“We are responsible for our own feelings“ is a major aspect of mediation, coaching and „non-violent communication“.

For me, this aspect was difficult to understand in the beginning, and I always had an example where it is not supposed to be. Over time, however, I realized that it really is always the case.

The trigger may lie with the others or with the circumstances. However, dealing with the trigger is up to us.

The utterance of another person can cause anger in us if it criticizes or insults us. But another utterance can also cause joy if it is an appreciative statement for us.

First of all, an utterance is just a series of sound waves, in fact pressure differences in the air.

Our sensor in the ear perceives these sound waves and converts them into sounds in our brain.

These sounds that put our brains into words when they can interpret and assign sound waves as such.

Our brain in turn converts these sounds into words if it can interpret and assign these sound waves as such.

In a language that is completely foreign to me, sound waves remain.

If our brain now recognizes the words, a sense is assigned to the whole. We then have a meaning of the sound waves.

Our brain does this all by itself.

What does our consciousness interpret into this?

For example, „That’s a nice, loving statement“ or „Outrageous, he can’t say that“.

We see that in the beginning there are only pressure differences in the air, and in the end a feeling of joy or pain can arise.

The crucial point is that the path from the pressure wave to the triggering of our feelings runs through our brain.

We make the feeling ourselves and we have the choice of interpretation.

This is an important point of „personal responsibility“. It is also related to Rumi’s statement:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there”.

There are even completely identical statements or actions, which can trigger different evaluations in different people and then corresponding follow-up feelings.