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Do You Feel Responsible For Other People’s Feelings? You Have to Read This…

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Many people actually believe that they are responsible for other people’s feelings. The truth is our feelings are caused by our own thoughts and actions.

Consider these examples:

“My wife is so upset that I have to travel more on my new job,” Chuck told me in our phone counseling session. “She feels so alone and lost when I’m gone. When I talk with her she is either crying or angry. I feel so badly and guilty but I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you feel responsibility for her feelings?” I asked him. “Do you feel that you are the cause of her feelings?”

“Yes.”

*****

“I’m just starting to date again after my divorce and I’m having a hard time with it,” Jeanette told me. “I just don’t know how to let a man know that I’m not interested in dating him any more, or in pursuing a sexual relationship with him. It feels like such a sticky situation.”

“Is it sticky because you are worried about his feelings?”

“Yes. The last man I dated hung his head and looked so distressed when I asked him to leave. I know that he was really attracted to me and I wasn’t at all attracted to him. I felt so awful that he was so hurt.”

“Did you feel responsible for his feelings?”

“Yes.”

*****

“My 14 year old daughter is so angry at me for the divorce, even though she knows that we are divorcing because of all my husband’s affairs,” Alissa told me. “I feel so guilty, even though I am not the one who had the affairs.”

“Do you feel responsible for her feelings?”

“Yes, of course!”

*****

The Truth About What Causes Our Feelings

Do you believe that you CAUSE others’ feelings, and are therefore responsible for them?

This is a major false belief. Some of our feelings, such as grief from losing a loved one, or helplessness over others, or loneliness when we want to share love with another and no one is available, are caused by life events. But most of our feelings, such as anger, anxiety, depression, hurt, guilt, or shame, are caused by our own thoughts and actions.

If Chuck’s wife is abandoning herself by not attending to her own feelings, or by judging herself, or by making Chuck responsible for her, then she will feel alone and angry at Chuck. It is not Chuck who is abandoning her. It is she who is abandoning herself.

Since there is nothing Chuck can do about the fact that his wife is abandoning herself, he cannot possibly take responsibility for her feelings. But he CAN take responsibility for his own feelings. As long as Chuck is telling himself the lie that he is responsible for his wife’s feelings, he will feel badly and guilty. His guilt is his inner guidance’s way of letting him know that he is telling himself a lie.

Taking Responsibility For Our Own Feelings

If Chuck or Jeanette or Alissa were to take responsibility for their own feeling instead of someone else’s, they would say to themselves, “I WANT responsibility for causing my feelings of guilt. What is the lie I am telling myself that is causing my guilt? Oh, I’m telling myself that I’m responsible for the other person’s feelings (the wife, the date, the daughter), and the fact that it is causing me to feel badly is letting me know that this is not true.”

Then they would open to learning about the truth – that we cannot take responsibility for others’ feelings. We can certainly be kind, gentle, caring and considerate, which is part of taking responsibility for ourselves, but no matter how loving we are, we cannot take responsibility for what others tell themselves that cause their fear, anxiety, aloneness, emptiness, anger, hurt, or depression.

What would change in your life if you decide that you WANT responsibility for your feelings and not for others’ feelings? If you really made this decision, you would stop being a caretaker, taking responsibility for others’ feelings, and you would stop being a taker, making others responsible for your feelings.

You would be free to be truly loving to yourself and share your love with others. Imagine the possibilities of that!

Why You Should ALWAYS Pay Attention to Your Inner Feelings When You Meet Someone

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A friend of mine recently said to me, somewhat in awe, “I’m just discovering that energy is everything!”

Right, it is, but what does this mean, exactly?

What Is Energy Exactly?

Our energy is the frequency, or vibration, that automatically emanates from our being, and is a result of our intention. Each of us is always radiating energy. Energy operates on a continuum from extremely negative to wonderfully positive, and reflects our intent from an extremely unloving controlling intent to an extremely loving intent.

Whenever our intent is to protect ourselves with some form of controlling behavior, our energy is of a low frequency – heavy, dark, difficult to be around. Whenever our intent is to be loving and to learn about love, our energy is lighter and easier to be around. Learning to discern the differences in our own and others’ energy is very important regarding being loving to ourselves.

Understanding Energy in Regard to Relationships

Let’s take an example. Richard, 28, fell in love with Rachael, also 28, an extraordinarily beautiful woman with a winning smile. Richard is a very kind, caring and compassionate person who tends to be a caretaker. Richard believed that everyone was basically like him, kind and caring.

