I'm Responsible For My Feelings

That's Empowering!

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

I sat in my favorite chair this morning, looking at the article I wrote about choosing hope over feeling sorry for myself. I was very close to going down that rabbit hole again. The sky was cloudy and gray. My knees hurt, the cat threw up, I couldn’t get the TV to work, and I glanced at the news.

But then I thought about the term emotional responsibility - taking care of my feelings instead of attributing them to other things. It involves recognizing, understanding, regulating, and responding consciously to them rather than acting impulsively or reacting.

Experts say that people manage emotions by practicing mindfulness, labeling and accepting them, challenging negative thoughts, and using stress management techniques, such as deep breathing or exercise.

They also say that patterns of self-blame, conflict avoidance, and boundary issues can affect emotional control in stressful situations. I’d relied on those coping mechanisms for years.

Self-Blame

Self-blame involves taking on misplaced blame for circumstances beyond one’s control.

Emotional responsibility means balancing accountability for my actions and understanding that I can’t control every aspect of a situation. It requires me to acknowledge my role in events without blaming myself.

Conflict Avoidance

Most people dislike conflict and avoid it if possible, favoring a less confrontational approach. This is a protective mechanism that helps navigate challenging environments and relationships.

Emotional responsibility involves balancing conflicts, acknowledging and expressing emotions without blaming, recognizing when conflict is necessary, taking constructive steps to address it, and processing the underlying emotions that arise.

Understanding Boundaries

Personal boundaries protect people’s emotional, physical, and mental well-being by establishing how close they want others to be to them. Healthy boundaries allow for intimacy and connection while respecting one’s needs and limits.

Emotional responsibility requires self-awareness and accountability. Establishing and maintaining boundaries ensures effective emotional management.

I’ve never been good at managing my emotions, particularly the past eight years as I cared for my husband, who struggled with dementia, coped with the restrictions of the pandemic, and adjusted to widowhood.

Over the last six months, I’ve experimented with strategies like mindfulness, befriending my emotions, and learning stress management techniques, and I've made positive changes. Still, here I was again, on the edge of feeling sorry for myself.

It occurs to me that another approach might be to examine the underlying patterns that trigger my emotions. I’m very skilled at self-blame, conflict avoidance, and ignoring personal boundaries. Maybe it’s time for a change.

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Janice Walton is a psychologist, a widow, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and a writer. Her book Aging Well: 30 Lessons for Making the Most of Your Later Years is available on Amazon, and she has written articles for Substack