I have been thinking about how I feel responsible for one of my parent’s emotions. I hadn’t truly noticed it until recently. I am expertly attuned to any and every event, emotion, person, experience that may trigger a reaction in them. My primary thoughts focus on how they will react, there is no thought given to me or anything else in the world. When I first noticed this pattern I started to think that I shouldn’t be doing that, it’s stupid, I’m an adult I shouldn’t be concerned about someone else’s emotions for events that I can and cannot control.

However, the more thought we gave to this the more we began to come to a bigger resolution or understanding. If we remove judgement from the word ‘should’ and instead come with an open and curious mind it can be understood differently. Yes we shouldn’t feel or be responsible for another persons feelings. Why do we do it then? The answer is quite simple to such a complicated topic. If we don’t manage things that affect their emotional state or response we then have to deal with the fall out. The fall out of which has always been worse than just managing the initial events to prevent a fall out.

So, it makes perfect sense to do this. Some people may challenge this and argue that you need to let the fall out happen. However, a fall out might not be a safe place to be. This does not have to be a physically unsafe place but rather an emotional or mental toll that ends up making you worse. I think for those of us who dread the fall out as this severe speak from experience with the taken responsibility for the parent’s feelings an unconscious learned skill in maintaining a level of safety.

You may wonder then when do we get to give ourselves consideration or allow ourselves to have a genuine reaction to things if we always consider a parent’s emotions before our own. I would argue to an extent we are considering our own emotional well-being to the event by protecting ourselves to give us time to process the event at a later stage. If an emotional parental fall out occurs we still do not get to consider and process our emotional response as we now are overwhelmed in the fall out period.

There is no wrong way to respond to anything. Instead it is understanding why we respond to certain events the way we do. If we can understand ourselves more and why we do what we do it can remove an energy that was previously there. If we no longer place shame on our responses to baring the emotional responsibility for a parent instead giving understanding that we do it for safety, I believe it benefits us. Even though our response has not changed to managing our parent’s emotional state, we have changed in our response to why we do it. For us, that makes it a little easier to do.

So to say it in a very off hand way, managing a parent’s emotions may simply lead to an easier life, or rather a safer way of living.

JF