Responsibility

Hello friends, I have been writing this one for awhile. Struggling to get the words right.

I listened to a podcast recently, one of the messages was that we are not responsible for how others feel or how they feel about things.

Say what? I think have always felt responsibility for how others feel.

To realize this is even an option for me has been a liberating experience. It has made me look within and search for why I have this heavy bucket of feelings that belong to people I care about.

My days as far as I can remember have always been about someone else. Making sure in my mind that I have done all the things I need to do to keep others ships sailing greatly. I did not know this was a trauma response.

After my brother died, I felt responsible for everyone’s feelings. And if I could work at controlling the environment of feelings for everyone around me, then everyone would be ok.

I am a believer that everything happens in the right time and space. So I know that this new knowledge that brings me a new outlook has the right timing. It has made me reflect, but also wonder what my life and my mental state after my brothers suicide would have been like had I really understood that I was not responsible for anyone else’s feelings.

Women are deeply socialized to take blame and feel deeply responsible for how others feel. If someone you love is out of sorts, do you assume it’s because of something you did? I shouldn’t have done this – I should have known ……

Looking back, I have realized I started taking responsibility for peoples feelings when I was a young girl.

In my eyes, my dad was an amazing person, he was my favourite person to spend time with, I adored him. He was quick tempered, so I learned to be adaptable and also offer distractions at a very young age. He was not always kind to my mom. I learned early how to be the sponge between the two when things would get heated up.

The body language, the tone, the mood. I also learned how to anticipate situations and try to stop them from happening. I learned to feel responsible for it. Or I learned how to respond to it, and try to turn it into something else. When I write this I am holding my breath, so I know I have hit the right spot. Where the hurt and fear is stuck.

I think back to one evening when my dad came home drunk. Memories flash very fast and I am certain there was much more to the story than the little girl can remember.

I think I was maybe 8 years old.

He was cut up in the face and hands, I think he got in a fight with one of his coworkers…. Likely to the part of the night when everyone gets really wise. I remember being very scared because he was hurt. He was spouting off his regular shit words in his inebriated state. It was a heated moment in time. My mom grabbed keys from the table and yanked my brother by the upper arm and they left me with my dad.

I remember being scared cause I didn’t know where my mom went, making coffee for dad to get him more sober, and trying to clean up his cuts with a dish cloth.

Life went on after that moment and all the other ones like it. The momma always came back and just scrubbed floors and continued life as normal.

I think of my self as a compassionate empathetic human. I also feel responsible for how others feel about me, about what I do and even for how they feel about other people that are important to me.

To know that each person chooses their own thoughts and that I am not responsible for how they feel gives me new eyes and I am seeing all my interactions differently.

We can give ourselves permission to lay down what doesn’t belong to us ❤️