Taking Responsibility For Your Feelings

At times, it can be difficult to take responsibility for our feelings and actions. It becomes second nature to blame someone else for our situation, feelings and actions. At times this may be true, but for the majority of us we are the result of our own actions, which means we also have the responsibility to take control of them.

This episode is centered on taking responsibility for our feelings and the impact it has. We will also looking at thinking about how you think and what you could change.

I know not everyone will agree with this and that's ok, I want to encourage a new thought process and give people an option to change.

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Transcript

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Thanks for listening.

Hi.

Welcome back to the therapy guy.

My name is Alan and today I'm

going to be talking to you about

taking responsibility for your thoughts and feelings.

So how are you?

I want to talk to you today about the

effect that this situation is having on us.

About how our thinking is either helping us

to cope or harming our ability to deal

rationally with a situation we find ourselves in.

This COVID-19 is a unique situation and it's placed

a lot of anxiety and stress in the world,

but it can be related to lots of different

things that go on in our everyday general lives.

For example, you worried, fearful, stressed, concerned

about your future at the moment.

These are all big words and questions

that can naturally increase our anxiety and

feelings of being out of control.

For a lot of people, the situation has

suddenly pushed them into a negative cycle of

feelings and emotions like stress, anxiety and fear.

There is so much news now and attention on

the Kobi 19 virus and the terrible effect that

it is having on so many people.

And then it feeds into all the posts,

tweets, social media experts, next door experts that

are around, are tweeting and voicing their opinions.

I've been watching all of these events unfold

and like everyone else, trying to keep up

with everything that is happening in the world.

Then I've been trying to keep up with all the

changes to my own lifestyle around work, ability to live

our lives in the way that we used to.

For example, I'm now working from home like so

many other people, trying to manage my family life,

my businesses, our finances, yet attempting to stay informed

and focus on what I need to do and

how I need to support other people.

What I'd like to ask you to

think about is whose responsibility is this?

Who can we blame for what is happening to us?

There must be someone to blame for all this, right?

I mean, is the government helping enough?

Are they protecting us, giving us enough support?

What about the scientists?

Or the people are supposed to know about these things?

Maybe they could blame the Chinese.

It's got to be somebody's fault, right?

So what were you thinking when

you thought about all those things?

Were you thinking, don't be so ridiculous or

yeah, it is this or it is that.

Someone's got to be used to blame.

Let me tell you something.

I've been a therapist for many years now and I've

watched so many people over the years look for answers

to how they feel or someone to blame and point

the finger at to say that's the reason that's what's

caused me so much pain and upset.

I mean, list is endless, isn't it?

Parents, teachers at schools, bullies, bad

relationships, bad luck, that moment when

things didn't go away, et cetera.

It's got to be something from back then, right?

So doesn't it make sense that there's something or someone

to blame for this situation that we are in now?

I was also taking part in this for years.

I blamed everyone else.

It was my parents, my school, my teachers

for not picking up on my Dyslexia.

All of my bad luck.

Nothing went one way.

My alcohol abuse, the police,

the government, yada, yada, yada.

It was anyone.

But it wasn't me.

I couldn't be blamed.

I was trying to stop myself

from moving on and succeeding.

Ridiculous when you think about that suggestion.

Now here I am, having retrained as a therapist

and leaving my old life and all that old

behaviour behind, leaving behind that way of thinking of

starting my own business and then another.

So should we live in a dream? Right?

But wait, hang on.

I'm now in danger of losing one of my businesses.

Maybe both.

What happened?

The world has stopped.

My clients, my work stopped coming through the door.

Since a lockdown, 60% of my work is gone.

And what about my other business?

If no businesses are working,

I can't train their employees.

What's going to happen?

Who's going to help me?

There it is.

A little bit old, stressed out, anxious me

looking for help and support elsewhere, right?

Alongside of looking for someone who isn't doing

their job right, that I can point a

finger at and say it's their fault.

My thinking changed for a while.

The therapist me left the building.

I spent a week looking for answers,

not sleeping properly, getting frustrated and worried.

And I'm sure my family will vouch just generally

being a pain in the butt to live with.

Is this sounding a little bit like you right now?

Or maybe some of the things that you've

been dealing with over the past few weeks?

I can go back to the question at

the start, whose responsibility is it now?

I'm not talking about the cause of the virus

or the impact on the business and life itself.

I'm talking about the way that you and I think.

I often speak to my clients about what

they can and can control in life.

When you look at things from an impartial place,

we have little control over parts of our lives.

We can't control anything that has happened before now.

What we did yesterday, last month, year

or many years ago is gone.

We can't control our future.

Think about it.

A few weeks ago, who would

have thought we'd be here today?

Do you know when our car or washing

machine, when any electronic items like that are

going to go wrong or breakdown?

What about the people in our life?

Do you know what they're thinking or feeling

right now, how they're going to react or

respond to certain situations or conversations.

