On occasion, we’ve all likely found ourselves saying, “So and so made me feel… (fill in the blank),” to both positive and negative effect. If we pause a moment and think about these words, they really don’t make any sense.
No one can make us feel – our feelings are uniquely internal, something we generate only by ourselves and for ourselves. It’s how we allow the influence of external forces to impact us that perpetuates our resulting feelings.
Then why do some people transport us to cloud nine or push our proverbial buttons, elicit specific feelings without any seeming effort? Even the mere mention of such a person’s name can have the same effect as their physical presence.
Perhaps a prior interaction made us feel ecstatic, or down in the dumps, and our memory triggers feelings similar to those from the earlier encounter. Or maybe the person reminds us of someone with whom we’ve had an experience that left an indelible memory with equally memorable feelings.
In my younger days, especially as a teenager, my mother’s and my hands might as well have been glued to each other’s buttons. Every other conversation seemed to set one of us off, resulting in an all too frequent tension between us.
I’m grateful those days are long gone, but in all my humanness, I occasionally still have one of those experiences. I just had the opportunity to spend a week with my dear mother, and living with her for an entire week presented a few such opportunities.
The difference now that I have much greater self-awareness is that I’m more apt to catch myself in the moment and in so doing, self-diffuse instead of self-implode.
The first morning of my visit, as I pulled into the garage after making a coffee run, I found Mom waiting at the door to tell me I’d failed to close the garage door when I’d left. Subconsciously, I immediately began to tense up at being scolded, heels digging in to defend myself.
Within seconds, I recognized my old response pattern to feeling like my buttons had been pushed. I realized how ridiculous was this old way of being and paused to ask myself what was Mom really trying to tell me? In all likelihood, she wasn’t chastising me simply for the sake of reminding me who’s still the resident matriarch of her house.
Mom needed to point out something that was important to her, and all I needed to do was acknowledge her. Instead of getting angry at the misperception of being scolded, I apologized. I reassured her that I’d never do anything intentionally to jeopardize her safety and that I’d be more mindful going forward.
The conversation took only a few minutes, and that’s all there was of it. In the past, something as benign as this might have exploded into an argument with no good end that could have put a damper on our entire week together.
The thing is, when we feel as though our buttons have been pushed, no one outside of us is causing our reaction.
When we feel a certain way in the presence or absence of another, that person isn’t making us feel how we feel; they’re evoking something within us that generates our feelings.
When we feel a certain way from a specific experience, it isn’t the activity itself that causes our feelings; it’s the self-selected emotions we associate with said experience that inform our resulting feelings.
The next time you feel your buttons being set off, hit pause and reflect on what truly might be happening instead of the assumptions on which the forming reaction is based.
Is someone intentionally causing you distress, or does the person or experience send you down memory lane to a similar time and place that was hurtful? Are the feelings bubbling up from what’s going on in that moment, or are they the by-product of an earlier wound that has yet to heal?
You may be surprised by the actual source of your feelings and find a doorway to heal and release something that no longer serves you, an opening that also saves the current purported perpetrator of your buttons from an unwarranted wrath.
In any case, taking pause will help turn down the intensity and make for a more manageable situation if it doesn’t dispel negative feelings altogether.
