You're Not Responsible for Other People's Feelings

You're Not Responsible for Other People's Feelings

Somewhere along the way, you learned that other people's feelings are your responsibility. That if someone feels bad in your presence, you caused it. That you are, essentially, an emotional bull in a china shop made entirely of everyone else's feelings.

If you're autistic, you probably learned this lesson so hard it's tattooed on your nervous system.

Here's the autistic experience in a nutshell: you get corrected. Constantly.

You said the wrong thing. You said it the wrong way. You didn't read the room. (What room? There are four walls and a ceiling. I read it fine.) You made someone uncomfortable. You were too loud, too quiet, too intense, too flat, too much, not enough.

After about ten thousand corrections, you internalize something: when there's a problem, it's probably you. You become the default suspect in every emotional crime scene.

Someone's upset? Must be something I did.

Weird vibe in the room? I probably caused it.

Global warming? Look, I'm not saying it's my fault, but I'm also not NOT saying it.

So you start monitoring. Scanning faces like a TSA agent looking for emotional contraband. You develop a whole internal department dedicated to predicting how people will feel and adjusting yourself preemptively.

This department never sleeps. It has no budget limits. It runs 24/7 and the only employee is you.

Spoiler: this is exhausting. Also, not your job. You didn't apply for this position. There was no interview. You just woke up one day as the unpaid emotional manager of everyone you've ever met.

Here's a fun concept: the difference between impact and responsibility.

Your words and actions have impact. Sure. You exist near other humans and sometimes they have feelings about it. That's real.

But responsibility for those feelings? That's a different thing entirely. Their feelings come from their history, their expectations, their interpretations, the weird thing their dad said to them in 2003. You're one input in a very complicated system that belongs to them.

You can be kind. You can try not to step on toes. But you cannot control how someone else's entire emotional operating system processes an interaction.

And yet here you are, trying to debug code you didn't write and don't have access to.

The real kicker is that autistic people are taught our natural way of being is inherently harmful. Like we rolled a character with +10 Offense and didn't even pick it.

Just existing—direct, literal, not performing the seventeen social rituals required before saying "no"—apparently causes damage. We're walking around thinking we're a hazard just for having a face and opinions.

So when something goes wrong, we assume it's us. Because it's always been us. We're the common denominator in a lifetime of "that was weird" and "you hurt their feelings" and "why would you SAY that."

But here's the plot twist: sometimes it's not you.

I know. Wild concept. Really out there.

Sometimes people have their own stuff. Their own triggers, their own baggage, their own unprocessed childhood nonsense. Sometimes they're projecting onto you like you're a screen at a drive-in theater.

Sometimes two people just communicate differently and that's not a war crime. It's just... different.

The difference is that neurotypical people are rarely asked to take responsibility for the gap. That's our job, apparently. We're the customer service department of every social interaction we've ever had.

Feelings are real. They matter.

But they also belong to the person having them. Like, literally. They're inside that person. Not inside you. Different bodies.

Someone can feel hurt by something you said. That feeling is valid. And also, you might not have done anything wrong. Both things can be true at once.

Their feeling doesn't mean you failed. It doesn't mean you need to launch an internal investigation. It doesn't mean you have to send a formal apology and a revised version of yourself.

It just means they had a feeling. Humans do that sometimes.

Unlearning this is hard. When you've spent years as the designated problem, it's weird to suddenly consider that maybe you're not.

But you're allowed to stop carrying feelings that aren't yours. You're allowed to put down the emotional baggage that someone else packed and handed you without asking.

You're allowed to say something clearly and let it land however it lands.

You're allowed to exist as yourself without writing a disclaimer first.

Other people's feelings are theirs to feel. Not yours to fix, manage, prevent, or apologize for in advance.

That's not coldness. That's just knowing where you end and someone else begins.

Also it's self-preservation. The unpaid emotional labor department is closed. We're unionizing. Go manage your own feelings.