How you can stop hurting your own feelings

How we can observe our thoughts and take responsibility for our emotions

As children, many of us were taught that it’s important that we don’t hurt other people’s feelings. This also leads us to believe that the inverse is true — that other people are responsible for causing our feelings too. At first glance, this seems reasonable - but let’s take a deeper dive into this assumption.

Who causes your emotions?

It is easy and commonplace to say things like “this person has really upset me” but let’s just say the thing we all know, but don’t acknowledge:

Our thoughts are responsible for causing our emotions. We can control our thoughts. So, we can control our emotions → cue mind blown 🤯

Does it mean that when you are still thinking about why your partner said something mean hours later, that we are responsible for the negative feeling? Yep. Have you ever dwelled on a presentation that went badly? Also, your fault. Still sad wondering why you didn’t get invited to that event? You again, I’m afraid.

• Note: Be kind to yourself — this doesn’t mean every situation is your ‘fault,’ merely that you have the capacity and responsibility to manage your own thoughts and emotions in response to situations to make them less painful for you.

Let’s take a simple example to really bring this to life:

Scenario: You’ve been given a promotion
Thoughts: “I don’t know if I’m good enough for this promotion. What if I suck?”
Feelings: Anxious, upset, scared

Now, let’s switch out that thought and see what happens to the feelings:

Scenario: You’ve been given a promotion
Thoughts: “I must be good at this job! This will be a great opportunity for me”
Feelings: Happiness and excitement

As you can see, the thoughts that we think directly affect how we feel.

Your thoughts: Running around your brain like unsupervised sheep

Like me, you have probably been letting your un-managed thoughts run a-mock inside your head for many years and, you guessed it — this means it’s allowed your emotions to wreak havoc too. Ever felt out-of-control? It’s no surprise when your thoughts have been running around like an unsupervised herd of sheep.

You may ask (as I did), “but my brain is automatically generating these thoughts without my permissions. How on earth can I manage them all?” Great question. You’d be right — our brain is constantly looking for shortcuts, escape routes and to reinforce what we already think to be true.

It’s time to train your own thoughts!

So, how can we do this?

Many self-help books talk about becoming the ‘observer’ of your own thoughts — recognising your own thinking. It’s a skill to be developed over time but, to start with, this can be a challenge as your untrained brain may fill your head with other un-related thoughts and suddenly you’re thinking about what you might have for dinner tonight and if the shop will be open late enough…

So, for the easiest chance to observe your thoughts I’d recommend taking this outside your own head initially — try writing them down on paper ✏️

Here’s the format I use and find useful every day to challenge unnecessarily harmful thoughts. I’d encourage you to give this a go too:

1. What am I thinking?
2. How does that make me feel?
3. How do I want to feel?
4. What thought can I think that I believe that makes me feel how I want to feel?

To bring this to life, let’s use our example. So, in the scenario of the job promotion with the negative thoughts above, we could see the following:

1. What am I thinking?
“I don’t know if I’m good enough for this promotion. What if I suck?”

2. How does that make me feel?
“Anxious, upset, scared”

3. How do I want to feel?
“Excited and confident”

4. What thought can I think that I believe that makes me feel how I want to feel?
“I have been promoted to this position because I am capable and therefore I will do a great job. The best I can do is my best and that is what I’ll do.”

• Note: It’s necessary to pick a thought that you wholly believe or you won’t get the emotional benefits of the positive thought — because your brain doesn’t believe it!

Thinking: Question and choose your thoughts to change your feelings

You — the empowered Shepherd of your thoughts

From the example above, you can immediately see how a turnaround of a thought can provide you with a new, much more empowering emotion.

And doesn’t it feel fantastic that you are the one in charge? You can alter the way you’re feeling by changing your thoughts. You’re the shepherd of those crazy sheep — thoughts.

Not only is it great that you can choose to feel a more positive and empowering emotion, but because our feelings determine what actions we take, we are likely to take more positive action from positive emotions —video on this here 👈

“It’s important that you don’t hurt other people’s feelings” — is it?

In the spirit of managing our thoughts, let’s finish off by managing this deeply entrenched one — “It’s important that you don’t hurt other people’s feelings.”

You only have control over yourself in this life — Brooke Castillo summarises this amazingly in The Model where she explains ‘Circumstances’ are things in your life that you don’t have control over. Other people are circumstances as you cannot control them.

Therefore, you can only be responsible for your thoughts and feelings. On the same thread, other people are responsible for their thoughts and since thoughts cause feelings, other people are also responsible for their own feelings.

Emotional empowerment: Your lightbulb moment

OK, so what can I take away from this?

Your thoughts cause your feelings. You have the power to challenge and change your thoughts.

When you experience a negative emotion, I’d encourage you to explore the thought behind it and turn it on it’s head using these questions:

What am I thinking?

How does that make me feel?

How do I want to feel?

What thought can I think that I believe that makes me feel how I want to feel?

• Note: You can also switch questions 1 and 2 round if it’s easier (e.g. 1. What am I feeling? 2. What thought am I thinking to feel this feeling?)

It may take you a bit of time to get used to asking yourself these questions as your brain would probably prefer you not to question it — that’s perfectly normal! The key is to stick at it and keep questioning your thoughts day-to-day.

I hope this is a powerful and practical realisation for you and helps you take more responsibility for your thoughts and feelings, so that you can feel the way you want to feel, more often ❤️

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• Note: It’s important to mention that managing your thoughts and emotions doesn’t mean that you should suppress negative emotion if you need or want to feel it. An example of this would be allowing yourself to feel sad if somebody close to you dies — it’s probable that you may want to feel sad in this situation so it is not a harmful emotion and therefore not worth challenging at this point.