Richard also believed that anyone this beautiful on the outside must also be beautiful on the inside. Instead of caring enough about himself to discern who Rachael really was, Richard allowed lust to determine his decisions and married Rachael.

In time he discovered that Rachael was a really hard, cold and calculating woman, who was really in the marriage to be taken care of financially. The marriage eventually ended in a difficult divorce, with Richard losing much financially.

Had Richard tuned into Rachael’s energy instead of being dazzled by her looks, he would have quickly discovered that Rachael came from fear and neediness, not from caring and kindness. Had he been willing to go within to his own inner, feeling experience of Rachael, he would have known that she was operating from a much lower frequency than he, and was not a good match for him. Had he been willing to experience Rachael with his heart and soul, rather than his mind and genitals, he would have known that she was not for him.

Pay Attention to Your Feelings

How often do you ignore your feeling experience of someone, instead of allowing your surface experience to govern your choices? It is only your feelings that are capable of discerning a person’s energy. If you feel a kind of inner uneasiness, pay attention to it. It might be telling you to be cautious. Even if a person appears on the surface to be open and friendly, the deeper intent is always betrayed by the energy.

If the deeper intent in being open and friendly is to control, you can feel it in your body if you tune in. However, if your intent is also to control, you may not be able to accurately discern another’s energy because your ability to discern is affected by your own intent. When your intent is to learn about what is loving to yourself, then you can tune into your inner experience and discern another’s intent.

The Importance of Energy

Energy is everything. How people look, what they say, or how they behave does not really tell you anything. It is the energy behind their behavior and words that really matter. A person can say, with the softest voice, “I love you,” and the energy behind these words can be totally different, depending upon the intent.

If the person’s intent in saying “I love you” is to get something, approval, sex, money, time, attention, and so on, the energy will not feel good inside you. You might feel pulled on or even drained by the expression of love.

If the person’s intent is to share love with no agenda in mind, it will feel very good inside you. Your job is to stay open to learning about loving yourself so that you are open to learning about another’s intent. You will feel safe inside and create loving relationships when you become a discerning loving adult, instead of reacting as a needy or lustful adolescent, willing to know the truth about another’s intent and resulting energy.

Understanding The Difference Between Getting Love And Sharing Love

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The feeling of love is the very best feeling in the world, even better than sex or ice cream!

The Bible states in 1 John 4:16 that “God is love.” When our hearts are open, the love that is God comes into the physical body and fills us with the delicious feelings of joy and peace. Love is always available, as available as the air we breathe.

Yet most people do not go through their days filled with love, joy and peace. Instead, they feel empty and alone, and often turn to various addictions (such as sex and ice cream) to fill the emptiness and aloneness.

Filling the Void With Addictions

One of the addictions many people turn to is the addiction of getting love from others. Coming from the belief that people, rather than our Source, are the source of love, they try in various ways to gain control over getting love from others.

Through physical appearance, accomplishments, niceness, compliments, cuteness, being funny, threats, anger, irritation, and blame, people try to manipulate others into giving them the love, attention, and approval they need. Sometimes this works for the moment, but like food or sex, it is only for the moment. Trying to feel filled through others is an exhausting way to live.

Other people try to get filled through the giving of love. The problem here is that unless you are first bringing love into yourself and then sharing your love from a full place within, the giving of love becomes just another manipulation to get love.

This is caretaking; giving to get. I can tell you from personal experience, since this was my major addiction, that caretaking does not to lead to feeling fill up with love, peace and joy. Rather, it leads to feeling drained, used and resentful, since rarely do others give back the love you hope for.

A Circle of Love

The highest experience in life with another person is the sharing of love. A circle of love is experienced when two or more people are sharing love from a full place within.

We are full of love within only when we have a spiritually connected loving adult self who is intent on taking loving care of ourselves. When our intent is to take full personal responsibility for ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, organizationally, and relationally, then we feel loved and safe inside.

Intent Opens the Door

Our intent to support our own highest good opens the door to connection with Spirit and the love that is God fills our hearts and souls. This deeply peaceful and joyous feeling can then be shared with others whose hearts are also open to loving and learning.

The sharing of love is truly an amazing experience. It can happen in person or over the phone. It can happen in letters or email. Time and place are irrelevant. God as love is an energy that can be experienced from any distance. Each of us has the opportunity to be messengers of God when we do our inner work and become able to share love with others.

