An idea we hate: others are not the cause of our feelings.

In my most recent post unpacking a feedback situation, I mentioned that Jordan was the stimulus, but not the cause, of my hurt. And that likewise I was the stimulus, but not the cause, for him feeling attacked. 

I know this idea is hard to swallow. 

It comes from both Non Violent Communication (NVC) and an understanding of what trauma is and how it works. 

Two basic, profound, and life changing tenants of NVC are

1. Every action is an attempt to meet a need, and
2. Our feelings point to our needs - met or unmet. Our feelings are not because of what someone else does, but rather because of our own met, or unmet, needs. 

People don't cause my pain. My needs cause my pain. People just stimulate it in me. It isn't simply what people do that makes us hurt, angry, scared or wretched, it is also something within us that responds to what they do that is really the cause of our feelings. To a great extent, we generate our own impact.

I still struggle with this. There is a part of me that really, really wants it to be about others. Because that makes them to blame, they are at fault. I’m the innocent party. I'm the blameless victim (or the sensitive hero). They’re the guilty party; the cruel villain intent on hurting me. 

But I have decided to choose the alternative view - others are the stimulus, but not the cause - because it is far more empowering. It shifts my attention from “what someone else did to me” to “what are my needs here, and what can I do to meet those needs.”

I can’t control what someone else does, I can control how I choose to meet my needs.

So, let’s say, someone hits me. Clearly I am going to feel physical pain. And probably emotional pain too. Depending on the situation, anger, fear, rage, terror…Clearly someone hitting me is more than stimulus, it is cause. It’s absurd to say I caused my own pain in this scenario, isn’t it? 

Yes. Absolutely, people do cause us pain - physical and emotional. 

But if that’s all we see, if that’s where we stop, we live a very disempowered life.  Seeing things this way, and only this way, makes others threats, and us the helpless victim. 

Not a very happy life. 

“The distinction between stimulus and cause is not about ‘what is true’ or about ‘being right’, it is about seeing things in a way that gives me choice...to see things in a way that empowers me and encourages me to find ways to make my life more wonderful.” --Thom Bond, NVC Trainer

I can focus on being right (and they’re wrong), or I can focus on my needs, and the actions I can take to meet them, regardless of what the other person does or does not do. When I put the blame, the cause, for my feelings, on others, I am focused on them. I become the passive recipient of their actions.

 But when I focus on my needs, when I make the choice to think of the other person as the stimulus, but not the cause, I am more likely to be able to take calm, purposeful action to take care of and protect myself. I can do that while feeling less anger, less hurt, and far more empowered. 

This came up just the other day for a dear person I know. Someone she knew had just committed suicide. He had been doing work for her family, and his actions had caused months long delays, and tens of thousands dollars in additional costs. Their relationship had become rocky, to say the least. She was feeling absolutely terrible. Had she done something that had contributed to his suicide? She carried a massive load of guilt. And yet at the same time there was also a strange sense of relief. An inexplicable situation, that had cost her family materially, now had an explanation: he had been struggling with a massive mental health issue. Their rocky relationship might have been a stimulus, but not the cause. There was something else going on for him. There were other forces and factors at play that had nothing to do with her. 

And this is true even for my own brush with suicidal ideation. (The first, when I had postpartum depression. The second, my year from hell that included workplace bullying, a horrible accident that took me to the ER, the death of my mother, and me being fired, all in the space of 6 months). Make no mistake, I want to say that my “bully” “drove me to it.” His actions were awful, mean and harmful. But making him responsible for my ideation is simply not the truth. He was a stimulus, but not the cause. He wasn’t even the stimulus, just a stimulus. 

This does not absolve him of responsibility for his actions - most definitely not. But a huge part of my recovery was throwing off the impossibly heavy, suffocating weight of feeling like the victim and stepping into the choices I had. My recovery included also recognizing where so much of the weight I was carrying had come from - including, amongst other things, a lifetime of the patriarchy shaming me, and telling me who I should be (a good little girl), and who I was (arrogant). His actions were just one of the last few extra heavy rocks in my backpack that I was increasingly failing at trying to carry. But they had come on top of a lifetime of other rocks in my backpack. 

When I finally put that backpack down and just stopped carrying it, oh my goodness, life felt so different! 

In the recent situation with Jordan, Jordan threw some rocks at me. But I was the one who picked them up and put them in my backpack, by owning more than I needed to. So I’ve been intentionally taking them back out. Getting clear, again, on what is mine to own, versus what others (and the patriarchy!) want me to own - but really isn’t mine to own. 

As I was writing this article I want back and re-read Marshall Rosenberg's original chapter, Expressing Anger Fully, in Nonviolent Communication: A language for life, in which he lays out in detail what he means by stimulus versus cause. As many times as I've read it, there will be many more times I will still need to read it - it is just that powerful in what he proposes, and how it can transform our lives, and the lives of others. Even where there has been horrific abuse, war, and trauma.

Trauma changes us and sears us, in ways we are still discovering and understanding. But even trauma - what happens to us - is stimulus, but not cause.

Trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. -- Gabor Maté

So that is why I continue to choose, hard though it is at times, to think of others as the stimulus, but not the cause, of my feelings - even truly painful ones like white hot burning rage and soul-crushing, agonizing despair. Each time I consciously shift from "I am hurt or angry because they..." to "I am hurt or angry because I am needing..." I shift from disempowered, to empowered. Sometimes I can do it in the moment, sometimes it takes me longer to access that. But eventually, when I do, I just feel this huge weight lift off my shoulders.

That's a life that is more wonderful to live.