‘No one can make you feel anything’ — is that true?

The Problem with “No One Can Make You Feel Anything”

The Torah gives us so many instructions on how we need to interact with others whether through our speech or in how we consider them. And so all that shows that, while it’s true that we should always aspire to grow beyond our natural tendencies to be affected by others in our emotional world, our job is to make it a better place for everyone to be able to have their emotions kept safe through our appropriate Torah-aligned behavior that we are meant to be striving for.

The Energy Behind the Gift

The Sifsei Chaim brings a metaphor of a person giving someone else a gift. He says that the gift itself can be really beautiful, but if the person gives it without a smile, without warmth, then that’s what the person ends up receiving. But when a person gives a gift with warmth and with a smile, they’re giving the person the gift of themselves.

The Nervous System’s Wisdom

From a nervous system perspective, we know about people who give us a vibe, right?
“Oh, that person’s creepy.”
“Oh my gosh, she’s so nice.”

We get a sense of people. Below our cognitive level of understanding, we get an idea of who we are surrounded by. And when we give to others from a regulated place, that is the gift that we end up giving to them: regulation. When we’re dysregulated, that’s the “gift” that we give them: dysregulation.

Emotions as Signals of Unmet Needs

Now let’s take this a step further. When we feel anything in relation to what a person did, or how we interpreted what they said, it is pointing to an unmet need within us. It could be an unmet need from a very long time ago that has been within us, unmet, for a very, very long time. Or it could be something really straightforward in our current lives, as we are now.

And so, while it’s true that we are in charge of our responses to our feelings that are triggered by others, people always are doing things that impact us both for the positive and in negative ways.

From Self-Blame to Self-Understanding

What I hear from a lot of women is that they end up blaming themselves and feeling a lot of guilt and a lot of inner criticism that pops up when we have strong reactions to the actions of others.

And so, how can we move from blaming ourselves to self-understanding?

Well, that’s where Focusing comes in.

Focusing allows us to go deeper below our conscious understanding of the situation and really understand on a very deep level what is going on within us. Our bodies are having the response well before our cognitive understanding. Our bodies are there in the interaction with the other.

Listening to the Body First

And so, if we want to understand what’s truly going on within us, we need to move beyond our cognitive understanding of the situation and allow our bodies to speak.

It doesn’t mean that we need to agree with what our bodies are saying or follow through with what our bodies are saying, but we need to listen to what our bodies are saying.

First, we listen to what the body says.
Once the body has been fully heard, then we can access our higher selves and a more elevated way of understanding the situation.

But the first step is checking in with our bodies and seeing what our bodies have to say about the situation.

Ready to Go Deeper?

If this speaks to you and you’re looking to deepen your emotional work in a more feminine and embodied way, I invite you to join me:

🌿 In my upcoming Facilitator Training, or
🌿 At one of my upcoming Retreats

Both are grounded in nervous system work, Focusing, and Torah. You’ll learn how to bring compassion, clarity, and presence to the parts of you that have been trying to speak, maybe for a very long time.