Am I responsible? Part II

“Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.”
— Stephen Covey, The Seven Habit of Highly Effective People

I referred to Stephen Covey’s book and the Eisenhower Matrix in a previous post “Time Management Didn’t Work.” In this context, I wanted to apply some business book learnings about being proactive to the issues of emotional responsibility.

Recall that my exercise over the past couple of weeks was to try to break down some of those things I feel guilty about and try to assess if I am “responsible” or if these feelings are misplaced. Over the couple week period, I noted the times where I felt guilty and wrote reflections on them. There were five of them!

The Cycle of Guilt

Of course, many of these reflections centered on people close to me in my life. While I have already given up my own privacy to reflect in this journal that I share with others, I want to be careful to respect the privacy of others! As such, I’ll limit my description of the five specific instances, but they shared some common elements:

• There was nothing left to “do.” Each of the situations where I felt some pings of guilt were ones where the underlying situation had more or less been resolved either logically in my own mind or with the people involved. There wasn’t anything else to “do” per se.

• If I resolved them logically in my own mind, it was because of understanding the emotional responsibility. I do have to hold responsibility for my own words, actions, and behaviors. Beyond that, I don’t have the responsibility to resolve how people feel. How people feel is something for them to hold.

• None of these situations was new to me. Each of these feelings of guilt was part of a recurring series. Even though I had either “resolved” them logically or even with the people themselves, they keep coming back. Why?

The understanding that I have these recurring feelings of guilt was actually pretty surprising to me. Normally, I don’t take the time to note them, but this exercise over the last couple of weeks fascinated me. Why do these feelings recur?

The problem is that there is a strange circularity in all this reflection. In the end of the day, the problem is that many of the things that caused recurring guilt were about how I responded to certain situations without the appropriate level of empathy. (I covered the “ATTUNE” method in a previous post. The “E” in “ATTUNE” is for “Empathy.”)

Reflecting on my behavior then makes me feel guilty. And then, guilt keeps me from being empathetic. The problem, as I’ve learned, is that what the individual does with guilt is focus on relieving that feeling of guilt. For me, my natural inclination to alleviate that guilt is by attempting to address solutions or engage in behaviors that can "right" the perceived wrong, which then keeps me from being present for others and truly being empathetic. Here’s my depiction of the vicious cycle of my guilt.

Some guilt can be positive

There’s a good piece in The Washington Post that explains our current understanding of guilt.

“We’ve only recently come to understand that guilt — historically perceived strictly as a distressing emotion — can be constructive… We now have a new concept of guilt as a potential source for growth. It can point us toward actions we can take to improve our lives.”

— Will Bynum, Associate Professor, Duke University School of Medicine

In essence, guilt makes us more aware. Recognizing our guilt can be healthy for our relationships. Our guilt about our behavior can focus us on the people we may have harmed and direct us to how we can do better in the future.

All good, right?

Why doesn’t it feel that way?

The problem for me is that this concept hasn’t been naturally working out this way, as somehow these feelings of guilt don’t resolve themselves on their own. They recur. Apparently, the problem here is that I haven’t been in touch with my feelings. By pushing them away, I was not allowing them to resolve.

My next set of exercises are around “self-empathy.” The concept is that self-empathy will help me resolve my guilt by allowing me to acknowledge my own feelings and experiences with kindness and understanding, rather than harshly judging myself. By treating myself with the same compassion that I would offer a friend or loved one in a similar situation, I should be able to let go of the negative self-talk that fuels feelings of guilt.

Why am I optimistic?

This principle of self-empathy very much reminds me of a concept I learned during a Dharma talk at a Buddhist retreat about “naming the discomfort.” The immediate tip was about sitting in a meditation position, which is hard to do for those who aren’t used to it. The concept is that once I become fully aware of the discomfort, I realize that the discomfort comes and goes, which helps me deal with it. I have applied this concept to not scratching bug bites, with the recognition that the itchiness just comes and goes on its own. There’s no reason to scratch! That works.

The broader concept is about “naming the discomfort.” In Buddhism, the first of The Four Noble Truths is the acknowledgment of suffering (“dukkha”). Recognizing the existence of suffering is a crucial first step towards resolving it. Therefore, acknowledging suffering is considered a key part of the Buddhist path to liberation from suffering.

While “suffering” refers to everything in Buddhism — birth, aging, illness, death, and so forth — it can be applied to something as small as an uncomfortable sitting position or an itchy bug bite. In this case, we can apply it to the feelings of guilt. Awareness of it is the first step, which is why my exercise was to note any feelings of guilt and deal with them.

Practicing Self-Empathy

So, this leads me back to the opening quotation. In Stephen Covey’s book, we learned about how this business book teaches us to react to unforeseen situations. Things don’t happen “to us”. Things happen. It is up to us to “be proactive.” We don’t worry about WHETHER a bear attack will attack us in the woods but rather proactively decide what we will do WHEN the bear attacks us. We get to choose how we react.

So, as I get to the practice of self-empathy, I will aim to take my learnings elsewhere from Buddhism and my learnings from business books previously read!. As I mentioned, I am optimistic!