Sonya Triggs-Wharton

It's Not You, It's Them

Lots of interesting stuff has been happening to me the last couple of weeks. And while I’d like to stay in my happy, rose-colored world and tell you about how much peace, love and happiness I’ve experienced and how wonderful people are, it’s just not happening this way right now.

This is not to say that my life isn’t great.  For the most part, everything is going pretty well. I’m in my last year of my Master’s Degree Program (for Clinical Mental Health Counseling) and have entered into my internship season. That means that in addition to taking a class and learning the theory, I finally get to actually work with people (under supervision of course). This means I get to spend wonderful, glorious hours listening to my clients talk about their deepest problems and am privileged to help them to gain clarity, find hope and begin the process of digging out to begin a new direction in their lives.

This part of my life is great. No complaints there.

Not so great is all the additional flak I’ve been getting. It would be an overstatement to say that everyone has decided as a group to rain on my parade. But it would be accurate to say that somehow, by achieving clarity and purpose in walking my path, I seem to attract a lot more negativity than I used to.

On two occasions in the last few weeks, I’ve been happily in my own world, at peace and in harmony with my immediate environment, and then – Wham! Out of nowhere, someone has lit into me. These two persons, while not exactly yelling at me, did in fact raise their voices at me, shock me out of my happy place and make me truly question if this world has gone mad.

See, I EXPECT drama when my life is off-kilter. I’ve had a bad day, my co-worker or classmate has had a bad day, so hey, perfect environment for a little conflict and deflected anger. Or I’m sleep-deprived and cranky and hubby has had a workaholic’s week, then of course we’ll both be a little teed off over the dishes that are STILL in the sink two days later.

Bad days = bad encounters. That’s pretty much guaranteed.

But somehow when all is going well and I’m blissfully unaware of any troubles brewing on the horizon, I’m always shocked to my very core that conflict could dare intrude on such a blissful state. I always think, well, I’m not putting any drama out there in the universe, so why the heck am I getting it thrown at me?

Until I realize….

It’s not me, it’s them.

Now, I have no problem taking responsibility when I’ve messed up. If I’ve done something wrong (and know about it), I say I’m sorry, try not to let it happen again and am very comfortable saying the words “I was wrong.”  My ego (after many trials and tribulations) is strong enough to handle being in the wrong and admitting it. I feel no loss of face and actually think it’s healthy to be humbled regularly by the normal situations in life.

So I’m good with that.

What is not so pleasing is when I’ve done nothing demonstrably wrong (or, more likely, there is some form of miscommunication or misunderstanding) and the other party decides I must be to blame. So their bad day + a bad situation = me being reamed out.

After years of personal therapy, meditation and deep thought, I have decided it’s rarely worth yelling back when someone yells at me. As a younger person, I reserved the right to vehemently defend my territory and if that meant yelling, screaming or getting in your face, I was ready to go there. But with time and (slightly more wisdom), I’ve finally realized that I’m doing more harm to myself by yelling and getting upset than I could ever do to that other person. So in the interests of low blood pressure, peaceful thoughts and good karma, I usually try to work things out to a peaceful resolution.

So while being chastened this week by my two compatriots, I did not yell, I did not reply with anger or do anything that could be construed as adding fuel to the fire. Instead, I asked them to explain what they meant (i.e., how I was to blame), refuted their points calmly (I do believe in defending myself, which can be done in a peaceful way) and then moved on to other things.

But both incidents bothered me.

Until I realized….

It’s not me, it’s them.

Which reminded me of something else.

The surest way to know you are on the right path is the amount of crap you encounter along the way. See, there’s a balance for all the good acts that you do. Somehow, the more good you do, the more the universe seems to want to balance this out by throwing a few obstacles your way. You do good, help a few people out, life is going well – well, expect a few bumps in the road to balance this out.

The good thing about these obstacles or bumps is that they help you gauge your level of seriousness. If you are on the right path, encounter a few obstacles, and immediately want to give up, then you may to re-evaluate where you are. Either you’re not ready or you’re not on the right path. Conversely, if you find that these obstacles have strengthened your resolve, you should be reasonably assured that you are doing the right things.

But back to it being them and not you.

The truth of the matter is that sometimes you could be doing everything right, but situations and people around you could be so very wrong. Truly, someone yelling at you or reaming you out says a lot more about them than it does about you. Think about it. What type of person yells at somebody else anyway? Unless there is a justifiable reason for it, a person who yells is a person badly in need of a little self-discipline. A person who reams you out BEFORE getting all the facts has issues of his or her own that have absolutely nothing to do with you.

Reasonable, mature people don’t routinely yell at others or act precipitously. A reasonable, mature person makes some attempt to THINK before acting, doesn’t routinely go off half-cocked and certainly tries to make amends in the event he or she makes an error.

So if someone is behaving unreasonably towards you, there’s a very good chance that it’s more about them than it is about you. Keep in mind your own responsibility to atone and make amends, but understand that people can only act to the extent of their own emotional, mental and physical maturity. Also, that while you might be doing everything right, that does not mean all will be well with the world and the people around you. You too can only act to the extent of your own maturity level and your only responsibility is to continue to do good despite whatever obstacles are thrown in your way.

And the next time someone seems to have it in for you or acts irresponsibly, remember, it’s not you, it’s them!

