Ask Dan and Jennifer » emotions

Do You Feel Responsible For Other People’s Feelings? You Have to Read This…

Dr. Margaret Paul — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:29:21 +0000

Many people actually believe that they are responsible for other people’s feelings. The truth is our feelings are caused by our own thoughts and actions.

Consider these examples:

“My wife is so upset that I have to travel more on my new job,” Chuck told me in our phone counseling session. “She feels so alone and lost when I’m gone. When I talk with her she is either crying or angry. I feel so badly and guilty but I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you feel responsibility for her feelings?” I asked him. “Do you feel that you are the cause of her feelings?”

“Yes.”

*****

“I’m just starting to date again after my divorce and I’m having a hard time with it,” Jeanette told me. “I just don’t know how to let a man know that I’m not interested in dating him any more, or in pursuing a sexual relationship with him. It feels like such a sticky situation.”

“Is it sticky because you are worried about his feelings?”

“Yes. The last man I dated hung his head and looked so distressed when I asked him to leave. I know that he was really attracted to me and I wasn’t at all attracted to him. I felt so awful that he was so hurt.”

“Did you feel responsible for his feelings?”

“Yes.”

*****

“My 14 year old daughter is so angry at me for the divorce, even though she knows that we are divorcing because of all my husband’s affairs,” Alissa told me. “I feel so guilty, even though I am not the one who had the affairs.”

“Do you feel responsible for her feelings?”

“Yes, of course!”

*****

The Truth About What Causes Our Feelings

Do you believe that you CAUSE others’ feelings, and are therefore responsible for them?

This is a major false belief. Some of our feelings, such as grief from losing a loved one, or helplessness over others, or loneliness when we want to share love with another and no one is available, are caused by life events. But most of our feelings, such as anger, anxiety, depression, hurt, guilt, or shame, are caused by our own thoughts and actions.

If Chuck’s wife is abandoning herself by not attending to her own feelings, or by judging herself, or by making Chuck responsible for her, then she will feel alone and angry at Chuck. It is not Chuck who is abandoning her. It is she who is abandoning herself.

Since there is nothing Chuck can do about the fact that his wife is abandoning herself, he cannot possibly take responsibility for her feelings. But he CAN take responsibility for his own feelings. As long as Chuck is telling himself the lie that he is responsible for his wife’s feelings, he will feel badly and guilty. His guilt is his inner guidance’s way of letting him know that he is telling himself a lie.

Taking Responsibility For Our Own Feelings

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How To Achieve Emotional And Sexual Intimacy In Your Relationship

Nick Arrizza MD — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:15:05 +0000

To know and experience each other fully is the most effective way to keep the bonds of understanding, love and empathy alive and strong. This is the glue that keeps a relationship intact. Without it, it will eventually fall apart.

So what do I mean by emotional and/or sexual intimacy and how can one nurture such experiences?

Intimacy is not necessarily sex

Well, intimacy is often colloquially thought of as simply "having sex" by some. This is not what I mean here.

By intimacy I am referring to one’s ability to be open to one’s own inner feelings and then be able to share such experiences with one’s partner freely and without fear of any kind.

You see intimacy is about letting yourself be fully known to yourself and to your partner.

Unfortunately this is easier said than done for many individuals because most have been conditioned to suppress, hide, denigrate, or make unconscious much of one’s inner emotional life.

That is largely because the societal norms which continue to be perpetuated see feelings and emotions as dangerous, untrustworthy, illogical, painful, impulsive, etc.

Well, this is a sad state of affairs because emotions and feelings are what make you and me human beings.

What happens when we shut down

So by shutting down this part of one’s life experience one is essentially making one’s self less than a whole human being. That means that while in a relationship you are not fully present as your complete self.

Of course at some level your partner will eventually recognize this and feel like he/she is not fulfilled because he/she is not having a relationship with a whole human being.

It’s at times like this that individuals start feeling dissatisfied with their relationship and hence start looking elsewhere for happiness. No wonder so many relationships end for this reason.

The ability to nurture a bond of intimacy starts only when each individual starts to take personal responsibility for allowing their inner emotional life to emerge. First to themselves and then to their partner.

As I said earlier this self revelation can be a scary one for many because allowing this emotional life to emerge often means allowing unresolved emotional pain to come to the surface of one’s experience. This can make an individual feel inadequate, guilty, sad, depressed, anxious, angry, hurt, tired, etc.

