Taking ownership, and responsibility, for our feelings and reactions in life, is often challenging. It requires us to do some self-evaluation. By the time we reach adulthood, however, we've likely had many grief experiences, which contributes to a victim mindset so many grievers have but don't acknowledge. And, acknowledgment is difficult, too, because you can't "un-know" something.
Once you know you're fulfilling the role of being a victim in your life and other people are responsible for your happiness, well, it is then up to you to do something about it. There is a gap, however, that exists in-between.
Today, I discuss the importance of taking even just 1% responsibility. I provide real-life examples of how not taking personal responsibility for our feelings looks like in everyday life, and hopefully, by the end of the episode, I've sparked some self-reflection.
It can feel disheartening to know that no matter what you do or say, you're not going to change others' behavior towards you, but if you can take 1% responsibility, no matter what anyone would ever do to you will never matter. You are the captain of your ship (and your heart) - no one else.
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If you or anyone you know is struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, there are free resources available HERE.
If you'd like to share your grieving voice on the show or want to share your thoughts about an episode, please send an email to victoria@theunleashedheart.com.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters. ______
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Victoria Volk:
This is Victoria of the unleashedheart.com, and you're listening to grieving voices, a podcast for hurting hearts who desire to be heard. Or anyone who wants to learn how to better support loved ones experiencing loss. As a 30 plus year griever. In advanced grief recovery methods specialist, I know how badly the conversation around grief needs to change. Through this podcast, I aim to educate gravers and non Grievers alike, spread hope and inspire compassion toward those hurting. Lastly, by providing my heart with yours and this platform, Grievers had the opportunity to share their wisdom and stories of loss and resiliency. How about we talk about grief, like we talked about the weather? Let's get started. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of grieving voices. Thank you for listening today. And if you didn't catch last week's episode on Academy Award recovery, I hope you check that out where I talk about the society's favorite word, which is fine. Often we are asked How are you? And typically we respond with, I'm fine. So if you want to hear more about what fine means, check out that episode. But today we are going to talk about taking 1% responsibility. And there are approximately five more episodes on this educational series. And this one actually, is one of my favorites, because it was the hardest for me to learn. But it's one of the most important that I wish to share. And I'm sprinkling some personal story. But I want to get started with this is one of the hurdles of grief. Because we have this incorrect belief that other people or events are responsible for our feelings, we might say things like so and so made me so angry, or so and so ruined my day. I think all of us could say this about COVID right now, couldn't we? Actually just told someone today that they had asked if I had taken a vacation or went away on vacation and I said nope, COVID ruin those plans, which COVID did. But the only thing I have control over and the only thing you have control over when it comes to COVID is our reaction to it. And I'm pretty sure we all agree that there are a lot of people not handling it very well. And as a result treating other people quite poorly, actually. Which is incredibly unfortunate. But this brings my whole point in this episode of why this is so important for us to understand as it applies to grief. Because as the whole world replies and responds and reacts to this pandemic, we're all responding differently. Many of us, myself included, have a really difficult time taking ownership and how we react and how we feel about it, right? Another comment that people might say is, if so and so hadn't done such and such to me, I would be okay. Like you did this. Now I feel this way. These are very common responses. And when it comes to grief, this is what keeps us stuck. When we don't take responsibility for our feelings and our actions we suffer. And this influenced learning, you guessed it begins in childhood. As I've talked about before and several of the previous episodes, what we learn in childhood, about grief is what we resort to when we are adults. So as children If dad or mom said to you, you make me so happy, or you make me proud or don't make your father mad. I heard that one many times. So what we learn in growing up as children and hearing these things, is that the actions that we take cause the feelings of others. And if I can make them feel something, then they can make me feel something. And I bet you're just like, oh yeah, you're listening to this and you're like that's so true, because it is, it is so true. And this keeps us stuck in this victim mentality. I have a whole chapter about victim mentality in my self published book, the guided heart moving through grief and finding spiritual solace, which I published in 2017. And it's on Amazon, if you're interested. But I've whole chapter devoted to this because it was a truly a huge struggle for me. And at times, I find it can be still, Eleanor Roosevelt has said, no one can make you feel bad about yourself without your permission. And I wholeheartedly agree. But growing up in hearing these messages and growing up and not understanding, as an eight year old child, when I lost my father, how to process those feelings and then really been a difficult child in a way because I cried a lot, actually, my family got together recently and my brother said to me, you cried a lot. And I did, I think I was truly a very sad child. And I would go to hide to cry. Because it was like shameful, I felt ashamed for crying for having the feelings I had. And that's why I wanted to hide them. I didn't feel safe expressing those feelings. We give all of our personal power away, when we allow others or events to be 100% responsible for our feelings. And in doing this, we also make them responsible, are those events responsible for ending those feelings as well, for making us feel better or for making the situation right in our own minds, right? Like, we look to that person then to fix it, like you screwed up, you made me feel this way. And now you need to fix it. And in loss, we may reflect back on all of the things through our childhood, young adulthood, depending on the loss occurred. And think back at all of that, what we feel are offenses that were done towards us to make us feel a certain way. And we will continue to look at that person that they need to fix this. They need to own what they did. What happens if they never do? What do you do, then, if you are hanging