What You Don't Feel, Someone Else Will | #12

We can avoid our feelings, refuse to talk about them, or convince ourselves they aren't affecting us. But that doesn't mean they've disappeared. Our feelings are still showing up in how we behave, how we respond to other people, and what happens between us in our relationships.

Feelings also give us information. And when we don't take the time to understand what they're telling us, we can end up responding to the person in front of us for something that isn't entirely about them.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why avoiding or denying our feelings doesn't stop them from affecting our relationships.
• How feelings can give us information about what's happening within us.
• Why being unable to sit with our own feelings can make it difficult to hold space for someone else's.
• How trying to fix, minimize, or move someone through a feeling can sometimes be about our own discomfort with what they're feeling.
• Why the person who triggers a feeling isn't always the person the feeling is actually about.

Episode Thoughts to Sit With

“A person who cannot hold their own feelings cannot hold your feelings. And that is not a dig. That is not shaming anybody. That is the truth.”

“Instead of him sitting with his own discomfort around that, he kept trying to fix my quote unquote problem. But I didn't have a problem. I had a feeling and I was willing to feel the feeling.”

“Feelings are always giving us data. And when we refuse to look at the data, we can use what is coming at us and put it onto people around us when it really doesn't have anything to do with them.”

“Just because somebody did something that initiates a feeling within us, doesn't mean they're the problem all the time. So we have to be able to process the data so that we can be more accurate with ourselves and we can engage relationally with those around us in a more accurate, caring and kind way.”

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Join me over on Substack at The Better Question for more of what I’m thinking about and exploring. https://ajarutledge.substack.com/

To get in touch about the show: ajarutledgecoaching@gmail.com

Thank you for listening to The Reality Between Us.