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Feelings – Part 3 - Why do people always remember how you made them feel?

Updated: Jul 21, 2020

Feelings are delicate. They are so delicate to the point that people never remember what you said to them, but they always remember how you made them feel. But why is this the case?

This is something I am still trying to figure out but in this blog I am going to share my thoughts on this.

Being bi polar I have realised when I am happy, I am very excitable. On the flip side when I am sad, I can become very down, angry and my mood can vary in an instant from one extreme to the other.

I also realise there are times I forget what others say to me or what others did for me, but for some reason I always remember how others made me feel. This is of course the same for many of us.

Now I am rephrasing this saying to say I remember how I have felt in a situation as a result of another person’s behaviour towards me. This empowers me; why do I need to make any effort towards a person if they are going to behave in a manner that makes me feel bad about myself?

This is something I never thought about or did before, but by doing so I never have to be made to feel bad about myself again as a result of others’ behaviour towards me.

I have noticed that there are many people who do make me feel good about myself. So if I focus my efforts on these people, I always feel good too.

Previously I always treated others equally regardless of how they treated me and one could say this is lack of self respect, not respecting my feelings enough to keep going back to a situation where I am ‘made to feel’ bad.

From today onwards I am gaining self respect by respecting my feelings.

Thinking about this, no one made me feel bad, it is how I interpreted the situation in my mind. I thought what that person is doing is not right and took it in a bad way, personally and as a result, I felt bad.

Looking at this from another perspective, is the person intentionally trying to make me feel bad? Could it be that they do not know any better way to behave in the situation than the way they are behaving? Could it be that they are not even aware of their behaviour towards me, and are doing it subconsciously whilst going through their day to day tasks?

An example of bad behaviour is ignoring others for no reason.

I have never ignored people, but throughout my life I have been on the receiving end of being ignored many times by others and sometimes it has been on purpose for long periods of time too, nine months to be specific. I have realised that these people are actually hurting themselves. For me, I have a tendency to be very direct to others or lash out when angered, moreso in personal situations. That said, I am able to control myself in a professional environment. Occasionally, the person on the receiving end does not appreciate the way I express myself (or the tone used) and therefore decided to remove me from their lives. Sometimes it could be that my behaviour or tone was positive, too positive for the other person's liking too.

This is exactly what happened in a professional environment, where an individual ignored me for nine months, and I did not lash out or say anything I thought out of order, except be myself; a friendly and bubbly person trying to get to know the team. After some time, it came up in conversation with others and I found out this individual had treated many others this way too, so it was nothing personal to me but I did not feel that way. I did not feel that way after my contract had been extended, so I quit the job quickly into another which I still was unhappy in, but nevertheless I was away from this individual who ‘made me’ feel bad about myself due to their behaviour towards me.

I never thought differently back then, but now I do and I don’t blame this person for how they treated me, as they were probably hurting themselves. Someone probably ignored them and they thought this was the best way forward, but unfortunately it isn’t. They never got shown a good path, so unfortunately continued treating others this way, such as myself.

Looking at this another way, I have never removed anyone from my life ever and I allow everyone in. For some, I may keep contact to a minimum but I have always spoken to everyone. I look at it as people who may not be so good for me have removed themselves from my life, which means I now have space to have better people come into my life.

Going back to others ignoring people, perhaps they have been hurt by something said to them or a certain situation. If that is the case and you want the person back in your life, all that can be done is for the other person to apologise where needed. Be kind to this person, have doors open and ready for if and when they do decide to come back into your life. Apart from this, there isn’t anything else that can be done, as relationships are two ways. The hurt person needs to acknowledge that ignoring isn’t the best method of resolving the relationship or communicating with others, provided they want to do this. If they don’t, then I guess it doesn’t matter and all you can do is let them be.

Coming back to the question, why do people always remember how you made them feel? I believe it is because of how the situation is interpreted in your mind, and the intensity of the thoughts in your mind about the situation. The more intense the situation is made to be in your mind, the more you will feel a certain way, be it happy, sad or another emotion.

From writing in my blog on feelings, I have realised feelings are more than delicate, they are very complex, and there are so many views on this.

Summary

I have shared many ideas in this blog so I would like to summarise the key ideas below.

● Feelings are delicate and complex.

● Others never remember what you said or did, they always remember how you made them feel.

● No one ‘makes one’ feel bad, it is how it is interpreted in one’s mind.

● The feelings one has of a situation is based on the intensity of how a situation is viewed in one’s mind.

● We all have ups and downs, some are more extreme than others and there are ups and downs some can’t understand which can result in people ignoring you.

● People ignore others for many reasons – they could be hurt by your behaviour or from past situations that have nothing to do with you, they don’t know how else to handle the situation, they may not even realise they are doing it, etc.

● If others make you feel bad, you don’t need to keep going back for more, but you can still be polite to the person if they are around, I view this as having self respect for your feelings.

● Relationships are two ways, if others choose to ignore you, all you can do is apologise where needed and be available if they ever decide to come round.

● When people remove themselves from your life by ignoring, you create space to allow better things to come into your life, or even the same person, but a better version of them at a later point in time.

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