Sunday, January 13, 2019

Entitled…and other popular delusions


“I’m entitled to my feelings and you can’t tell me otherwise,” yelled an enraged person just the other day.

Something inside me snapped.  Mind you, it’s been under a ton of strain for the vast majority of my life but something about this moment was when I had enough.

Let’s start with the offensive pieces.

First, no person is “entitled” to feelings, emotions, or any other reflexive neurocognitive impulse.  Entitlement, by definition, requires a community in which someone or some set of individuals is recognized as having or deserving “special or preferential treatment”.  While hosts of popular psychologists, therapists, and counselors feed sociopathic addictions (and line their co-dependent pockets) by reciting the “entitlement” delusion, objectively entitlement is an agreement, consideration, or an imposition that requires someone to give or have taken from them a concession.  Without a priori agreement in each instance, neither you nor your outburst constitute such an agreement.

Second, they’re not your feelings.  There are hosts of genuine sensory inputs that conspire to build the notion of “feelings”.  But the dominant narrative likes to shriek about “my feelings” without doing any consideration about where those “feelings” came from.  When someone you think you love finds other priorities, are “your feelings” injured or have you decided to opt out of accountability (possibly a contributing factor to the perceived loss) rather than sit and consider pathways to understand and reconcile relationship accountability?  When someone dies, are they “your feelings” or have you attached meaning to temporal attributes of life rather than living in complete fulness of each present moment?  When situations don’t work out the way you wanted them, are “your feelings” damaged or have you projected an unreasonable surrogacy or dependence on other people or circumstances without consideration for their conscription into your illusion?  I’ve yet to meet anyone yelling about their “feelings” that isn’t parroting an entitled social cliché derived from consensus myth values considered neither by themselves nor their purveyors. 

Third, I have no interest in agreeing to, acquiescing to, or recognizing “your feelings”.  While I can see conditions in which external or internal situations have created adversity to be sure, my humanity can easily be stimulated to empathy.  In transparent dialogue about a situation and the self-aware processing of senses that give rise to pain or sadness, a listening ear, a hug, or another expression of concern is quite accessible.  But the conception of control of an imaginary, ephemeral notion of controlling in another a reflex that is out of control in the person ranting about “feelings” is a road too far. 

Unwilling to let go of tirade when the bait wasn’t taken, the person amped it up.  “Yes, I’m angry and I get that way when you try to control me.”

Funny, that one.  That sentence was yelled – face glowing red – by a person who had just heard me say that if our conversation was to proceed, I would only continue the conversation if tones were kept low and a commitment to truthful communication was maintained.  The comedy in this was the fact that I had no interest in controlling another.  What I did have was an interest in setting boundaries for the protection of my own well-being.  The only control in the conversation was my emotional disengagement from meeting the escalating frenzy.  Setting ground rules for communication – particularly when there’s been a history of reflexive loss of control – is not a patriarchal imposition.  Rather, it is a means by which both parties can make conscious decisions about the value of communication.  Keep the ball on the field – it’s a game.  Kick the ball onto the street – it’s a fatality waiting to happen. 

What’s missing from this conversation?

  • 1.      Genuine commitment to integrity:  There’s no question that people have unique perspectives on words, experiences, and most of all, recollections.  Everyone’s perception of events, communication, and the like is, in fact, their own.  However, insidiously, many times that perception is shaped not by the protagonists in a conversation but rather in the perspectives and worldviews of others that are implicated without attribution into those interpretations.  A person should have lived longer.  You should love me.  My project should have succeeded.  Integrity CANNOT exist when the uninvited guest of unspoken assumptions are allowed to be recklessly invoked. 
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  • 2.      Autonomy:  One cannot give or receive “permission” from another for any reflex.  Reflexes are autonomous and unconsidered.  They – by virtue of our anatomy – do NOT INVOLVE cognitive filters and attenuation.  Short of anesthesia or lobotomy, the ability for anyone to “control” in real or figurative ways, your perception is a direct function of YOUR ceding surrogacy to others for your experience.  In other words, loss of control is ALWAYS on you.
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  • 3.      Self-governance:  While emotional trauma, pain and disappointment are in fact unique human experiences, mature communication never affords license to venomous attacks of others in the conversation.  You may be hurt.   You may have emotions.  You may be frustrated.  But only sociopathic abusers feel entitled to yell, curse or storm off enraged to exercise manipulation (not control) of a situation.  These behaviors are NEVER acceptable and NEVER justified.


Having lived for over 30 years with incapacitating pain in both of my legs has made me intolerant of self-inflicted pain.  When my legs collapse in the normal course of walking or navigating stairs, I find myself impulsively drawn towards thoughts of other realities in which this wouldn’t happen.  But in an instant, I’m reminded of the fact that I’m walking.  When I’m in conflict, I’m frequently drawn towards questioning the merits of the relationship I’m seeking to build, maintain, or heal.  But in an instant I’m reminded that I am blessed with the fellowship of others and don’t live an isolated life.  But I’m to a point in my life where I have come to embrace the IS nature of the senses I have and I strive to separate the reflexes that those engender from the interactions I have with others.  And that, my friends, is because I’m not entitled to anything.  I’m grateful for life… and that makes all the difference.

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