...

• You made me feel guilty.
• You made me feel sad.
• You made me feel like I don’t know what I am doing.
• You made me mad when you...
• You made me fall in love with you.

      The above are statements we have all either said or heard. The above are statements that confuse me.

      I do not believe that anyone can make me feel anything, unless of course, they physically touch me. I do not believe that anyone can make me feel guilty, unless I already feel it. Same for sadness, ineptness, anger, love, etc.

      Most people find it easier to blame others for the way they feel. Take a moment and really think about the fact that someone made you mad. Did they? Is someone else truly responsible for making you mad, or are you mad because that is the emotion you chose to have as a result of someone’s words or actions? I believe we are conditioned to lay blame and avoid responsibility for how we feel. At some point, someone taught us to respond to certain situations with certain emotions and now our responses are habit; conditioning, if you will based on our experiences; based on what we were taught or what we observed.

      We choose our emotions, whether we realize it or not. We are a world of free speech. While not all people can read and write, we can all speak some kind of language.  I believe the words we choose are to evoke some kind of reaction; a reaction we would have if we heard those words. We do not know how someone will react to our words; we do know how we will react to them, and I believe that we choose words that will evoke the same emotion we will have to hearing them. If someone tells me great job, I know that I felt great hearing those words. When I use those words, I think that the recipient will feel the same way I felt. What I do not know, and what I am not in control of is how the recipient will actually feel. Perhaps the recipient has a negative association to the phrase ‘great job’; and when I say it, they respond with an emotion I did not expect. The next thing I hear is how I made that person feel bad. My response is always I cannot make anyone feel anything unless I physically touch them.

      How do we navigate this communication jungle? I believe the more responsibility we take for our own emotions, the easier communication will be. I am not responsible for how you feel. You are responsible for how you feel. I can only be a contributing factor to your emotions if you let me. If I choose words that are intended to make you angry, and you choose to not be angry, then my attempt fails, and you do  not feel angry. If you choose to be angry, that is your choice, and my attempt succeeds. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

      To change our focus from ‘you made me’ to ‘I feel’ takes re-training and self-awareness. I believe the general population walks around completely unaware of their effect on others. Having said that, the general population can only have an effect on me if I let them. A simple example that I feel you will understand is driving. Someone cuts you off, and you get angry. You beep your horn, raise your middle finger, yell obscenities, even racist remarks, and whatever mood you were in prior to the incident is gone. That driver made you feel angry.

      Not really.

      You let that driver make you angry.

      For the record, I used to react that way to most dumbass driver moves. Now when a driver cuts me off, I figure they are in more of a hurry than I am, and hey; have at ‘er! I am in control of how I feel when another driver cuts me off. This perfect stranger who means nothing to me on the grand scheme of life is not going to become a major player in my life at that moment. If that driver caused me to have an accident and die, the last emotion I felt was anger, and the last person I thought about was an insignificant driver. No thank you.

      Other reactions we have are to fear. Fear will also ‘make us feel’ a certain way. Truthfully, I feel that most anger is actually fear manifesting itself as anger. Fear of rejection, fear of getting fired, fear of being alone, etc.. The new age explanation of fear is false evidence appearing real. Truer words were never written. I believe we are responsible for our fears as well, which dovetails right into our emotions.

      Think about a time when you received criticism at work. The emotion you chose was anger. The basis for the anger; fear. Fear that you will not be respected, fear that you will be fired; even shame if you get fired. Wow! So many emotions.

      How can you let that go and turn it around? Identify and understand your triggers. What makes you react a certain way to a certain situation? Chances are it is either conditioning (you were taught this response), or it is fear based. You are told you did not do a good job, you respond with anger and a ‘you made me feel’ statement. The trigger was being told you did a bad job, the response is blaming the messenger or others, then the fear sets in (I’m going to be fired, I’m going to lose my house, etc.) and the emotions escalate and the blame goes elsewhere.

      If you receive criticism, first, consider the source. Is the criticizer a major player in your life? Do they matter? If no, let it go. If yes, then ask for clarification. Rather than say ‘you made me feel’, use ‘I feel that your comment was <insert adjective>. Please help me understand why you said what you said’. The first statement ‘you made me feel’ not only gives the instigator the power over you, it also puts them on the defensive because you are telling them they did something to you. The second statement puts the control in your hands, and often makes the instigator think about what they said. Most people do not know how to respond to being challenged for what they said. Owning your emotions and asking for clarification usually results in clearing the air and both parties walking away satisfied. Satisfied because the instigator is aware that the recipient is displeased (or pleased); and the recipient has clarification and chose the appropriate emotional response for them. Think about it, if you do not understand why something was said, then there is a good chance you will continue repeating the mistake. While criticism rarely feels good, it is an opportunity to learn and grow. The choice is yours. When you become conscious of your emotions and your triggers, you can change them.

