(or, let people you *trust* feel their feelings)
Have you ever NOT told someone a truth – that they had a right to know – because you didn’t want to make them feel bad?
How much time do you spend trying to manage YOUR behaviour to stop people around you from having feelings you don’t like / feel comfortable with?
Most of the time this type of behaviour developed as a way to keep ourselves safe.
We may even think ‘we’re just people pleasers’ or ‘we want people to be happy’.
At a certain point it becomes controlling and manipulative – so let’s talk about letting people feel their feelings.
what feelings do you not want others to have?
For me, this was (and sometimes still is) anger.
If someone was angry, I felt like I needed to fix it. Or I felt unsafe.
I couldn’t be comfortable in my own skin if someone in my life (especially if it was a man or my mother) was angry – not at me, just angry in general.
I would often say to my husband ‘you need to stop being angry, it makes me uncomfortable.’
To be clear, I’m not talking about when people were displaying abusive or dangerous behaviours.
Just when they felt angry.
For other people I know, it’s not wanting people to be disappointed, or upset, or sad.
what do you do to prevent/stop those feelings?
If someone was angry, I would go into ‘fix it’ mode.
Let me find it for you, go to the shop for the thing you forgot, or explain to you why you shouldn’t be angry.
Not from a place of trying to help them, but rather because I couldn’t be comfortable until they stopped feeling how they were feeling.
I’ve known people who won’t tell people things they have every right to know because it would upset them.
Or lie to them because they don’t want the other person to have a certain feeling about them.
Most of us have had some emotion shutdown by someone around us because they weren’t comfortable with us crying, or feeling upset or angry or disappointed.
we know where it comes from
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why being around anger made me feel uncomfortable.
In my body, I have generations of women before me who experienced unhealthy expressions of anger directed at them in my bones.
As a child, anger in my house (from my mother) was scary and unpredictable, leading to physical pain or emotional abandonment.
We’ve all had situations where a person being unhappy with us – whether they were disappointed, sad, angry, embarrassed – led to a loss of a relationship, social status, and safety
Even now many people will be in situations where it’s NOT safe for someone to be angry or disappointed or embarrassed around them (thus, why the sub-title of this is ‘people you *trust* feel their feelings).
It makes sense for the response to this to be ‘I will do everything I can to ensure I don’t create these negative emotions in people in my life.’
Because this often develops as a response to a true threat to our safety, we should never shame ourselves for developing this tendency.
It’s still our responsibility to notice when this trauma response shifts from being protective to be controlling.
when you become controlling
Have you ever had someone try to shut down YOUR reasonable response to something because your feelings made them uncomfortable?
Or not told you something you had a right to know because they didn’t want you to feel a certain way?
This is when managing other people’s emotions becomes controlling.
When we behave in a specific way so people respond to us in a specific way, that’s controlling behaviour.
It stems from us not feeling safe around certain emotions, but ultimately, it’s trying to dictate other people’s worlds for our own comfort.
a step in emotional maturity
One of the first steps in emotional maturation is learning how to give our own emotions space, how to express them in a healthy way, and how to regulate when we feel emotions overwhelming us.
If we say that emotions need to be experienced and processed, we mean ALL emotions, even the ‘bad’ ones.
(Reminder: while emotions are valid, not all actions are… you can feel whatever but you can’t do whatever.)
This can take practice especially when our emotional responses are linked to emotional energy we’re carrying in our body and is often a lifelong practice (see ‘how emotion lives in our body’).
The next step is to start being comfortable with OTHER people’s emotional responses.
Taking responsibility for your side of the sand, so to speak, and allowing people the space they need to have their own response.
You may feel comfortable giving your own emotions space, but as long as you’re NOT okay with other people having their own emotions, you’re creating a double standard.
The next step is noticing how you react to other people’s emotions and whether you’re comfortable not taking responsibility for controlling how they feel.
check your reasoning
Recently I’ve had/heard of a lot of conversations of
‘I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to be upset.’
Or
‘I’m going to tell you something but please don’t be mad.’‘
If this is your thinking, it’s important to check in as to why you’re trying to control the response.
Sometimes these requests come from a deep, instinctual fear related to safety or loss.
