No Emotion Is Bad and You Can’t Control How Other People Feel

When I was a little girl, we had a lot of chaos in our family. My parents were often on edge and argued with one another loudly and frequently. Like all little kids, I struggled to regulate my emotions, and sometimes that made things worse. 

At some point I learned to just be quiet, to do my best to tiptoe around my family when they were on edge, and to try not to rock the boat. I learned to bring my parents things they would be proud of rather than problems for them to solve. It took me until I was in high school to squash my anger, but by the time I was in college I rarely got angry. 

Anger in particular seemed like a dangerous emotion to me. It caused people to say horrible things that cut like tiny pieces of glass and stuck with you forever. Anger made me feel unsafe and out of control.

This warped into me being an upbeat, enthusiastic people pleaser. No was not in my vocabulary, unless I said it to myself. I took on more and more, always trying to be someone my parents would be proud of.

But I was never proud of myself. No matter what award I had won or accomplishment I had achieved. It was never enough for me. 

My senior year of college, I took a literature class that exposed me to one book that changed my life. Bird by Bird, written by Anne Lamott. Lamott was funny and irreverent. I was shocked by her raw, blunt expression of her life and all of its dysfunction.

This book was a gateway for me into more irreverent, funny books about unapologetically owning our experience and taking responsibility for our lives. At some point, in one of the many books I read, I learned the lesson that we alone are responsible for our own emotions. 

Sadly I can’t presently remember which book really cemented this idea for me.

One day I was waiting at a drive-thru coffee kiosk for them to take my order. There was only one vehicle in front of me and they’d already driven around to the window. I waited and waited and waited. No one took my order. 

I even backed up and pulled forward again to make sure they knew I was there. Someone said, “We’ll be with you shortly.” They never took my order…

Angrily, I drove forward to leave. At just that moment someone said, “What can I get for you today?” I left in a huff without any delicious coffee and thought to myself, “God! They made me so angry!!”

Immediately after this thought popped into my head I burst out laughing. They couldn’t make me angry! I chose to get angry in the face of this situation, but nobody made me angry.

Blaming other people for how we feel prevents us from taking responsibility for our lives. It actually robs us of our own power. How we feel is up to us. 

This also means that we have no control over how other people feel about us. You’ve probably heard the quote by Paulo Coelho: “What other people think about you is none of your business!” It’s a tough pill to swallow sometimes, but it’s true.

When you grow up in an environment where you can’t express your emotions without fear of making things worse, it makes sense you might learn to distance yourself from your emotions and also feel responsible for other people’s emotions. But the truth is that you are not responsible for anyone’s emotions except for your own. 

And none of your emotions are bad! Anger isn’t bad, grief isn’t bad, envy isn’t bad, lust isn’t bad. They are all normal human emotions that all of us experience in our lifetimes.

What’s important is that we are responsible for what we do with these emotions. The words that come out of your mouth or the actions that you take when you are angry are your responsibility. You cannot blame those behaviors on anyone else but yourself. 

It’s taken me 29 years to learn this, but I am not responsible for my mother’s sadness, nor am I responsible for my father’s anger. I’m not responsible for disappointing my family or anyone else. Those emotions are theirs to own, and my emotions are mine. 

What I am still learning is that I am responsible for my own happiness. It’s up to me to experience more joy, gratitude, curiosity, and wonder. It’s my responsibility to treat myself with greater kindness and compassion. No one can do that for me.