When I was younger I spent far too much of my time on dwelling and stressing over pretty much everything.
Due to my low self-esteem, I was constantly worried about what the people in my life thought about me and I didn’t know how to cultivate healthy relationships.
Friends, family, strangers, it didn’t matter, they could all affect how I felt because I didn’t have any boundaries.
Even now I have to stop myself from allowing outside influences to control how I feel.
For example, sometimes when a friend responds to me a certain way I’ll start to overanalyze their message and assume that they could be mad at me. My mood will change and I won’t be able to focus on anything else.
I have learned that 99 times out of 100 I am reading into absolutely nothing and it’s a reminder that I am allowing myself to fall into old behavior that I am still trying to change.
We let people and circumstances control our lives if we let them affect our moods and state of mind.
Success Consciousness
So why do we allow ourselves to get so upset over the actions or words of other people?
And the biggest question why do we let other people hold power over us to control our emotions?
Recently I received a comment from someone who I believe had good intentions about an article I wrote regarding what I learned from my narcissist ex.
I felt myself becoming upset as I read the words saying that I should have stayed a naive girl and becoming part of the "me too" movement wasn’t the answer to stop letting in toxic relationships.
It ended by saying it sounded like I had become exactly like my ex.
Then I realized that they had derived their own conclusion. They didn’t know everything that had happened between the lines.
They didn’t understand why that particular relationship had shaken me so much due to the emotional and physical abuse that I had changed so much.
I was letting someone who didn’t even know me control how I was feeling. I felt like I owed them a response, or explanation to make them understand.
Then I remembered, I had absolutely no obligation to make them understand.
When we put our feelings out on a public platform we are letting the world comment and judge as they desire.
If you have a presence on social media you are going to get negative comments. It’s just part of the game.
Something that has worked well for me is working on being more emotionally detached when it comes to the comments of strangers.
For someone as empathetic as I am, it’s been extremely difficult but I knew that if I didn’t get better I was going to end up spiraling after every negative comment.
Being emotionally detached isn’t good in all aspects of life, but in these situations, it can prevent you from having expending unnecessary emotional energy into a situation that you cannot change.
Take a moment to observe your thoughts and take the time to really feel them.
If you are able to face and work through your feelings you can deal with them in a rational way instead of trying to ignore them and obsessing later.
At one point or another in our lives, we have most likely given people power over our lives and our emotions.
We may have let them control if we feel loved, safe, content, and happy when we need to be the person in charge of what we feel.
You can try to help other people understand the inner workings of your mind, but you are just telling part of your story.
The reality is that no one will ever be able to know exactly what you feel or who you are except for you.
Ensuring that you have control over your feelings and emotions will prevent other people from pulling at your strings because the only person who should have that power is you.
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