Sometimes, it’s because them having that feeling makes YOU uncomfortable.
If you notice that you’re hesitating to be honest with someone because you’re afraid of their reaction, ask yourself these questions:
‘Do I have legitimate fears for my safety?’
‘Do I have a legitimate fear of loss?’
‘How much am I avoiding my own discomfort?’
‘Am I expecting someone else to modify themselves so I don’t have to deal with my own stuff?’
If there’s a legitimate fear of safety, you do what you need to do to keep safe. But sometimes the feeling of being unsafe is a remnant that doesn’t apply to the present moment.
If there’s a fear of loss inside a relationship, consider if it’s consequences of your actions or if it’s that you don’t trust that person to manage their own emotions.
Maybe the loss is reputational or financial, and this is where you have to balance integrity against survival and, again, is situation dependent.
realise you're avoiding discomfort?
What if you realise it’s the last one, that you’re actually focusing on modifying other people’s feelings so you can avoid your own discomfort?
Instead of facing up to something we’ve done wrong / made a mistake, instead of holding space for what we may have done to disappoint or let down someone else, we’re prioritising our own comfort.
If we want to share something with someone and they’re likely to have an emotional reaction to something, it’s not fair for us to say ‘don’t be mad about this’, or expect them to have the emotional response YOU want.
They’re entitled to their own experience and it’s not fair for you to demand that they don’t feel negative emotions so you don’t have to feel uncomfortable.
We all make mistakes.
We are all thoughtless sometimes.
We all have different perspectives.
Good, solid relationships are built on rift and repair, without placing requirements on other people’s emotional states.
(Again, emotions do not equal actions, and be mindful of people who use their own emotions as reasons to behave however they want.)
what kind of relationships do you want?
I’m very lucky that at this point in my life I have a number of relationships with people I trust.
They’re not always perfect, I’m not always perfect, and we sometimes will be annoyed or upset at each other.
We don’t police each other’s feelings and we practice rift and repair.
If you’ve been in relationships where you’re expected to manage everyone’s emotions and/or someone being disappointed in you means the relationship will end, it may sound farfetched to imagine upsetting someone and still being friends after (assuming actual, effective repair has taken place).
emotions deserve space, bad behaviour doesn't
I’m lucky to have a number of relationships in my life where I know sometimes, I’ll annoy my friends, family and team just like sometimes they’ll annoy me.
We’ll talk about it, we’ll have our space, and give space for each others’ experience, and keep going because we’ve established we have an underlying throughline of respect.
And yes, there are boundaries past which relationships can’t survive. If that happens that doesn’t necessarily mean someone’s the villain, it may just be that the stars aren’t aligning for that particular connection.
this doesn't mean 'don't use care'
To be clear, we’re not talking about not being mindful and intentional of how we talk to and treat people.
Letting someone feel their feelings doesn’t mean you don’t try to be kind when you share information.
There’s a difference between being considerate and withholding information to control someone else’s emotional state.
There’s a difference between ‘I’m worried this will upset you so I’ll try to put it carefully’ and ‘If I tell you this you have to promise not to be upset.’
There’s a difference between ‘I’d like to comfort you’ and ‘I’m going to contort myself so you’re not upset because I can’t handle you being upset.’
There’s a difference between trying to manipulate a response from people and speaking to people with care.
Don’t take ‘let them feel their feelings’ to mean you can speak to anyone however you want and not care how it makes them feel.
Be kind. Speak thoughtfully and clearly, but truthfully.
Your aim can be to care for the other person’s response without trying to control their response.
your turn:
Take a moment to think about the times this week or last where you’ve felt uncomfortable with someone else’s emotional response.
Why did that happen? Can you understand what it’s rooted in?
Can you think of recent times where you’ve wanted to control someone’s reasonable emotional response? For example, not telling someone something they should know because you thought they’d be unhappy with you, or angry?
Once you start seeing the pattern, you can start to change it.
Remind yourself it’s okay for people to have their emotional response, and notice where people stick with you despite a bumpy moment.
And if you need help exploring what you’re carrying in your body to see where some of the deeper responses come from, I’m always here to help.
Your aim can be to care for the other person’s response without trying to control their response.