your happiness hat on what someone else does or the way someone else responds to your pain that you feel they inflicted, that's a lot of power you're giving away, folks, when you realize that that's never gonna happen. You either then accept it and move on and process those feelings. But if you are not able to do that, you're stuck in emotional jail. And this is why grief can keep us stuck. Let me give you an example to illustrate this point a little bit further. So let's say someone is sitting at a red light. And I've done this I'm sure you have to where you kind of daydreaming and not really paying attention to the light. Well, then it changes. And that person behind you just blares their horn and you get startled and what do you do right away? What is your knee jerk reaction? Are you going to roll down your window and say hey thanks, thanks for letting me know the light changed, I was just daydreaming, or you likely going to give them the bird in the rear view or curse under your breath. It's more likely the later. We are the architects of our own discomfort. And we fail to recognize that we are responsible for the feelings that result from our attitudes and actions. Let me ask you another question. What ruins the picnic, the rain or our reaction to the rain? You cannot do anything about the rain. However, what you do have control over is your reaction to it. The same is true for almost all losses, for example losing my father, what was causing my grief? Was it the loss or my reaction to the loss over the course of the next 30 years? Well, it was both. And although I couldn't undo what had happened, I could do something about my reaction to it. And I'll tell you what, it took me 30 years, more than 30 years to do something about it. And for a lot of years prior to that most of those years actually. I felt like a victim. I felt like a victim of that loss. I felt like a victim to the circumstances that I was then after that loss, I felt stuck. I was absolutely stuck in my grave. But what we can do is we can acquire skills to help us complete our relationship to the pain and the heartache caused by what happened. You see, in overtime, we develop of all of this influence learning. We develop an automatic critical response toward others, or circumstances that we hold responsible for our feelings. So rather than examining ourselves hich I was not doing to be h nest, until grief recovery. I take that back, about 2014, when I started to really dive in o personal development that' when I really started to o some self examination. But p ior to that, I had that critica response where I was examini g the thoughts and behavi rs and actions of others w o I held responsible for my h ppiness. When it comes to the past, we can only control our current reaction. Otherwise, we will forever feel like a ictim. We sustain and recreate the pain of the past through our own memories as well. Pe ple may say, let it go move n, you can't change the pas. However, what they are likely holding on to the same belief system about personal respons bility that you are a out something in their life nothing changes, until you ta e responsibility for your recov ry. And so the idea is o take 1% responsibility, which can open your head and your h art to a new way of thinkin and challenge those old worn ut belief systems and patterns o behavior that are keeping you tuck in your grief. So the ne t time you find yourself in traf ic, and you've feel yours lf just boiling up with motional anger, consider that you have the power of choice i that moment, in any other time that there is a stimulus. And ou have a thought, which then leads to a feeling and then to a reaction or an action that you ll take. Think of that loo? The stimulus, thought, feeling action, loop and think abou this podcast episode. How do yo get off that loop? How do you et off the hamster wheel of b ing and feeling like a victim o the circumstances and to the o her people in your life who mak you feel a certain way, wher you believe, make you feel a certain way. My husband has favorite phrase that he uses and says to our kids, they'll say there is no such thing as try. You either do or you don t. And I would like to say that e can also apply this to grief hat we either take 1% respon ibility or we don't. B t we very much can try, right? I's recognizing when we're on that loop of stimulus, thought feeling, action, loop, that i not serving us that is keeping us stuck in these old thought and patterns and behaviors. Th t keeps us stuck in certain elationships. Think about this episode. As you move about your day. The circumstances tha come across your path, the peop e that perhaps influence you feelings throughout the da. And know that if you're allowi g that to dictate your feeli gs, even the rest of the day, e can have something happened to us at eight in the morni g and it can do rail us the en ire day. I experienced this I know what it's like I know I et it. It's life in general. It's not easy. I totally ge it. But to have the awar ness when we are stuck in that attern. That's when we can cha ge how we respond and react. So hope you enjoyed this episode. heck me out on Instagram a the unleashed heart. I' e several episodes also li ted on my website the unleas chart calm there's a link to Grieving Voices Podcast ther. I also have a link on that pa e on the podcast page to bec me a guest which I'm taking subm ssions now. If you have a griev ng story, grief story that you would like to share. I'm open to all sorts of losses to be shared on this platform to give you the time, space and platform to share your grieving story. In the hopes of educating others, what you wish would have been there for you how you wish people would have shown up for you unhelpful things that maybe have been said to you, as you're grieving. All of this, the purpose of this podcast is to educate and to raise awareness, that grief is something we really need to start talking about, like we do about the weather. It's not a plague. It's not some sort of thing that's going to pass over time. Grief is here to stay, you know, and there's no getting around that. We will all experience grief. We have experienced grief, we're all grieving something in terms of COVID. So yeah, submit your story to me through the Contact link or through the link on the web on the website. And I'm also looking for experts whose work is around grief or and whose work has been influenced by their grieving grief story as well. So if that sounds like you, I encourage you to reach out as well. There are about I think six episodes left in this educational series. And then I will be going live with the interviews. And I'll have some also solo episodes in there as well throughout. So that's me for today. I hope this podcast episode and this message finds you well and I will catch you next week. Until then, much love. From my heart to yours. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it because Sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being hurt with yours. And if you're hurting know that what you're feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend