Emotional responsibility - the concept that improved my relationships the most
What is one word you would use to describe a relationship? Complicated, gratifying, challenging, unique, amazing, tricky, loving, difficult, and incredible – these are some of the answers I received from my friends, when I asked them the same question. No matter what word you used to describe them, most likely relationships rank highly on your value scale. I could also bet that you’ve experienced some level of emotional distress due to relationship problems at some point in life. I think we all have.
Relationships and interaction with other people are at the very core of the human experience. We live on this planet with about seven and a half billion other people. Other people probably teach us more about ourselves than anything else. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to write my first blog about relationships. As an Intuitive Transformation Mentor, I constantly see how relationship problems cause people emotional distress, yet at the same time they are a fruitful opportunity for self-realization and personal growth.
When I refer to relationships in this blog, I don’t mean only intimate relationships. I refer to all kinds of frequent human to human interactions such as friendships, kinships, and work relationships, as well as intimate relationships.
There’s a lot that I’ve learned about myself and relationships during my conscious spiritual path. I say a conscious spiritual journey because our whole life is a one long spiritual path, we just aren’t always aware of it. In this case, I’m referring specifically to the period of my life after I consciously started to explore my inner world and face my own issues.
If I had to choose one, for me the most profound concept that permanently transformed all my relationships for the better, is what I call ‘emotional responsibility’. I’m not sure if ‘emotional responsibility’ is a proper English term (I’m a native Finn), but it’s the best term I can think of to describe the concept. What I mean by emotional responsibility is that everyone is responsible for their own feelings, and not responsible for someone else’s feelings. In other words, my feelings aren’t other people’s fault, nor are their feelings my fault.
I know this can be a lot to take in, if you’ve never been introduced to this concept before. It also took me some time to digest and my ego didn’t agree with it. I was actually introduced to emotional responsibility by an energy therapist (or spiritual guide) who I used to have a regular session with in Finland years ago. The idea of always being responsible for my own feelings simply didn’t make sense to me in the beginning. My ego kept screaming “How can my feelings not be X person’s fault, when the only reason why I’m feeling this way is because of what person X said or did to me”.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a former Portfolio Manager and Business Executive. Those positions require analytical thinking. In this case analytical thinking also helped me to understand how emotional responsibility works and what it is really all about. I started to dig deeper into the concept of emotional responsibility and asked myself questions like “If my feelings aren’t other people’s fault, why am I feeling this way?”, “Where do my emotions and feelings come from?“, “Do I feel the same way every time someone says the same thing to me?”, and “Could there be something in me, that is triggered by what someone says or does, and that’s why I feel the way I feel after the situation?”.
Asking myself all those questions helped me to realize that whenever I felt hurt, angry, offended, undervalued or something similar due to what someone had said or done, the person had actually poked an inner wound that was still bleeding. And in most cases their intention was never to hurt me. It was really all about me, not about the other person and what she/he said or did. If I was holding onto an old trauma or story, and I was unable to love and value myself, other people’s words and actions could easily make me feel undervalued and unappreciated.
In the beginning it wasn’t always easy. Especially when my ego took a big hit. I would momentarily fall back to the old habit before I remembered to remind myself of what I’d just learned. However, step by step it became my normal state.
When my focus in any human interaction switched from feeling like a victim, or blaming other people for my feelings, to looking into the mirror and asking myself, “why do I feel this way” and “why did person X’s words or action trigger this emotion in me” my relationships became easier and happier, both in my private life as well as at work. And I’m not indicating here that my relationships were somehow bad or super difficult before this, but I noticed a significant improvement in my human interactions after I started taking FULL responsibility for my own feelings.
I also learned a lot about myself and was able to let go of many old stories and wounds. Further, I started to understand better where other people’s reactions stemmed from. Instead of judgement, I started feeling compassion. Everyone has their own story and they react based on that. To this day I still haven’t met a person who is happy and loves herself/himself but treats other people harshly. Behind mean behavior is always a person who has their own issues.
Taking full responsibility for my feelings in every situation also made me feel freer. I can sound counterintuitive, yet full responsibility makes you free. You aren’t a victim anymore.
You might notice that my focus so far, has been on how I comprehended the full responsibility of my feelings. That’s because I personally struggled with it more. However, the other side of the equation - other people’s feelings aren’t my fault - is equally as important and valuable. To me it was just somehow a bit easier to digest somehow. Of course, I felt guilty if I saw someone’s feeling’s hurt. But, for me staying true to myself mostly overcame the need to take care of other people’s feelings (yet I’ve also experienced a relationship in my life in which I completely lost myself and constantly tried to accommodate the other person’s feelings and moods). Also, someone could call it quite an ego trip to even think that I could control and be responsible for someone else’s feelings.
There’re a lot of people who find this side of the equation more difficult to digest. Many of my mentorship clients struggled with the concept of ‘other people’s feelings aren’t my fault’ before we started working together. They’d be used to tiptoeing around other people, trying to make sure no one got upset, to the point that it become normal to them. The ongoing denial of their own needs and the accommodation of other people’s moods made them forget who they are and what they want. When they comprehended the concept of emotional responsibility, they received permission to start listening to their own needs and feelings, instead of focusing on others’ feelings. This has generated remarkable results in their life such as a promotion to top management team, more high-paying clients, the leaving of unhealthy relationship(s)/friendship(s), the finding of a life partner/new authentic friends, and significantly happier and healthier marriages/intimate relationships.
I’m also aware that there are people who completely disagree with me on the concept of emotional responsibility. And I respect their opinion. We all have our own path and I’m only sharing here the concept of emotional responsibility because it was the biggest breakthrough for me in the relationship area. Naturally there are many more aspects when it comes to the various types of relationships, and I will touch upon some of those in my upcoming blogs.
If you feel that emotional responsibility is an issue for you, or you encounter more challenges in your work or private relationships than you would like to, or you seem to attract ‘the wrong kind of people’, might have just the thing for you. I’m starting soon an intensive online group-mentoring program for people who want to transform their relationships for the better. If you’re interested in learning more about it, book a free intake call here.
I would also love to hear your comments and thoughts about my first blog, so feel free to email (miia@ettlecoaching.com) or DM me on Instagram/Facebook (@ettlecoaching/Miia Viita).
Light and joy!
-miia-