Getting Love, Sharing Love

The ego wounded self in most people does not understand the vast difference between the getting of love and the sharing of love. Because getting a bit of love from someone feels good, the ego thinks that the best feelings come from getting love. Until you have the experience of bringing God-that-is-love into yourself, you do not realize that loving yourself brings far greater joy than getting love.

And until you are loving yourself, you cannot experience the even greater joy of sharing love with others. There is no addiction, no drug, no food, no experience, that comes close to the incredible joy of feeling the love-that-is-God within and sharing that love with others.

If you have never had the experience of sharing love, you may not realize what you are missing. Sometimes it may seem hard to be motivated to keep doing your inner healing work if you have never experienced the joy of loving yourself and sharing that love with others.

I hope you keep in mind that only by doing your inner work will you ever be able to experience the greatest experience on the planet; the sharing of love!

Why Don’t We Ever Make Love Anymore?

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I cannot tell you how often couples complain to me that they rarely make love. These are generally people who love each other, who enjoy being together and often have fun with each other. Yet they don’t have sex. Why does this happen so often?

Sexual arousal, especially for most women, comes from emotional intimacy and connection. While many men can have sex purely from physical desire, many women need emotional intimacy and connection to feel physical desire. While many men might love it if their wife would suddenly start to fondle their penis, many women feel violated when their husband grabs their breasts, crotch, or butt.

Gender Differences About Touch

I often hear from the woman I work with, “I just feel groped and disgusted when my husband grabs my breasts. Why doesn’t that turn me on? Is there something wrong with me?”

Many women do not feel drawn to touch or be touched in a sexual way until the feeling of love is flowing between them and their partner. Yet women have been trained to believe that they should respond sexually in the same way men do, and often feel inadequate when they do not feel turned on by the things that turn on men.

Hazel and Daniel were struggling with this issue of lack of sexuality. Just before their counseling session with me, they had a fight because Daniel fondled Hazel’s breasts while she was dressing in the morning, and then got angry when she didn’t like it.

Hazel had often expressed to Daniel that what turned her on was the deep kissing that resulted from emotional intimacy. Yet, even though Daniel said he wanted to make love, he would not intimately kiss Hazel.

Why?

As we explored the issue, it became apparent that neither Hazel nor Daniel felt safe with intimacy. While they loved each other, their fears of rejection and engulfment made them feel unsafe with each other.

When Hazel got critical, Daniel took it personally, and was unable to set loving limits against being controlled by Hazel. He would get angry and withdrawn, which would trigger Hazel’s fears of rejection.

Both Hazel and Daniel were afraid that if they were emotionally intimate, they would give themselves up to avoid rejection. Keeping the emotional distance felt safer than risking losing themselves or losing the other if they did not give themselves up. Yet sexuality could not flow without the loving feelings that come from emotional intimacy.

Be Conscious Of Your Intent

The problem was that neither Hazel nor Daniel were conscious of their intent most of the time. In most of their interactions, both of them were unconsciously protecting themselves from rejection or engulfment, rather than consciously thinking about what would be loving to themselves and each other.

Because their intent was to protect themselves, they were often trying to control how the other felt about them while at the same time protecting against being controlled.

Each would respond to the other’s rejecting behavior with their own rejecting behavior, anger, criticalness, blame, withdrawal, resistance. Each would attempt to control how the other felt about them by not telling their truth, not taking loving care of themselves.

Each were handing the responsibility for their feelings to the other and then getting upset when the other did not do what they wanted. Neither were showing up as loving adults to take care of their own feeling in loving ways.

Relationship Safety

While it may seem roundabout to deal with a lack of lovemaking by focusing on one’s intent, this is exactly what needs to happen.

Until both Hazel and Daniel become conscious of their intent and start to choose the intent to learn about loving themselves, instead unconsciously choosing the intent to protect/control, they will not create the inner safety necessary for intimacy. Until they practice taking personal responsibility for their own feelings, they will continue to fear rejection and engulfment and protect against it.

You cannot have the joy of sharing love and passion while protecting against loss of self and loss of other. Love and passion do not flow when you are trying to control and not be controlled. As long as protecting against rejection and engulfment is more important than loving yourself, you will not create the inner safety necessary to create relationship safety.

Relationship safety creates the arena for love and intimacy to flow, leading to the physical sharing of love that occurs when people are deeply connected.

You cannot change what you do not know you are doing. When noticing your intention, to protect/control or to learn about loving yourself and your partner, becomes your highest priority, you will begin the process of healing your sex life.