How To Finally Stop Feeling Responsible for Other People’s Feelings

If you’ve been trying to set boundaries and have been struggling with it, chances are you feel deeply responsible for the feelings, needs, and emotions of other people.

You don’t want to upset anyone. You don’t want to disappoint anyone. You just want everyone to be okay with you, you want to get along with the people in your life, and you’d much rather avoid conflict than have to deal with someone being angry, hurt, or unhappy with you.

So when someone is upset, your instinct is to immediately wonder what you did wrong, what you could do to make things better, or what you need to change so they feel okay again.

And the truth is… That’s not healthy.

Don’t get me wrong: empathy is something we should all cultivate. Being able to understand how someone else feels, care about their experience, and take their feelings into consideration is a beautiful and important part of having healthy relationships.

But there’s a difference between healthy empathy and feeling responsible for someone else’s emotional state.

Healthy empathy allows you to care about how someone feels without believing that you need to do something about it. You can notice that someone is upset, understand why they might be upset, and still know that their feelings belong to them. You can care without immediately jumping into fix-it mode.

When you feel responsible for someone else’s emotional state, though, it becomes much harder to do that. Their disappointment feels like something you need to resolve. Their anger feels like something you need to calm down. Their sadness feels like something you need to make better. And before you know it, you’re constantly adjusting yourself to keep everyone around you comfortable.

This is something I’ve had to work really hard to unlearn, and in this post, I want to share what actually helped me stop carrying emotions that were never mine to carry.