Taking responsibility for your own feelings

Do you take responsibility for your own feelings? Our thoughts create our feelings, therefore it is only us who can end up angry, sad, happy, loving, kind or unkind. It was such a profound thing for me to realise a little while back now that it is not, 'He/she made me angry / made me suffer / ruined my life / upset me...' etc... but rather, 'I made ME angry / suffer / am ruining MY life by doing this.' Just like drinking the poison expecting the enemy to die. Not a nice place to be in that state, and yet the more you're in it, the more you stay stuck in it without knowing a way to pull yourself out. I think too if you are suffering, you become part of it by staying there, in that bad relationship, toxic friendship, whatever.

Taking responsibility for my own feelings has been life changing, because I no longer blame, but have an opportunity to look inside and see why these feelings/emotions are being created, and by what thoughts. If I look deeply into it, I can realise some very interesting things about the way my thinking works and how I wired it up... and have the opportunity to change it. Such a peaceful place to be, with so much growth.

Kelly I completely agree with what you have written. Our heads really do create our worlds and thoughts, feelings and therefore a lot of the time, behaviours are very closely intertwined. During childhood and adolescence we develop patterns of responding to similar events in the same ways, over and over again. It becomes very ingrained and automatic. It is always good to stop and think about where our feelings come from, what are we thinking? What are the beliefs underlying our thoughts? Often it gets down to some pretty strongly held beliefs about ourself, others or the world and those beliefs usually involve lots of black and white thinking -"shoulds" and "always" and "nevers". I think what you're talking about in terms of self reflection can be so liberating. To realise that each of us can take control of ourselves, we are not necessarily victims of circumstances. It's what we think about our circumstances and then what we do about it that's important.

I guess though, taken to the extreme what you're talking about can be interpreted to mean that we never have to feel a negative emotion again. That if we just change our attitudes and thoughts, then we won't ever feel angry, hurt, sad, panicked, victimised etc etc but I don't think that's possible or even desireable. There is nothing wrong with negative emotions. They are great signals that there could be a problem. Too much of a positive emotion can be just as much an issue too. I believe it's what we do with our emotions, ALL of them, that matters. I think too it's ok to hold certain expectations of ourselves or of others and to be disappointed or upset or angry when we/they fall short. I think the trick is to realise that the emotion is coming from the expectation that wasn't met, that it is still my/our responsibility of how to respond. And yes the option is there to change the expectation. Sometimes that involves a lot of hard work though and I think sometimes it can be easier to simply work through the negative emotion to handle it appropriately and then move on. If the same issue keeps coming up then perhaps more work is needed on the underlying belief/expectation.

I swing between both. Sometimes I am incredibly self aware, other times I blame others - but do eventually come around.

I just remind myself that people act a lot more unconsciously than we perceive them to sometimes, and yeah, we have to take responsibility for the way that we feel when things happen.