Wednesday, December 21,
2011Today's Gift
You can feel only your own
feelings, not another person's.
Having empathy for those we love, and being able to
share their joys and sorrows, is part of our nature as warm, caring human
beings. Taken to an extreme, however, too much empathy can mean that we lose our
boundaries as emotionally separate individuals. When that happens, nobody
wins.
We're responsible for our own feelings. If we're too
deeply involved in another person's emotional state, we may not be truly aware
of our own feelings. If we take on someone else's response to a situation, we
lose our own in the process.
In any situation, particularly one that is highly
charged with negative emotions, we need to maintain a sense of self. If we allow
ourselves to be swept up in the anger, fear, grief, or despair of someone close
to us, we become less capable of giving help and support. Emotional maturity is
one of the goals of recovery. We progress toward it as we differentiate how we
feel from how another person appears to feel.
I can respect the feelings of others without
making them my own.
From the book Inner Harvest by Elisabeth L.
No comments:
Post a Comment