Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Emotional Responsibility

I am working on managing my Anxiety and Anger.  The story of my life.  I have a ton both of those things but I have made a lot of progress.  I have learned how to control myself and take responsibility for my own emotions. Am I always able to do it perfectly? No.  But seeing progress gives me hope to keep trying.

One thing that I did not see before in myself was the fact that I find myself responsible for others emotions.  This is a huge anger trigger.  Anger comes from either not making a choice or feeling like you can still do something to fix something.  I get a lot of anger from feeling like I can fix or change other peoples emotions.  It is not possible, so the anger grows, when I do not get rid of the responsibility, the anger continues.

We have a rule in our house that you can eat fruits are vegetables anytime you want.  If they end up ruining their dinner because they ate too many carrots then for goodness sakes, who cares!  So, one of my daughters asked me if they could eat some grapes.  My answer was, “You know the rule, but just remember that dinner is coming up.”  Well, she continued on making a big fuss about it and went on and on about how I would not let her eat any grapes and her sister was eating grapes and it was not fair that she could not eat any grapes and yadda yadda.  Anyway, instead of letting her decide that she did not want to eat any grapes and just let her own her own decision, I bit.  Oh man I was angry.  The realization is that I became emotionally responsible for her instead of empathizing with her.  I took the blame and responsibility even though it was not mine and therefore I became angry.  I have also realized that I do this in many other instances and I allow others to cause me guilt and I make choices based on feeling responsible for someone else somehow.  I have realized people who tend to do this to me.  I need to recognize this and remember where the responsibility lies and not allow them to make me feel this way.  I also try to lesson my time with them.

Lessons in Progress:

1.) I am not responsible for others emotions.

2.)  Show empathy and kindness but do not feel responsible.

3.)  It is freeing to be able to make choices that I need to make and not make choices based on the emotions of others.

4.)  I am a kind person with high morals and I would not make a choice to purposely hurt someone so there is no need to feel responsible when someones feelings get hurt.  I can apologize and admit where they may have thought that but I will know my heart and I can be okay with what I have done.

Babies snack time! No grapes for her!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

:] Love your insight Lindsay! I always love to read your blog posts! Keep them coming!