Are you taking full responsibility for your feelings?

As a child, I knew when I had upset my mum or dad.

In the case of my father, I would get beaten, cursed at in some of the most obscene language which, fortunately for me, I did not understand at the time, and/or made to kneel with my arms outstretched for what seemed like an eternity.

With my mother, it was a little more subtle but perhaps more searing.  There would be no eye contact, she would not speak to me, sometimes for days, and/or would wear a scowl in my presence.  In some ways, it felt as if I did not exist or rather that my existence was an unfortunate one which caused her considerable pain.

As far as my father was concerned, there was nothing I could do but cower in terror from his physical and verbal violence and stay out of his way as best as I could, not an easy thing to do in a large household with few rooms.

With my mother, however, I would make a sincere attempt to be contrite by doubling my effort in helping her with household chores and trying ever so hard to get her to engage in conversation with me.  None of these seemed to work.  Time was the only thing that did.

It would be several days and sometimes even weeks for her anger to subside and for her to allow me back into her circle of love.  This would bring such overwhelming relief that I would quickly forget what it was that had excluded me from that circle in the first place.  It wouldn’t be long before this cycle would repeat itself 🙂

I learned very early in life that physical violence was a terrible thing because it puts your dominant sense of self, which is your physical self, under immediate threat.  Slaps on the face from a very strong hand shock and sting.  Getting a badminton racquet broken on your 4-year old back hurts and terrifies you deeply. And even as a little child, you are quite capable of feeling shame even when there is no valid reason to.

I also learned very early in life that I was the cause of other people’s feelings and behaviors.

While my father swore at me for causing him grief (and he was almost permanently in grief exacting much worse violence and blame on my mother than he ever did on me for it), I never really bought it.  Instinctively, I knew this was not right

Somehow, my child wisdom would not accept that any of my behavior or actions could have warranted such violence.  I mean playing with my neighbors, laughing, or visiting with my cousins who lived next door surely did not warrant such violence.  Of that, I needed no persuasion.

On the other hand, my mother, to whom I was so tightly bonded, was teaching me a whole different lesson. After all, I would mostly experience her kindness and care, her humor (despite the almost daily abuse from my father), her sweetness and her affection, so that when it was completely withdrawn from me, often without warning, for anywhere from a few hours to several days, it was deeply, deeply painful.

I suppose you could say I should have known it was coming.  As an eight to twelve year old, you sensed when you were reaching the limit of your mother’s patience.  Yet, the priorities of a young child are clearly and necessarily different to those of its parents.  But not all parents can see that, and even if they do, not all know how to accommodate it.

A child’s priorities are set in exploration, in discovery, in experimentation, in meaning making.  Strangely enough, these are also the priorities of an adult who is fully alive!  But for my poor mother, tethered as she was to the unyielding weight of nine dependent children, a violent husband who kept her confined to house and church and created for her an endless stream of debt, you can understand why my priorities were not hers.

So as a child, there were times when I knew that I was surely to blame for her unhappiness, for the scowl on her face and for her withdrawal of affection.  This belief was especially compelling because these reactions from her would only ever follow some misbehavior on my part.

She would have asked me to do something like tidy up a room or sweep the floor or fold the washing and she might have asked this several times and I would not have done it.  Like I said, a child has different priorities and in my case, some things as unnatural as daily violence and the forbidden joys of play and companionship with siblings and cousins compelled my attention.

The fact that my mother never asked these chores of my brother, four years older to me, did not escape me.  But, this was something else that I would learn – that as a female, certain things would be expected of me that would never be expected of my brothers.  I felt the injustice of this treatment but was unable to articulate it.

In the meantime, her withdrawal of affection would torment me, not just by its absence but by the sickening guilt that would instantly take its place.  The less affection I felt, the more guilt I felt.  The more guilt I felt, the less affection I felt.  I was responsible for the pain that I had brought on myself through my mother’s withdrawal of affection.  And I was responsible for my mother’s pain.

