Semantics & So On

My emotional worldview shattered at a professional conference in 2019. At the closing session, the host began her remarks by saying, “If I say anything that offends you, I apologize.” I took this as an anodyne statement of good intent and wouldn’t have given it another thought.

But one of my colleagues snorted and said, “You can’t make someone else responsible for how you feel.” I asked what she meant. “You decide how you’re going to feel about what other people say, not them.”

I felt like I’d tipped my chair too far back and I was going over. Her words sounded like abuser logic I’d heard my whole childhood. My mother’s voice came back to me, responding to complaints about bullying in school. What did you do to make him do that to you? And how many times had I objected to someone’s mistreatment only to be told it was my problem?

I hated it. I hated thinking my colleague thought like that. I hated it more because she was more than a colleague. She was a friend. I’d known her for years and I had never known her to be cruel. How could she so calmly echo abuser logic?

Either I misunderstood her, or she was wrong.

I had to find out which it was, so I started researching the subject. I half hoped she was wrong, because I wouldn’t have to change. But what I found forced me to change my worldview. What my friend had offered wasn’t abuser logic. It was a healthier way of handling negative interactions and emotional pain. We have a lot more choice over our emotional responses than I realized.

Here’s a hypothetical example: You’re meeting your friend Hal to see a movie. You arranged to meet fifteen minutes before show time. But the time comes, and no Hal. You’re a little perturbed but not anxious.

You text him. No response. Five minutes pass. No response, no Hal. Annoyance builds to anger. You call and it goes to voicemail. You’re barely going to make it to your seats before the show starts. Furious, you go into the movie alone. You don’t enjoy it because you spent the entire two hours seething with resentment.

The lights come up and turn your phone on. You have voicemail. Hal’s wife. Hal was hit by a drunk driver, she says. He’s in the hospital.

The anger evaporates. Now you feel pity for Hal. Maybe you even feel a little shitty about all of the things you mentally accused Hal of two hours earlier.

Who made you angry?

Not Hal. Hal did nothing wrong. You made yourself angry. This is not the same as abuser logic, where they’ll do something atrocious and then say, “Sorry you feel that way.” In this instance, you chose anger over other ways you could have responded.

I’ve heard it said that anxiety and excitement are physiologically exactly the same. It’s how we approach them mentally that makes the difference.

This concept is hard to grasp. I’ve thought about it a lot and done a lot of work to overcome a lifetime of programming that runs counter to it. It is not an excuse for abusers or those who deliberately attempt to trigger emotional responses from you. Yes, some people are jerks. But their being jerks says nothing about you. And it doesn’t obligate you to respond in any particular way.

So what have I done with this? I’ve learned to recognize the mental and physiological signs that I’m losing control. When I notice the symptoms, I take a breath and stop myself from escalating, then decide how I want to respond. I am far from perfect at it. I am getting better.

Recently, when I was writing in a coffee shop, a family came in. One of their children began stomping in a circle around my table while singing loudly. I noticed the shortness of breath and tension in my neck that start my anger cascade. Instead of giving into it and lashing out at the child or his parents, I took a deep breath. After letting it out, I smiled and turned to the parents. “Would you mind keeping your kid at your table?”

I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t make threats or comment on their parenting. I merely asked them to deal with their rambunctious son. A few years ago, I might have shouted and thought myself justified in doing so. I chose not to give in to anger, but to start from a position of graceful co-existence.

When you are responsible for your own emotions, it follows that everyone else is responsible for theirs. That’s what my colleague was telling me all those years ago. Once again, that’s not a license to push someone else’s buttons. It means you don’t have to tiptoe around them for fear of inadvertently triggering them. When you let go of needing or wanting to control other people’s emotions, you acknowledge them as an equal. That changes the dynamic of how you interact with them. It leads to more equitable relationships, happier relationships, healthier relationships.

It’s understandable to want people to treat you well. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nor is there anything wrong with setting boundaries about what behavior you will and won’t accept. But the only person you can control is yourself. Recognizing that, acting on it, gives you a lot more power than you may have ever realized you had.

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Featured image by Олег Мороз on Unsplash