SELF-IMPROVEMENT

It Was Never My Responsibility

Day 28, 50 questions for deep self-reflection

This is day 28 of the 50 Questions for Deep Self-Reflection challenge from Know Thyself Heal Thyself created by Diana C.

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: How can you learn to stop taking responsibility for alleviating the emotional discomfort of others?

Fresh eyes with flashbacks

Each day, I read the prompt when I am ready to start writing, not before. I don’t have pre-knowledge of what these questions are and yet it seems like every day when I open it and read the question for the first time, there’s something I’ve said in the prompt the day before (and every day prior to that) that reflects exactly where I need to go with the current question.

Yesterday I talked about taking responsibility and ownership of my own happiness rather than trying to affect that of somebody else because that’s a recipe for disaster. It’s literally not possible to be the cause of somebody’s happiness or unhappiness. Sure, your actions and reactions can affect them, but they are the ones that get to choose how they are affected. Not you. Not me.

I’ll take responsibility for myself, not you

Taking responsibility for, and ownership of, one’s own happiness is a great starting point for this question. In taking responsibility for self, how can I also learn to alleviate myself of the responsibility of the happiness of others? I’ve kind of already answered it. We are responsible for our own actions and reactions just as everybody else is.

What I say and do will only affect another in the way that they choose to be affected. Just as what they say and do only affects me in the way I choose to be affected. Note that ‘choose’ is a convoluted word because there is the whole thing of cause-and-effect, trauma, experiences, and learning, which all impact how you act and react. But in taking responsibility for those actions and reactions, we can unpack it all and do better, become better, become happier.

I reacted but pulled myself up

Yesterday, someone commented on one of my posts. In one paragraph, they used directive terminology, ‘you’, and the way it was written I felt like it was written directly AT me. And so, in that moment I CHOSE to take offense. It was only in stepping back and thinking, “Wait. Why am I feeling this way?” that I was able to relook at the context and realize that they were not attacking me at all. They were agreeing and rewording it in a way to emphasize what I was saying. If I had not taken that moment, and just retaliated, I could have lost a reader, respect, an ally, possibility, opportunity… There is so much I could have lost in a moment of choosing to be affected in a particular way. In that simple moment of stopping myself, of looking at how I was feeling and reflecting on that, I realized I was misinterpreting their words because I was triggered simply by the word, “You.”

So…

How can I learn to stop taking responsibility for alleviating the emotional discomfort of others?

• By knowing that their emotional discomfort comes from their own experience and is therefore their own journey to alleviate
• By focusing on my own actions and reactions and not making assumptions or jumping to conclusions
• By recognizing that anything said to me is not a personal attack and even if it is, it says more about the attacker than it does about me
• By knowing but it was never my responsibility in the first place

If you are interested in the journey so far — all the days that came before, I’ve collected all the article links here:

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