Why I Always Thought Other People Were Upset with Me
“Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you.” ~Don Miguel Ruiz
I used to walk into a room and check everyone else’s emotional temperature before I noticed my own.
A tightened jaw meant I should get quieter. A distracted answer meant I’d done something wrong. If my partner sighed while unloading the dishwasher, I’d go back through the last hour looking for the mistake that caused it.
I called this empathy. It felt like attentiveness, and honestly, I was proud of it, because I noticed things other people missed.
What I didn’t see was that I wasn’t …
