Loving someone doesn't mean taking responsibility for their emotions

you're doing too much babe

When you love someone, you want them to be happy. You want them to feel safe. you want them to be at peace.

Loving someone means caring about their experience and having compassion for their feelings.

But there is a big difference between caring about someone’s feelings and taking responsible for them.

When you take ownership of another person’s emotional state, you lose sight of their autonomy. No longer a separate being having an independent inner experience—their emotions become a part of you. Like an itch you need to scratch, a diagnosis you have to google, or an ingrown hair that must be plucked—their problems are your problems to solve.

Worst of all, their feelings are an obstacle to you feeling in control of your emotional state: i can’t be happy if they are unhappy.

This leads to resentment.

There are many reasons why you could feel like it is your job to regulate the emotions of someone you love.

If you grew up in a home with a lot of unpredictable emotional outbursts, when someone you love has big emotions, it can make you feel unsafe. so you do everything in your power to prevent that.

If you grew up in a home where you had to stifle your sensitivity; where no one asked you how you felt or told you it was okay to cry—you might do everything in your power to prevent a loved one from being upset because being upset is wrong.

If you grew up in a home with a parental figure that was emotionally unavailable, shut down or cold—you might experience someone you love’s sadness as abandonment.

If you were raised in a culture that taught you it was your job to complete your partner (all of us), you might feel if your partner is unhappy you have failed them and are a failure.

Although it might seem like you taking responsibility for another person’s emotions comes from deep love, it actually comes from a need to feel control over your environment.

That desire to feel safe and in control is totally valid. but the truth is you will never have control over another person’s emotional state. Nor should you.

You are doing too much babe. You need to cut yourself a break. You need to relinquish ownership over the person you love’s emotions. For better or for worse, this is the only way to have healthy attachment.

Does this mean you shouldn’t support people you love when they need you, be a shoulder to cry on, or help them problem solve? Absolutely not. But in order to truly be supportive, you have to recognize if them being upset is triggering you. Because if you are triggered, you are not really present. You are in the past. Back to a time when you didn’t have the freedom to have your own experience. Back to a time when your feelings were not valid. Back to a time when you felt inadequate. Back to a time when you felt unsafe.

You don’t feel bad because the person you love is feeling bad. You feel bad because them feeling bad is triggering past emotions in you that felt bad.

Rather than feeling responsible for another person’s emotions,