They make me feel … (add in your emotional extreme), but there is a space between stimulus and response. Use it.

I was watching the news the other night and the first item was about a mother complaining about how a politician made her daughter feel. She claimed that the politician was a bully and had threatened her daughter.

I don’t know the full details, but it was the words ‘made her feel’ that grabbed my attention.

These words always do, and I always skip back to the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt

This belief, that my feelings are under the control of others, is prevalent in our culture.

Listen to these pop songs

• You make me feel like a natural woman (Arethra Franklin)

From these songs, that we sing into our psyche, they seem to say that our feelings are hard-wired to the actions of others.

Certainly others can influence how we feel, but can anyone make us feel certain things?

Read this further here