      When I went through the exercise of trying to understand why I was so angry all of the time, I was immediately taken back to my childhood. I realized I conditioned myself to react a certain way to certain situations. (For the record, I believe we all do this.) When really delving into myself, I started to discover my triggers. Once I discovered my triggers, I tested changing my response to them. Believe me, this was no quick solution! It took me a few years to change my responses to my triggers, and I still evaluate my triggers and work at changing my responses today. What happened to me, over time, is that I no longer had triggers. While I may have developed a few new ones, I am self-aware enough now to know that these will not serve me well, and I work to remove them as soon as I become aware of them.

In summary, remember to:

• Take responsibility for your own emotions.
• Become self-aware and learn your triggers then change your emotional response to them; eventually your triggers will disappear.
• Where necessary, ask for clarification and clear the air.
• Own your emotions. They are yours. You are in full control of them. No one can make you feel anything that you do not already feel or want to feel.
• Test yourself, and repeat until both the trigger and ‘you made me’ response disappear.

The Past Passed

I learned that in order to move forward, you have to revisit your past. It isn’t about just evaluating the last decade; that would be too easy. It is evaluating childhood, evaluating the situations that formed you, learning about how you started reacting to certain situations. It is only when you understand the pattern, can you break it.

      How many times have you thought “Oh no. Not this again.”. The word again implies you previously experienced this and it’s back. When I was younger, I would end the thought right there “Oh no. Not this again.”; however, now that I am little bit older and much more self-aware, I think “I guess I didn’t learn the lesson the first time.”. Then I go inwards and think about the circumstances of my life last time this happened, and compare it against my current situation. Many days of thinking later, I can usually find the pattern; not always; most of the time.

      I find that certain reactions I have (and I am using the word reaction in its truest form, which to me means, that I am not taking any time to think about what I am doing, I am just reacting) fall into a pattern, and whenever this happens, I react that way. It’s a vicious cycle, to be honest.

      A few years ago I sought out therapy because I was in one my perpetual (and obviously inevitable) little patterns and I was frustrated and wanted to stop the pattern (or as I lovingly refer to it, stop the insanity). I went and tried something called EMDR Therapy. EMDR, which is an abbreviation for Eye Movement Desensitization Therapy, and a therapy often used to treat those with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My therapist was fantastic, and was able to get to the crux of my craziness in four, short sessions. While I won’t bore you with what childhood trauma I was choosing to play out in my adult life, I will say that I became acutely aware of my patterns, and the therapy provided me with the tools to eliminate them. I made a whole bunch of changes – quit my job, broke up with my boyfriend, and spent one year soul searching and learning about who I am as an adult.

      In order to do all of that, unfortunately I had to unlock that door to my past. I cannot say that it was painful, it just was. It was more like I was an actor in someone else’s drama and I was viewing the situation from afar and yelling at myself in the past “you are not responsible!”.  One little phrase you are not responsible. What an impactful statement that was for me; and quite an oxymoron to how I conduct my life as an adult, because I feel I am totally responsible for all that I do or say today.

      Understanding my past, and forgiving my deep conscious self of any and all guilt I associated with my past, allowed me to change the way in which I manage my life in the present. Over time, I have come to realize that truly understanding where I came from provided me with a wealth of information about who I am today. How I react to certain situations, to people, to words. This process provided the greatest epiphanies of my life to date. So rewarding and so helpful in fact, that it no longer takes me days, weeks, months or years to first, figure out I am repeating a pattern, and second to figure out how to deal with the circumstances! I am acutely aware of me, how I feel, the effect I have on others, and if any of that is negative, I adjust first my thoughts, then my actions.

      Digging into your past can be a painful, even traumatic experience, specially if your characteristics are similar to mine, which are you are strong, independent, and learned to rely on yourself at a young age. These characteristics make it very difficult to even think of reaching out to anyone, let alone a professional. What I can offer is…do it! If you are repeating negative patterns, whether they are associated to relationships, work, your attitude, whatever; if you are repeating a negative pattern and you don’t like it, you can change it. While some of mine were deep seeded, others were on the surface and all attributed to the issues I experienced over and over and over again.

      I learned that self-awareness is my strongest tool in my tool kit of life. Knowing my triggers, knowing how to manage my responses, and eliminating my reactions, created a more consistent approach to my life and aligned who I felt I was on the inside with who I am on the outside. I was self-aware enough to know these patterns existed, and with a little help, I was able to break the cycle and understand how the cycle came into existence in the first place.

      I do not believe you can move forward if you repeat the past. Learn about the nuances of your past because they make up who you are in the present and will form the person you want to be in the future.