Other People's Feelings Are Not My Responsibility, But Apparently My Face Is

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I have spent a lot of money on therapy learning that other people's feelings are not my responsibility. This was apparently an important lesson for me because I am a very committed people pleaser. I don't like people being upset with me, and even worse than someone being upset with me is someone misunderstanding me. I find being misunderstood genuinely horrifying. If you are mad at me for something I actually did, I can live with that. If you are mad at me because you think I meant something I didn't mean, I will give my life force to explaining the difference. This has not been a particularly useful quality in relationships. I've learned that when someone is upset by something I've said, my immediate assumption is that I haven't explained myself properly. So I explain it again. If they stay upset, this is evidence that I have still failed to adequately explain it, so I will explain it a third time, using slightly different words. From my perspective, I am trying desperately to make sure they understand what I actually meant. From their perspective, I have now spent twenty minutes explaining why their reaction to what I said is incorrect. I'm told this is also something I should stop doing. The healthier position, my therapist says, is something like this: I am responsible for what I say and how I say it. I should try to be kind. I shouldn't deliberately hurt people. But I am not responsible for controlling another person's reaction to something reasonable that I needed to say. But then... I took an interpersonal dynamics course recently where self-responsibility was one of the central concepts. The basic premise was that instead of assigning intentions to other people, you own your experience. You don't say, "You were trying to dismiss me." You say, "When you did X, I felt dismissed." The other person doesn't have to agree that they were dismissing you for your experience of feeling dismissed to be real. In a remarkably quick test of the limits of this concept, I was told later that same day that my facial expressions and tone sometimes made me seem nonchalant or disinterested. At one point I received feedback, said "okay" and nodded. I even remember trying to give a rueful smile because I had previously filed away that this is a thing people do to signify, "Yes, I understand the criticism and recognize this quality in myself." I had evidently not executed the full sequence correctly. Apparently I said okay too quickly and this was taken to be dismissive. I think I just process things quickly. By the time someone has finished telling me something, I've usually understood what they're saying and I'm already responding. But apparently even while learning not to people please, I should also learn to pause for a socially appropriate amount of time before accepting feedback so that the person giving it feels sufficiently heard. Unfortunately, my face had failed to communicate that their feedback was already being added to my permanent operating instructions. In fact, one of my many problems is that I am extremely willing to believe feedback about myself. If someone tells me my tone made them feel dismissed, I take a mental note. If multiple people tell me the same thing, I'm basically convinced. I then add it to my ever-expanding internal document, Interactions With People, and remember the new rule forever. Hence the rueful smile. There are only so many times you can hear that people experience you a certain way before "that's their interpretation and they're responsible for it" starts to sound less like self-responsibility and more like being oblivious. If people repeatedly misunderstand something I say, I explain it differently. If my tone is repeatedly interpreted in a way I don't intend, I work on my tone. If saying "okay" immediately makes people think I don't care about their feedback, maybe I wait two seconds before saying okay. But isn't this exactly the skill I'm supposed to be unlearning? The distinction is supposed to be between caring about someone's feelings and taking responsibility for them. I can care that something I said hurt you without automatically deciding I shouldn't have said it or taking it back. That sounds reasonable until the same thing keeps happening. If something I say repeatedly hurts people, of course I'm going to change how I say it. At some point, refusing to adjust because everyone else is responsible for their own feelings would be bizarre. Except if I start changing how I speak based on how other people are likely to receive it, I am once again anticipating other people's emotional reactions and modifying myself accordingly. Which is, unless I have seriously misunderstood several years of therapy, quite close to people pleasing. Maybe the answer is why I'm doing it. Am I changing because I genuinely think the feedback is valid, or because I shrivel inside at the thought of someone being unhappy with me? Unfortunately, I am perfectly capable of doing both at exactly the same time. I can genuinely believe I should communicate something differently and also desperately want you not to be mad at me. I can think your reaction belongs to you and still want to prevent it. I can recognize that I don't need to explain myself again while every cell in my body is screaming that if I could just find the right combination of words, you would finally understand what I meant and then neither of us would have to be upset anymore. I notice this most in romantic relationships. One of the things I've repeatedly been told to work on is saying what I'm actually feeling instead of anticipating how the other person will react and editing accordingly. Don't people please. Don't overfunction. Don't try to control the outcome. Say the thing kindly and let the other person have whatever reaction they're going to have. Great. Except sometimes you say the thing. And the other person has a reaction. And because you love them and don't enjoy watching someone you love become upset, you comfort them. Which is also, I'm told, a good relationship skill. You validate them. You reassure them. You try to understand why what you said landed badly. And somewhere in that process, the original reason you spoke disappears entirely. I have had conversations where I started out hurt by something someone else did and ended up spending the remainder of the conversation comforting them because they were hurt that I said I was hurt. And I have also made these conversations worse by refusing to let a misunderstanding remain a misunderstanding. Someone tells me how they interpreted what I said, I know that isn't what I meant, and suddenly I am explaining myself again. I think I am clarifying. They think I am invalidating. Eventually we are having an argument about my explanation of the explanation of the thing that wasn't actually the original issue. So yes, there is clearly something to the idea that another person's interpretation has to be allowed to exist without me immediately trying to fix it. And I think that's the part I can't connect. Surely being empathetic requires considering not just what I meant, but what it was actually like to be on the receiving end of me. The issue is, once I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of me, I can't exactly unknow it. I don't know how you're supposed to take that information seriously without letting it change you, or let it change you without accidentally changing yourself for the wrong reasons. I don't know where being considerate ends and people pleasing begins, especially when both look exactly the same from the outside. And I definitely don't know how to do any of that while my brain is still screaming THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT. I had rather hoped therapy would eventually provide clearer instructions.