Are We Responsible For Our Own Feelings?
Are Babies Responsible For Theirs?
For example, Non-Violent Communication appears to advocate that this is true (ignoring the babies case for now…), as do lots of emotional work practices. This can be phrased as:
‘I cause my feelings, other people can only trigger me causing my own feelings.’
This is intended to be empowering, because the alternative is disempowering: if others can cause my feelings, then I am not causal in my own life. When I consciously and competently take the step of owning my own feelings, I become causal in my experience of my life, and am no longer buffeted by forces outside of my control, except in a purely physical sense.
However, this can be flipped on his head and used in a violent sense:
‘I can do whatever I like to you because I’m not responsible for your feelings, you are.’
While the first statement is self-empowering, the second is likely to be violent.
The violent statement can sometimes be used in inexpert, unintended, retaliation, when the defensive version is actually what is intended:
‘I believe that I am behaving reasonably [with regard to you], your feelings are your own business, and I do not wish to get involved.’
Depending on circumstances this might or might not be reasonable.
If I am a Buddha, then you can indeed do anything to me, and my enlightened ability to not be triggered by circumstance assures my unassailable equanimity. However, if I am not a Buddha, then any way you interact with me might result in my upset, because I am susceptible to being triggered by circumstance, and am therefore not fully causal in my own experience of my own life. So, if you intentionally set out to upset me, then this is violent. (And then there are various grey areas where you didn’t intend to upset me, or the intersection of your needs and my needs and our respective abilities to negotiate conflict may result in unavoidable upset on one or both of our parts.)
Victim-blaming
The above way of flipping meanings happens with victim-blaming too:
‘I choose not to be a victim, I take responsibility for my situation.’
is a very empowering step for people who have had traumatic experiences. However:
‘Don’t be such a victim about it, take responsibility for your situation.’
is likely an act of violence against someone in an already vulnerable and hurt state.
So, ultimately,
we each decide, to the extent that we are able, whether or not we are responsible for our own feelings, and whether or not we are victims.
When we are ready and able to take the step of responsibility, or the step out of victimhood, this reflects us stepping into our power and becoming causal in our own lives. Others can support and encourage us to take these steps, but nobody can force us to. Attempts to force this (including on ourselves) tend to be violent (even if not deliberately so) and are likely to result in a further retreat into victimhood or non-responsibility for feelings, and a longer path of healing.
Are Babies Responsible For Their Own Feelings?
We can trace these ideas of responsibility back to infancy. Intuitively, it seems obvious that babies are not responsible for their own feelings. Their sense of separate self is either non-existent or in the early stages of emerging, and is in no way ready to take responsibility for the feelings that are already surging around in a relatively unboundaried way in the baby, their caregiver(s) and their environment.
So, at what point does the baby, growing into a child, an adolescent and then an adult, become responsible for its feelings? It seems to me that the capacity to become responsible for feelings develops in tandem with all the other emotional, mental and physical capacities. However, my intuition is that, given the general lack of attention to emotional development in this current globalised civilisation, vast numbers of people reach adulthood and old age without ever taking much responsibility for their own feelings or experience.
Further, my guess is that all adults (and to a typically lesser extent, young people) have latent within us the ability to take responsibility for our feelings, but that this ability is more or less blocked by any traumatic experiences (emotional trauma can occur independently of physical/recognised traumatic events) and the general level of emotional development of our social surroundings.
Within our communities, any individual taking the lead in taking emotional responsibility is providing a huge gift to the community (as well as a huge gift to themselves), as it paves the way for intentional and fulfilling living within the community as a whole.
This is partly because the act of taking responsibility for one’s own feelings:
- reduces our tendency to take responsibility for other’s feelings (and therefore entering into codependent relationship), creating a non-coercive space for others to freely take responsibility for their own feelings.
- takes the pressure of responsibility [for our own feelings] off those around who have themselves not attained their own responsibility, increasing their level of emotional freedom (and therefore their tendency to develop emotionally).
Once the general level of emotional maturity starts to increase, emotional interactions become causal, intentional and creative rather than codependent and oriented around ‘getting by’ or survival, and general flourishing occurs.
