So, I see a therapist regularly. With the kind of heavy duty emotional trauma I've had to deal with, I've been seeing one ever since I could convince myself it was worth going. Also ever since a few friends screamed loudly enough at me that the prolonged periods of depression and self-hatred were not okay and that there was very probably a way out of the deep hole of panic attacks, repetitive emotional masochism, and general fuckedness that was going on in my life.
Oops.
One recent session with the therapist was focused around this one particular idea that comes up a lot. Ownership of emotions.
It's pretty true, to a relatively fuzzy and narrow margin (because nothing in this world is binary) that we all own and are responsible for our own emotions and actions resulting from them. It's also a fucking pain in the ass to reconcile with the idea that people can and will be utter dicks. Friends, enemies, strangers on the street can be pretty cruel.
And these things do hurt. These things are hurtful.
So the question, more or les, as I posited to my therapist, was such:
"So, okay, sure. What if somebody's deliberately hitting buttons they know are there? What if someone's shouting derogatory remarks at someone else?"
"Your reactions and emotions are still yours, but that person shouting probably isn't so nice, right? They're still responsible for what they're shouting."
As I proceed through therapy and as I've proceeded through the next few months, I've been trying to keep in mind this idea: yeah my emotions are my own. Yeah I have to deal with my own bullshit.
But fuck that other guy, he's a dick.