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Old 09-13-2012, 08:05 AM   #14
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
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Re: Even at Boot Camp...no one can reach inside you and make you feel. Your feelings

Quote:
Mary Eastland wrote: View Post
Taking responsibility for our feelings gives us the option of changing how we react. It is a process that needs lots of Patience and courage. It is so much easier to blame others for our reactions yet we are the ones that have them.
If you're carrying a cake, and someone trips and shoves you, and the cake ends up on the floor, are you responsible for the fact that the cake is on the floor? You are the one who had it, after all...

Yeah, I understand there's a difference. What I want you to do is bring a finer focus to what you're saying. What exactly do you mean by "taking responsibility for our feelings"? What does that mean in a real situation, not in the abstract -- a real situation where a person is having bad feelings?

For what it's worth, I believe that we have more control over how we feel than most people realize, and I recognize that we humans tend to fuel our own negative emotions. At the same time, I think it's disingenuous to pretend that there's never any outside agency, and platitudinous to imply that this control can be perfect and absolute. If a child is being harassed and bullied by other children, or a worker is being berated and threatened by a boss, or a person has just gotten a diagnosis of cancer, feelings of fear or anger or distress are neither inappropriate nor self-generated.
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