The tendency might be to attempt to numb the emotional pain through drugs, alcohol, sex, work, and other distractions. Again this leads to individuals simply acting out a stale relationship with little depth and or awareness of self or other.

Sooner or later this will declare itself as unsatisfying and each partner will be on the look out for something else.

Nurturing intimacy

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Why Your Relationship Success Depends on Feeling Your Feelings

Wendy Strgar — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:47:27 +0000

Regardless of what kind of relationship you are in, the foundation for its success is based on your ability to experience and articulate your feelings. The authentic self disclosure of the joy, fear, anger and pleasure that your time together brings you is the adhesive material that makes relationships real.

Most of us are handicapped by our feelings. Not only do we not often give ourselves the permission and space to feel them, but often they exist without even being able to name them. Our internal experiences that don’t get expressed with language don’t just go away. They live in us and often surprise us with their sudden re-appearance at times when we least expect them.

The truth about feelings

Thinking about our feelings like weather patterns is a helpful beginning. Like a sudden storm, they inform and distract with their intensity. They are changeable and act on the environment and relationships you are in with great power. They reflect the nature of the moment with great accuracy. Our ability to experience and share our feelings in meaningful ways is one of the profound marks of our humanity.

Yet feelings are for many people a locked box; an experience that overwhelms and is difficult to express. We are taught in a variety of circumstances and for a variety of reasons to suppress our feelings. We learn to silence our feelings so well that the messages in our bodies are not even discernible.

Suppressed feelings are not as invisible as you might think. They take on a life in our dreams and eventually become diseases in our bodies. Our inability to express our feelings cuts us off not only from our own experience but limits the connection we feel with the people we love most.

Why we disconnect from our feelings

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Emotional Competency Builds Healthy Passionate Relationships

Dan and Jennifer — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 14:55:56 +0000

Explore the Logic of Passion

Emotions are the primal bonds of our relationships. They are authentic, immediate, intimate, passionate, and memorable. They provide a window into another’s most genuine thoughts and feelings while they reveal our own true selves.

Emotions are colorful, dramatic, fascinating, and essential dimensions of every person’s experience. These primitive mechanisms send a constant stream of powerful signals that can guide us along the difficult path of survival, or quickly send us off on destructive and painful tangents.

How well do you understand these essential and universal signals?

Many believe that living life to its fullest requires experiencing and enjoying the full range of human emotions. Yet so many of us are uncomfortable with emotions; we don’t recognize what they are, what they are telling us, how they can be helpful, or the choices we have in how to respond to them. Many of us were taught to ignore, suppress, diminish, or deny our own subtle feelings and vivid passions. Do you know how you feel? What emotions can you recognize and describe? We may have mistakenly learned to overreact to various negative emotions while suppressing positive ones. Unfortunately some of us are prisoners of anger, hate, guilt, sadness, fear, anxiety, shame, humiliation, envy, pain, and violence without understanding what has consumed so much of our lives. Others endure a lonely and sterile existence without experiencing genuine feelings or passionate emotions.

The Emotional Competency website helps people explore the logic of passion. The site is dedicated to developing the essential social skills to recognize, interpret, and respond constructively to emotions in yourself and others. It features an in-depth description and discussion of twenty-four distinct emotions.

Emotional competency is an important skill that can provide several benefits throughout many aspects of your life. It can increase your satisfaction with relationships while it increases your gratification and contentment with the many interpersonal events in your life. It can give you greater insight and help you better understand the motives and actions of yourself and others. You can begin to free yourself from anger, hate, resentment, vengeance, and other destructive emotions that cause hurt and pain. You can feel relief and enjoy greater peace-of-mind, autonomy, intimacy, dignity, and wisdom as you engage more deeply with others. Increasing your tolerance and compassion can lead to an authentic optimism and a well-founded confidence, based on your better understanding and interpretation of what-is.

On the Emotional Competency website, you’ll find:

A study guide that provides a well-organized path through the material to aid self-study
A guide to recognizing emotions
A guide to the core human concepts that trigger our emotions
A description of the survival value of each emotion

Why not improve your emotional competency and the strength of your relationships? This is a great resource that’s definitely worth checking out…