Emotional Accountability is a critical skill to nurture when healing from the CUTS (Chronic Unpredictable Toxic Stress) in our lives. We learn emotional accountability as children, typically from models who were not emotionally adept. It is highly likely that our parents had some confusion/delusion about accountability that was reinforced continually throughout our childhoods. Here are a few of the most common delusions about Emotional Accountability:
Winners and Losers
This assumes that children have a great deal of power over their circumstances, and if their child loses, primary caregivers will either blame the other child/team (they cheated) or blame their own child (you’re a loser). Double messages like “you’re not as perfect as you should be” AND “you are better than everyone else” create twisted accountability.
Children must fail many times to achieve all developmental milestones; everything is new and challenging as they grow and develop. Failure is the attempt to reach for something beyond their grasp. This reaching—SEEKING–is a critical part of mammalian limbic intelligence. The ability to “handle” failure—to see failures as resources for growth instead of toxically shaming–is a bedrock of emotional intelligence. The ability to persist and learn from failure is a developmental advantage. Our lives shrink in inverse proportion to our fear of failure
Emotional Over-responsibility
This assumes that if anyone is unhappy (sad, mad, upset) because of something we said or did or failed to say or do, we must either make them happy or take care of them in some way while also feeling bad (shame, self-hatred, or terror) because “We made them feel that way.”
We are not responsible for the feelings of others. We cannot “make” someone feel a certain way. It is possible to trigger another person’s high emotion. However, that emotion is their responsibility, not ours. We can care about how someone else feels without being responsible for causing that feeling. Primary caregivers who blame their loss of emotional control on their children reinforce this message “If I lose my patience it is because you are impossible!
Emotional Under-accountability
This assumes we can say anything we want, regardless of whether it is true or verifiable or factual, because it is expedient. If one of your primary caregivers was a habitual liar, you may have learned that the only accountability worth having is NO accountability.
We are responsible for what we say and do. In order to gain social trust from others, we have to speak truth a ‘good enough’ percentage of the time. If we state something that is untrue, we are emotionally accountable, and it is our responsibility to “set it straight”.
Emotional Accountability: My Lane is not Your Lane
We are accountable for that which we control. We control the expressions of our reality—our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, musings, words, actions, etc. Your thoughts, feelings, beliefs etc., are in your lane. My thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc., are in my lane.
- If I can control it, it is in my lane.
- If it is in my lane, then I am accountable for it.
- If I cannot control it, then it is not in my lane;
- If it is in your lane, I am not accountable for it.
- I am not accountable for things I cannot control.
When we practice accountability, we are able to feel and say “I’m sorry” to another while forgiving ourselves as well. Understanding and practicing Emotional Accountability allows for intimacy, because we can look at our past, including our mistakes, without feeling victimized by it. We can back up far enough to see our accountability—the places where we had choices and perhaps chose poorly.
Remembering poor social/emotional choices (past failures) can trigger emotional flooding or toxic shame. This is an emotional flashback*, which will predispose us to view those choices through our trauma response patterns (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn). These patterns prevent us from examining those poor choices as learning tools. When a poor choice becomes a ringing indictment of our unworthiness, throwing us into toxic shame, fear, confusion, or shut down, there is likely an underlying accountability confusion/delusion.
We cannot carry emotional responsibility for others without harming ourselves. The serenity prayer is the guiding principle in all 12-step Recovery Programs. It reinforces the true nature of emotional accountability: if we cannot control something, we cannot be accountable for it.
Grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.
*If you are flooded with shame/confusion/fear when you examine accountability, please see video “EFT Tapping for Anxiety” on this website. The other video “Deep Pressure Touch” is also helpful when you are in any kind of emotional flashback.