Brett offers a reframe that deepens Joe’s teaching on doing emotions “at” people: if you’re using an emotion to manipulate, you’re not actually fully feeling it. You want the other person to feel it for you. Someone guilt-tripping with sadness isn’t actually feeling their sadness — they want you to feel it so they don’t have to.
“If you’re doing it at somebody, it’s not love. Maybe it’s actually the case for all emotions.”
This applies universally: fear used to make others anxious, sadness used to guilt-trip, anxiety spread to an entire office so one person doesn’t feel alone in it, and even “love” used to extract connection (“I’m going to love you up so that you love me back”).
The test is simple: “If that person doesn’t change their behavior at all, am I still okay?” If the answer is no, you’re doing the emotion at them rather than simply feeling it.
This explains why certain emotional patterns cycle endlessly — the emotion never fully moves because it’s being projected outward rather than felt inward.
Related Concepts
- Don’t do emotions at people
- Shame hot potato
- Fear hot potato
- Fully feeling a pattern ends it without figuring anything out
- We manage others’ emotions to avoid our own
- Empathy is being with someone, not in someone
- Longing and loneliness are love in disguise
Source
- [[sources/qa-3-common-questions-uncommon-answers|Q&A #3 — Common Questions, Uncommon Answers]]