Not Your Responsibility

You know how when you go up to somebody (say at your job) and you ask that person to help you with something and they politely refuse you with a statement such as, “That’s not my responsibility”? Or somehow indicate to you that what you’re asking is not covered in his or her job description?

Well, this is not the kind of ‘Not Your Responsibility’ that I’ll be talking about today. The kind of responsibility I will be talking about here is the responsibilities you decide to take on over and beyond your own which are interfering with your ability to get your own things done. And the responsibilities which are necessary to spur personal growth and development.

Let me give you an example. Say you are on a work committee that is responsible for collecting dry goods to donate to a homeless shelter. You and three other people meet and decide who is going to do what. You decide to send out email reminders to everyone in the company and keep them updated about how they are meeting their donation goals. Another person decides where to set up collection bins and a collection schedule, someone else creates flyers and the last person arranges a baked good sale to be able to donate some cash as well to the homeless shelter.

Let’s say that you do your part and send out the initial emails, the person setting up the bins sets them up, the flyers go out and the baked sale is planned and publicized. Then you hear that the one of the bins is overflowing as your committee person has been too busy to collect the dry goods. So you rush over to collect the dry goods and stack them beside your desk and then go and check the other bins to make sure they’re not too full either.

Then the person arranging the baked goods sale goes away for company training without having quite completed the arrangements. So you call him or her, find out who was going to participate, starting contacting them and then create new flyers to publicize the new event (since you couldn’t go forward on the original date due to poor planning). And the next week you go and re-check the bins (because your co-worker has again been too mysteriously busy to get the job done), which results in you having several boxes of dry goods by your desk which you then decide to come in on the weekend to organize and label (even though your committee had all agreed to do this as a team at the end), which takes you 5 hours until you find you’ve had enough and go home.

 The next week, you check the bins again (because your co-worker isn’t even returning your phone calls now), call everyone on the baked goods bakers list to make sure they’re still baking, buy whatever is needed as some drop out (which involves a late night grocery store run – thank goodness for those 24-hour stores!), come in early to set up, brush aside the co-worker who is finally back from training (as she is too out of the loop to help, much less organize the sale), spend the entire day running the baked goods sale, collect the money and then decide on the best time and place to make the bank run to deposit the money. Later that week, you realize the co-worker who was supposed to run the baked goods sale failed to set up a bank account as well, so you take time over lunch to do just that, deposit the money and then check the bins yet again when you return to the office and then send out a final email (your original job) letting the office know where you are in regards to helping out the shelter. Finally, you fall exhausted into bed that night and make plans to check bins again the next week before you are able to go to sleep.

Obviously my scenario is a little exaggerated (but not too much if you’ve ever served on a work committee), but you get the point. At what point in that scenario would you realize that what you are doing is not your responsibility?  It goes without saying that the further you get from your original contribution and work role, the less actual work you will be doing (at what your company actually pays you to do) and the more deeply you become involved in doing something that someone else should have taken care of in the first place.

Many people I know find it easy to sacrifice their personal and work time for the greater good or in the interests of team spirit. And there are always a few souls out there who are ready and willing to take advantage of their kind natures. It’s okay if this happens every once in a while. That would make it a good life lesson to learn about boundaries and who you can rely upon in a pinch and then you’ll walk away from that a better, wiser person. But it is not okay when it begins to interfere with your own responsibilities and commitments.

If you find yourself routinely picking up after someone, taking on someone else’s responsibilities and sacrificing your own time to do it, something’s wrong. You have to clearly delineate in your mind what is your responsibility and what is someone else’s responsibility. If you find people constantly taking advantage of your kindness, flexibility or big-heartedness, it’s time for you to stop.

Having boundaries does not mean saying no to everybody in your life. It’s a balance between meeting your needs and helping someone else meet their needs. You cannot make someone else take on personal responsibility, but you can certainly choose not to take it own yourself.

Helping people is great. Helping people as they are learning to help themselves is an even more wonderful and joyous experience. Taking away someone else’s responsibility and taking it on as your own is misguided. Not only does it mean more stress for you, but it actually robs them of the experience to grow into a responsible, mature person themselves.

They may actually be fully capable of doing that job and even more, but if you do it for them, you take away their opportunity to learn. You are an enabler of the worst sort. Think about it: you didn’t become the competent professional you are because someone else did all your work, did you? You became a competent professional because you were allowed the experiences and the opportunities which forced you to stretch beyond your comfort zone and move beyond the previous competencies you had. You gained confidence, savvy and know-how as you had more and more of these experiences until you became the person you are today.

So who are you to deny this experience to anybody else?

Besides helping them grow, these experiences are also crucial for you as well. They are crucial to you because as a friend, mentor or co-worker, you have to be able to stand out of the way and allow people to grow at their own pace and in their own timing. Even if (especially if) they are not doing things the way you want them to. Though you are wise and strong, you cannot be the person who dictates how another person grows. And if they do things differently than you do – but still get the job done – then so be it. Or if they discover they didn’t handle it right and have to start all over, even better. Of course you are there to offer advice, but you are not there to do the job for them. Rather than being an enabler in a negative sense, instead be someone who enables others to grow on their own terms. Allow your friends, co-workers and even relatives to find their own way in navigating various experiences in life. Mentor them, assist them in some ways and encourage them, but don’t do the job for them.

And if you falter in your reserve, just remember – it’s not your responsibility!

Be Blessed.