OK, I admit it, the title is a trick question. But don’t be surprised if you got onto that track of thinking that “something makes you feel a certain way.” These days, it is the thing to do, promoted by therapists, counselors, moms and dads, teachers, popular music, etc., etc.

And, crazy as it might seem at first blush, that line of thinking is just plain silly. (I actually had some much less nice words to describe this concept, but good sense got the better of me.)

We unfortunately live in times of little personal responsibility. For quite a few years now, we’ve been encouraged to blame others for our actions and now for our feelings. We blame our misbehavior on our early years, our lack of nurturing as a babe in swaddling, our absent parent. Heaven forbid that we might have something to do with our actions today – no, it is far easier to blame it all on something or someone in the past.

A quick Google search turned up thousands and thousands of references to songs which have the words “you make me feel”. Actually, I fudged – there were more than 3 million hits on that phrase! Listening to modern music is like being brainwashed – endless references to how someone made someone else feel good, bad, upset, ecstatic, and more.

The expression “that made me feel…” has crept into our language so much that we take it for granted. And, like a mind-virus, it has taken over some of our critical thinking functions. Instead of understanding that our feelings arise inside us, we are constantly telling ourselves that somehow someone or something outside us is causing us to feel a certain way. Did you just hear that “boggle” sound? That was my mind…

Some people might think this is just nitpicking over language. However, there are lots of studies that show that we are influenced by the language we hear and the language that we use.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany

The current propaganda is that our feelings are generated and controlled by others. This means that we are not responsible for them, and so when we act inappropriately as a result of our feelings, we can always blame it on someone else: “They made me so mad I punched the wall.”

Say this sort of thing to yourself often enough, and you’ll start to believe it. Instead of owning your feelings, you’ll spend your time blaming others for how you feel (and act), and end up feeling … powerless and stressed. How else could one feel when someone else can make you feel a certain way at their whim?

Take back your power

The funny thing is that all you need to do is take ownership for your feelings and you get all that power back. Rather than saying that someone else made you feel a certain way, you state the more accurate truth: they said/did X and as a response, you felt Y.

Let’s try this on:

• Joe said that I was lazy and I felt mad.
• Jill made a face at me and I felt sad.
• Billy paid little attention to me and I felt ignored and hurt
• Mary said I was silly and I felt ashamed

and so on.

The key thing here is that by stating the actual relationship between the exterior event (actions or words spoken to us) and our inner world response, we start to see how we are not subject to an outside power, although we can be influenced by exogenous (outside of us) elements. Notice that a cause -> effect relationship is not being used here. Instead, we state that something happened and then how we felt. This differentiation is also particularly important, as our response/reaction to an external event can vary tremendously.  One day we can be very upset by something and the next we can shrug it off, depending upon our mood, our level of distraction, our hormonal levels, etc.

The other thing that can really affect our response to a situation is how much emotional pain we still carry from prior similar situations. If we carry little pain, either from not having had much history of this sort of situation or by having released that pain using a technique such as AER, then our response is likely to be moderate. If we have lots of accumulated pain, we are more likely to get really upset and or hurt.

Talking and thinking about how we respond to situations reinforces our sense of ownership of our responses. No longer are we blaming others for how we feel – we are owning those feelings and noticing them arise in us. And, as a result, we can also own our actions. We get back our power in relation to our feelings, and we can actually have less stress, since we are not in a position of having handed over our power to others.

“Man’s unique opportunity lies in the way he bears his burden.   Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”
Viktor E. Frankl

So, the next time someone tells you that you made them feel a certain way, ask them where exactly on them is this magic button to make that feeling appear – it may be on their elbow… Tell them you want to make a note of it, so you can use it in the future. 🙂

Yes, you’ll probably get a puzzled look in response, and maybe you’ll have to thank them for giving you so much power over them, so they start to see what is really happening.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved.