No One Can Make You Feel Anything

"No one can make you feel anything."

I don't remember when I first heard that phrase, but I do remember recoiling a little (or lot!) when I heard it.

Over the past six months I've been running senior and emerging leader programs and de-escalation training across the Kimberley, and this phrase has a way of stopping people in their tracks.

The phrase isn't mine. It belongs to Richard Barrett, who puts it even more bluntly: "Nobody ever upsets you. You always upset yourself through your beliefs."

"Nobody ever upsets you. You always upset yourself through your beliefs."

At this point arms can start folding because it sounds like an accusation, as if a rude colleague or dismissive family member is suddenly off the hook. We're so used to saying "he made me so angry" that the opposite idea can feels pretty offensive.

I'm not sure that's Barrett's intention though. I think he's handing back the one thing most of us can easily and quietly give away: our own agency.

The situation is only ever a trigger. The words, the tone, the side comment, they're real. But the upset is generated inside us, shaped by beliefs we've carried for years. Two people can experience exactly the same event and respond in completely different ways.

“If another person truly controls my emotions, I'm powerless until they change. But if the upset is mine, then so is the response.”

Here's an opening though to developing a leadership skill. If another person truly controls my emotions, I'm powerless until they change. But if the upset is mine, then so is the response. At some level that's a harder truth, but I also think it's a far more hopeful one.

None of this means suppressing what we feel. It means getting curious in the gap between trigger and response: what belief of mine just got activated here? What am I actually protecting?

No one can make you feel anything. And that's not bad news. It means the pen was always in your hand, and the response story is yours to write.