Over the years, others, including siblings, teachers and friends, would similarly reinforce this belief that I was responsible for their anger, their disappointment, their disgust, their distrust, their sense of betrayal, their sadness, their pain, their failures.

I am sure you can relate to at least some of this.  No doubt the details may be different but the general theme of learning that you are responsible for other people’s feelings is a familiar one as is the guilt and unworthiness that goes with it.

By the time I reached my teens, both mum and I had matured a bit so that our relationship evolved into one infused with the sweet and lingering fragrance of deep love, deep understanding, deep empathy, deep joy and much laughter.  Yes, despite the ongoing brutality from my father, we naturally and effortlessly were drawn into a shared space in which life was beautiful if only for a few minutes or a few hours.

In that garden of love, she awakened in me the ability to take delight in and laugh uncontrollably about everyday things like the chook that would lay the tiniest eggs (we had a motley but tiny collection of poultry in our backyard), the day old and often soured rice and curry that she would sometimes feed me by hand and that we would both devour while my father was out, the embarrassing situations I would find myself in at school and the various personalities at church that made my obligatory attendance at services a little less dreary.  Needless to say, by this time, we had *accidentally* discovered that neither of us was responsible for the other’s pain nor for the fulfilment of our needs.

But this discovery seemed to remain relevant only to the relationship I had with mum.  It didn’t translate into my other relationships and certainly not to the relationship with the man I married.  Wonderful as he was (and still is), I felt that he was unable to meet the needs that I had and I was wrought with guilt for not fulfilling his although he never complained.  It led to our eventual divorce.

Today, I can look at the person that I was before and during our marriage and see quite clearly how I had entered marriage with one set of needs, how these needs changed over time and how I believed that my husband was responsible for meeting my needs.

I don’t regret getting out of my marriage because it certainly was a critical step in nudging me towards the self-awareness that I thought I had but clearly lacked!  And while I have since been infinitely happier than I’ve ever been in my life, I can look back today and see how, had I had a different set of beliefs, I may not have felt so fatalistic about my marriage :).

So it is with the wisdom of hindsight and the awareness and awakening that I’ve experienced over all the years since that I can confidently and with the utmost conviction say to you that you are not responsible for another person’s feelings and their actions or decisions no more than they are for yours.

I came to this realization some years ago when I began the consistent and daily practice of observing my mind.  Such kind of mind-observation (some may like to call it meditation) is hugely revelatory.  What I observed was that in any situation, we have the choice of response or as Richard Bach calls it, ‘the power of our consent’.

In other words,

Given that most of us would have learned from a very early age (like I did) the falsehood that we are responsible for someone else’s thoughts, feelings, words, actions, decisions, and that others are responsible for ours, it is not surprising that we continue to act out of unconscious habit in either defending ourselves, attacking another or blaming another.

But can you see how unenlightened and disempowering this is?  Can you see, on the other hand, how enlightened and empowering it is to take responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, words, actions, decisions?

In our relationships, we invest an inordinate amount of energy either attacking our partner or child for what they’ve done or not done or defending ourselves for what we’ve done or not done and often both.

We are conditioned into playing mind games. 

I know what you’re thinking.

I know why you did this.

Why would you have done such a thing to me?

You must have known this would hurt me!

See if you can explain that to your children!

You don’t care how I feel.

You really don’t care what I think so long as I agree with you.

You don’t deserve to be forgiven 

You’re pathetic!  You’re despicable!

Why did you do it?  I have a right to know! 

I did not want to upset you.

You made me do it!  You drove me to it!

You never really listened.  You never really cared.  You never helped out.  How else do you expect me to feel?  How else did you expect me to think?

You make me sick!

You drive me insane!

And even if we are too *civil* to mouth these words out loud, we certainly let them roll around endlessly in the dramas that we enact and re-enact in our mind.

As adults, as mature human beings, we must be prepared to take responsibility for our stuff – our thoughts, our feelings, our words, our actions, our decisions.

It is time to see that even when someone has deliberately set out to hurt you, how you think about it and how you respond to them is entirely within your power.  In other words, whether you feel hurt or not or persist in feeling hurt is a matter of your consent.

