How did that make you feel?
“How did that make you feel?” Even if you have never been in therapy before, you probably associate that phrase with therapy. If we look a little more closely, we will see that there is an assumption in that phrase that something (or someone) external to you can “make” you feel a certain way.
Before I go on, I want to pause and have you think about what feelings are, and how they are related to emotions. Feelings are conscious experiences in the body of an emotional response to some stimuli. While emotions are triggered by a complex interplay between your environment, physiological sensory inputs from your body, and your perceptions of those sensory inputs, feelings are influenced by learning, culture, language, and individual differences. At a very basic level, we experience sensory states of arousal or calmness, pleasure or pain (emotions). But our minds add an additional layer of interpretation to these states to arrive at joy, sadness, anger, fear, etc. (feelings). Emotions are not experienced in a universal way across every culture. Some cultures have emotional states, described with language, that don’t exist in other cultures. And, some cultures pay more attention to certain emotions than others.
The takeaway is that you may experience an emotional state that your partner doesn’t, or you may both experience what you label as the same feeling, but maybe you each experience it a little differently based on physiological, cultural, or learning differences. So, going back to therapy, when a person says to their partner, “You made me feel this way,” part of their feeling construction puts the power over their emotions with their partner. I’m not going to argue that feelings or emotions don’t arise from encounters you have with other people or with other stimuli in your environment. But I am arguing that maintaining responsibility for your feelings is better than allowing someone else that control. When you make the shift to thinking about your emotions as your own experience and your own responsibility, you get better at knowing yourself and what you need. You get better at reading your feelings and emotions as data that inform your choices, what you choose to reveal to your partner about yourself, and what you ask for in your relationships. You get better at taking a break when you feel emotionally flooded, and knowing how to get yourself into a calmer state. You also get better at not assuming you know how someone else feels just because you feel a certain way, and so you learn to listen with openness.
When I hear a person say, “You made me feel this way,” I usually encourage them to drop the “you made me” part of the statement, and just focus on articulating how they feel. The feeling matters, and when we can identify what triggered the unique emotional process that came up around the feeling, and anchor it in the context of the person’s experiences, learning, and perception, we can move toward identifying what the person needs. And when a person’s partner feels unhooked from the responsibility of taking care of the other person’s feelings and emotions, it allows them to listen, learn, and respond without defensiveness. This fosters emotional safety and intimacy, which supports stronger relationships–and stronger individuals–and that’s why therapists are asking about your feelings in the first place.
If you want to explore this topic further, check out the Invisibilia podcast “Emotions” episode that originally aired on June 1, 2017.