You own your emotions. They’re yours. Don’t give control of them away.

You own your emotions and your reactions. Nobody else does. Don’t let them.

This goes both ways. Let’s go in reverse order.

THE SECOND WAY

I’ve had too many people (women, it’s women, m’kay?) tell me something like “I feel so awful because he did something shitty, and I objected / got upset / stated my boundaries and he didn’t like that and now I made him sad, and it’s my fault!”

Fuck no.

It’s not your “fault”, especially when you were reacting to their shitty behavior.  You can’t “make” someone else sad. You can react as a consequence, but ultimately you own that reaction, for good or ill.

THE FIRST WAY

“He did something shitty and made me upset / angry / sad!”

No, no they fucking didn’t.

Oh, they probably did something hurtful or boundary-violating (whether intentional or not doesn’t matter for this particular rant). I’m not arguing that at all.

They didn’t make you feel anything.

Sometimes this gets twisted into experience nullification or gaslightling-style crap. Fuck that noise too. This is empowering stuff right here.

You own your emotions and your experiences. You. Nobody else. You reacted to an experience. That’s yours. Nobody else gets to dictate to you how you feel.

Are there consequences? Of course there are. But own that shit as well. They’re yours, for good or ill.

And failing to own that shit will cause even more problems down the line, but that’s another rant.