It is time to see that, as Madiba Mandela so sharply declared,

If anyone knows about resentment, about hurt, about injustice, I’m sure you’ll agree that Madiba does.

To get us out of these mind games, I often advice my clients to ‘mind your own business’.

Why and what do I mean?

Simply this:

Too often, we’re preoccupied with what our partner or child is thinking and we attempt to design our response accordingly.

The effect of this is that we hang off the noose of the other person’s thoughts, feelings, actions and decisions.  It is not an empowering position to be in and it is certainly not a loving one because you’re almost always motivated by fear and the need to protect your own interests.

Consider the alternative which I advocate: 

You acknowledge that although this is your Intention, you may not be certain about the action, if any, that you need to take.  Consequently, you ask to be guided by the intention of Love and you make a commitment to allow yourself to be guided by this intention.

When you do this, you will find yourself infused with a peace and a sense of freedom that you have been striving to feel but never could until now.  Now, you feel it effortlessly by simply standing in the truth of who you are which is Love and yielding to its all mighty power!

Now, I know that even reading what I’ve just written may bring on such anger and tension inside you as well as trigger those dreaded but familiar knots in your stomach.

You need to see that this is your conditioned, egoic mind that is reacting.  After all, it has built itself upon a mountain of falsehoods which is under threat of instant destruction as soon as you change your thinking, your beliefs.

Like I once so strongly and deeply felt and believed, you too may be thinking and feeling this:

That person has caused me so much hurt, s/he doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.

If I let go of this anger toward him/her, s/he will continue to do what they’ve been doing.

But you do know, don’t you, that as long as we do this, we continue to drink that poison which is really hurting us.

You know, with very few exceptions, most people do *hurtful* things not because of something that you have done or not done but because of a neediness within them, often relating to a futile attempt to regain power and self-worth.

Likewise, most people do *hurtful* things not because they intend to hurt you.  Often, they do it because they are not in a good place themselves and because they believe it will help them regain a perceived loss of power.  This need to regain power is related to insecurities about self-worth and self-image and a lack of purpose,  passion or meaning, all of which are the result of not being aligned with Love.

But all of these insecurities and perceived lack are false perceptions about themselves because with true perception,, they will see that they (like you) lack nothing, that they are whole and complete, that they are perfectly created in Love.  In the meantime, what they think, feel and do is their business, not yours.  Your business is to maintain a true perception of yourself.

It is also true that sometimes, we take certain actions and make certain decisions that we deeply, sincerely and lovingly see as the right ones for us to take.  If others feel hurt by such actions or decisions, it really is their business not yours.

Meanwhile, it is useful also for you to recognize that your need for another to measure up (or down) to your standards, to fulfill your demands and expectations, to behave in a manner that you deem to be proper and right is nothing but an expression of your neediness fed by an equally false perception of yourself!

The insane thing that we all try to do is to get someone else to somehow rectify that false perception that we hold of ourselves.  We have this tacit belief that if our partner or child or parent behaves in a way that is always pleasing to us, it affirms and confirms that we are good, we are deserving, we are lovable, we are enough.  That is just about the most evil lie that we can live by and expect others to live by!

What is worse, you will be punishing yourself and others your entire life in the pursuit of something that no one can do for you but you yourself.

Why did I enter into a relationship?  What did I want?  What did I want from it that I believed I couldn’t give myself or find within myself?  Is it empowering for me to keep expecting or needing these from another person?  Is it freeing for either myself or for them?  Is this what I think *Love* is?

I can assure you of 3 things:

1. Whether or not you are ready to accept the truth now, the truth is inevitable and undeniable.
2. When you do accept the truth that you and only you are responsible for your thoughts, feelings, words and actions and are ready to take FULL responsibility for them, it will be the most liberating and life-giving thing you will ever experience 🙂
3. When you do take full responsibility for your feelings, your relationships will improve and often in ways you never thought possible!

With my love

Lucy

Postscript: In case you’re wondering, I have made peace with my father.  I stopped drinking that poison of resentment and blame a long time ago 🙂

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