No one Can Make you Feel Anything

“No one can make you feel anything”

People don't like this phrase. I understand why – it's triggering af. If no one can make me feel anything, then raging against other people, which is what I'm probably busy doing, is useless. It triggers the inner desire for justice in a way that is decidedly unsatisfying.

The truth is that the war is with myself, not with those around me.

The concerns about this phrase (that @Ana Del Castillo brings up in THIS video) are two fold:

One – that I am removing accountability for the abuser

and

Two – that I am essentially spiritually gaslighting you by saying your experience is not valid.

It feels important to me to clarify both elements of this phrase by taking a deep dive into the truth of this miraculous belief, “No one can make me feel anything.”

Despite these two concerns, I find this phrase to be one of the single most empowering beliefs, crucial to the emotional individuation of any human... but as such a powerful tool, I agree that we must be very careful of how we use it.

By these words, “No one can make you feel anything” the emphasis is importantly on the word make. Our emotions are internal processes that come from the response of our nervous system to our PERCEPTION of our experience. There is no denying the truth that they are birthed within us.

A Note On Perception and Story

This alone requires us to back up one more notch and say that each person's perception is unique. That means something that feels deeply threatening to me might feel genuinely pleasurable to you and vice versa.

My perception is governed by something called the Reticular Activating System (or RAS) which filters out all information I ever receive based on what I am focused on and what I have decided is valuable. The RAS filters by generalizing, distorting, and deleting information which means it's capable of feeding me a completely different story about reality than someone with different values and focuses.

Us humans, then, are all having different experiences of the same events.

A helpful and empowering way to think about the RAS and my own radically unique experience of being alive is that it is affected by the story I tell myself.

What is happening is happening. What I tell myself about what is happening is what I am experiencing.

Let's demonstrate with an example:

I am driving down the road and in front of me I see a car wreck – one car fish tails, hits another car, both end up suddenly upside down in front of me. I hit the brakes but not enough and not in time, and run straight into the upturned vehicles.

That is what happened. What I experience – as in, what I FEEL – will be dictated by how I filtered what happened which means it will be hugely influenced by the story I tell myself about what happened.

My brain creates the story almost immediately; so quickly, in fact, that I might not notice it is a story.

Perhaps my story looks like: “That horribly inconsiderate driver just caused me to wreck”

This will create a certain set of feelings in my body that might look like: anger, fear, righteous indignation

Perhaps my story instead looks like: “I failed miserably at safely driving just like I've failed at everything”

Those feelings might look like: self pity, sadness, hopelessness

Perhaps my story instead is: “God/Pachamama/Some higher being chose for me to be here at this moment and endure this tragedy for a reason”

Those feelings might look like: gratitude, resignation, determination

So, you see, whatever I am feeling I might attribute to what I blamed (myself, the other person, or Sky Daddy/etc.) but the truth is none of those entities created my feelings: the story I told myself created them.

The experience of abuse through this lens

With this new context, let's look at the important detrimental elements called forth, accountability for the abuser and validation for myself.

I would like to first acknowledge that by declaring an abuser, we have added an evaluation to a situation which may or may not be true.

Me feeling abused (neurodivergent sidenote: this is NOT a feeling, it is a belief all entangled with emotions) is a valid experience that I am worthy of responding to within myself... but does not inherently create an abuser. If you've ever been perceived as an abuser by someone for, say, setting a totally reasonable boundary (“No I would prefer not to receive pictures of your genitals, thank you”), you can understand the truth of this.

To understand how abuse and “No one can make me feel anything” intertwine, let's take a concrete and physical example.

Example: You are minding your own business in your own home when someone breaks in, attacks you with a baseball bat, and leaves.

All can agree that this is, objectively speaking, abuse. So, did they make you feel something?

Well... yes and no. They did indeed physically FORCE you to feel the blow of the baseball bat. This is relevant. Physicality is the one way in which someone can indeed MAKE us feel something.

But what emotions do you experience right after that? Do you feel anger? Do you feel fear? Do you feel sadness? Do you feel guilt?

These things they did not make you feel. Certainly their actions impacted you, as all actions do... but what that impact is is determined by you and you alone.

This means that at the moment our brain is determining the story, we stand in radical power over our experience. At this moment, the story I choose will dictate the experience my body has, and if I may cultivate awareness and choose wisely, my experience can be magick.

So when I choose to acknowledge that I am in control of how I feel, despite what happened to me, I remove a little bit of power from my abuser.

This phrase, then, “No one can make me feel anything” ultimately radically empowers the true victims of perpetrated situations.

Could it also, however, serve to remove accountability from a true abuser? The answer in my opinion is: it certainly could. Used incorrectly, especially in the face of psychological abuse, this phrase can invalidate my experience and ultimately add so much doubt, which is in itself a tactic of psychological abuse.

Personal Responsibility, Validation, and Sovereignty

We must use care within ourselves that this phrase is not serving as spiritual gaslighting, invalidating the experience of folks who are and feel victimized. How can we avoid doing that?

I do not see that it could be any more true that I create my own feelings through my perception. But this truth does not stand alone. It stands arm in arm with truths like, I am a social creature, and I stand in response to other, and My actions impact those around me.

To rely solely on the phrase “No one can make me feel anything” is to stand inside of the teenage stage of emotional intelligence – selfishly isolating my experience and not yet taking responsibility.

This stage is very useful if you've been at the childhood stage of emotional intelligence – stuck feeling like all of your emotions are forced upon you by others – but is not the end of the road.

Personal responsibility is the ingredient to be added here – my own and others'. When no one can make me feel anything, I must take responsibility for my own feelings which means it's my job to validate my own experience.

If I am feeling angry and sad in response to the twin towers falling, that is valid. If I am feeling angry and sad in response to being lovingly offered ice cream, that is also valid.

My feelings are valid simply by existing, and I can honor that validity by taking responsibility for them.

In other words, my feelings become more valid by recognizing that they came from within me.

Though my feelings are valid, the stories I tell myself about them may not be.

Whether or not someone was actually acting in an abusive manner, if I feel victimized my feelings are completely valid whether or not they reflect the truth of the situation. My own nervous system is not an objective judge and jury. It is a personal reflection of the totality of my existence responding to the now.

The objective truth of the situation is irrelevant to my feelings, and by recognizing this I can allow my feelings to be relevant on their own merit, without requiring “proof” or external validation.

By internally validating my experience, taking responsibility for that experience, and recognizing that no one else can make me feel anything, I stand in deeply empowered sovereignty.

Now I can hold myself accountable for my feelings, which will hopefully lead me to make radically different choices around my experiences of abuse. I can advocate for myself by setting boundaries or asking for help, by ending bad relationships and cultivating healthy ones.

My own personal accountability becomes a super power of decisive action. With all these elements in play, I stand in Sovereignty.

Looking for some help stepping into these empowered mindsets? Book a free first session to apply to work with me