Think about yourself and how we put on a face, a front.

We can go to work and we can be really

stressed with what's going on at home or vice versa.

We go home and pretend everything's okay and work

those two parts of our lives don't know.

Now, we can plan and we can

use educated reasoning, in and judgement to

predict the outcomes of situations and conversations.

But just think about how many times things have gone

exactly to plan and that is whether something has worked

out perfectly as we planned, or without any hitches or

things even maybe not turning out as bad as we

thought they were going to be.

Now, I'm a planner, I'm planning that this helps people,

but I don't know what the effects it will have.

The difference between me and a lot of other people

is how I react when those plans change or things

don't work out the way that I expect.

Take this podcast.

I don't know what you're thinking about it.

For some people it won't help them at all.

They might feel it's no good, it's rubbish,

for others they can think it's fantastic.

So in answer to my question whose responsibility is it?

Well, I feel that it's mine.

I may allow myself to look for someone for a

while, but ultimately the decisions I make all made.

How I think, how I feel

about certain things and my responsibility.

And yes, I know that people have had things

happen to them and that can have an effect

that drastically changes how everything can feel.

And we all have our own stories to tell.

But blaming everyone else has never got me anywhere

and just keeps me in that victim role.

Nobody forced me to start my own business.

I knew the risks.

I couldn't have foreseen this current

situation, no one really could.

And there's part of me that wouldn't

want to foresee it if we could.

We may not start anything, we may not take the

risk and we definitely wouldn't learn anything from it.

Yes, I might lose my business

and what I've worked hard for.

It has been a painful experience for

me and I have difficult and painful

conversations with my amazing colleagues and staff.

But because I am taking responsibility for

my decisions, I still feel in control.

I don't know what's going to

happen as I can't predict it.

And if I did, there are lots

of things that would impact my prediction.

I do know that I will survive.

Yes, my life will be different and maybe

it will be harder for a while.

But I've learned a lot about myself and what

I thought of my limitations during this time.

What about you?

I now realise that I'm the one who

places the limits on me, no one else.

How I think and feel are down to me.

And if I don't take responsibility for that, then I

will feel that fear creeping in, that anxiety and stress.

I'm looking for someone to pass responsibility for.

And two, to say, you've done this.

You made me feel that I have learned to look

at what's in front of me right now, to make

decisions based on the information I have at this time.

If in a week, a month, years time, it

turns out it's the wrong one, so be it.

I've done my best right now, the

same as what you do every day.

We all do our best.

None of us wake up in the morning and

say, today I'm going to make the wrong decision.

But what do you choose?

Do you spend all that time and energy

looking for someone to blame or living with

a fear and anxiety and stress?

Or do you want to take responsibility

and accept that some of our decisions

haven't worked out as we'd want it?

But we can change what we do next by using all

of that negative energy we were using before to look at

what we are in control of and how we can change

what is in front of us right now.

I know this isn't easy, and it takes effort every day.

I am a trained therapist, and I

still have to work hard at it.

I know I've made lots of bad decisions in my past.

I've upset people.

I've done things that I'm not proud of.

But I also know that I've made lots of great ones too.

And so have you.

Your past, your experiences, whatever has happened in your

life before today, they don't define who you are.

They don't define who you're going to be.

Think about it, how you think and feel about yourself.

That is what defines you.

If you allow that negativity, if you allow yourself

to focus on the bad decisions, what has happened,

on looking for something to blame, looking for responsibility,

that is what's defining you at the moment.

We've all made bad decisions.

We've all made bad choices.

The key here is to try to learn from

it, to try to not do it again.

Now, that may take a while for some of us.

It took a while for me.

But I need to use my experiences to improve who

I am, to understand that with the knowledge from my

past, I can make different decisions in the future.

I can then change the future for myself.

Don't let the fear of the past hold

you back, chain you to being the victim.

You're so much more than that.

All of my bad decisions, all of my good

decisions have brought me to this point today.

If you'd asked me ten years ago would I be sat here

talking to you now, I would have said, not a chance.

At the most, I laughed in your face.

It wasn't who I was.

It wasn't the person I was supposed to be going to be.

But here I am.

Allow yourself to listen to that critical voice,

but you don't have to accept it.

By starting each day with a will to do your best

and accept that your thoughts, your actions are your responsibility, you'll

be able to find a way to change them.

It will take time.

Sometimes it will be easier than

others, but you can do it.

If we start by taking responsibility

for ourselves, it's no one's fault.

It's just life and the lessons

we have to learn from it.

Now, if you want to talk about this, if

you want further information, then please get in touch.

There's a lot more to my story that I

haven't got the time or space to describe.

But I know that I'm no longer the victim of my past.

I believe you don't have to be either.

If you want guidance or advice, I'm here for you.

Email me message and I'll be in touch as soon as I can.

Please just take care of yourself.

Stay safe and well.

And for today, this is a Therapy

Guy signing off saying thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the therapy guy.

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