Mantra with Jemma Sbeg - I Am Not Here to Manage Other People’s Emotions

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

This week's mantra is: "I Am Not Here to Manage Other People’s Emotions." It's a common trap to feel responsible for the feelings of those around us, often at the expense of our own emotional well-being. But true empathy means holding space for others without taking on their emotional burden or feeling obligated to fix their feelings. In this episode of Mantra, we'll explore how to set healthy emotional boundaries, distinguish between compassion and co-dependency, and prioritize your own inner peace. Releasing the need to manage others' emotions isn't about being uncaring; it's about empowering yourself and allowing others to navigate their own emotional landscapes. This Mantra will help you reclaim your energy, honor your boundaries, and cultivate healthier, more authentic relationships. Mantra is an OpenMind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. Don’t miss out on all things Mantra! Instagram: @mantraopenmind | @OpenMindStudios TikTok: @OpenMind Facebook: @0penmindstudios X: @OpenMindStudios YouTube: @OpenMind_Studios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Open Mind Welcome to a brand new week. Here is your mantra. I am not here to manage other people's emotions. I'm Gemma Spegg, and every Monday I give you a simple but powerful phrase to consider and bring into your life. a philosophy to guide you in the week ahead and hopefully even beyond. In each episode, we unpack what our mantra really means, how it has shown up in my life, and how you can bring it into yours with journal prompts and a weekly challenge

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Learn more at landrover.ca. Welcome back. It's time for this week's mantra. I am not here to manage other people's emotions. I am so enthralled by this mantra. I am in love with it. It is the one I personally really needed this week. Let me begin by explaining what it may look like to manage other people's emotions.

Some of you probably don't need me to tell you. You feel it every day. But just to make it super clear what we're talking about here, I want to give a little bit of a peek behind the curtain a little bit of a description. Managing other people's emotions, it's not feeling bad for someone. It's not having empathy. It's not expressing kindness. It's when we take on the responsibility of regulating someone else's internal state as if it were our own, often at the expense of our own emotions. It's when someone else is sad, angry, disappointed, or even just in a bad mood, and we instinctively adjust

our behavior, our mood, our tone, or even our beliefs to soothe or appease them. So it's not just about caring how someone else feels. That's a very great natural human feeling, and it should be promoted. It's basically trying to then control how they feel, believing that if we just say the right thing. If we fix the problem, if we're attentive enough, if we cheer them up, if we kick them calm, then everything is going to be okay. So it's beyond emotional awareness. It's emotional overcompensating. This looks like a lot of different things. It might look like over-explaining yourself to prevent someone from getting upset. It might feel like walking on eggshells or constantly

anticipating how your words or your actions might be misinterpreted. It might mean putting your needs your truth on hold to avoid setting someone off. It might also look like, you know, being at an important event for yourself and constantly thinking about how someone else is feeling, constantly monitoring their emotions to make sure they're okay, they're having fun, they're not upset, to the point where you just can't even enjoy yourself anymore. The defining feature here is ownership. You believe often unconsciously that their emotional response, is your burden to carry and your job to fix. I think it goes without saying this can be incredibly training because it places you in a constant

state of hypervigilance. Your nervous system starts to anticipate their dysregulation before it happens, therefore disregulating you. You might catch yourself feeling guilty for things you didn't do or feeling responsible for problems you literally couldn't have prevented. And what's more, this habit can actually disempower the people around you because it is assumes that they can't manage their emotions without your intervention. Sometimes what we're really doing is treating someone like a child.

It's like we're putting ourselves in the position of a parent, even though they're an adult. They can experience hard things. They can endure hard things. They can learn from those hard things and still be okay. We often develop the belief that it is our responsibility to regulate others' emotions very, very young, very early on because of conditioning in childhood. People, many of us, grew up in environments where emotional expressions, especially negative ones, like anger, sadness, or frustration, they were not just unpredictable, sometimes

they were unsafe. When a caregiver's mood dictated the tone of the household, children learn to scan rapidly for emotional shifts and preemptively manage them in order to maintain a sense of safety. In such cases, you know, a child often internalize as a very difficult. distorted sense of control, basically along the lines of, if I can keep them happy, everything will be okay. Over time, this morphs into a very deeply ingrained belief that other people's emotions are their personal responsibility. This conditioning often manifests itself later as

drum roll please. People pleasing. People pleasing, a lot of people don't know this, is actually a coping mechanism. It's a coping mechanism rooted in. in a fear of rejection and rooted in a fear of disapproval. People pleases often overextend themselves emotionally, not just to be liked, that's only one component of this, but to avoid the discomfort of someone else's negative reactions. According to psychologist Harriet B. Breaker, she's the author of The Disease to Please. This behavior stems from a need for external validation and also a subconscious belief that one's worth is tied to being agreeable, accommodating, and most importantly, conflict-free. When someone gets upset, the people please are, it's not just that

they don't want to witness the emotion, it's that they absorb it and they believe it's their duty to fix it, even when they have absolutely no part in causing it. This self-imposed kind of responsibility becomes exhausting. It often reinforces as well a cycle of hidden self-neglect. Let's talk about gender. It's about gender when it comes to managing other people's emotions, because gender socialisation definitely complicates this pattern. Women in particular are often raised to be caretakers, not just of others, but of their emotions. They are encouraged, even subliminally, to be empathetic, nurturing, to be very sensitive to other people's needs.

Boys, on the other hand, are typically taught to suppress emotions or to handle them independently. Both people lose in this situation. Both genders are losing. As a result, many women grow up with kind of. of an invisible curriculum that teaches them, their job is to smooth things over. It is to regulate tension. It's to serve as kind of emotional support systems. I think this disproportionate expectation, it's not an innate thing. We're not born with it. It's definitely cultural. And it's led to a phenomenon known in psychology and beyond as emotional labor, where one person becomes the designated

feeler, the designated fixer, especially in relationships, at the cost of their own mental and emotional well-being. They do more labor when it comes to holding up other people's feelings and protecting their feelings. Think at its core, believing we are responsible for other people's emotions sometimes reflects a lack of healthy emotional boundaries. And this is often shaped by trauma, it's shaped by unmet needs, it's shaped by the past, it's shaped by subconscious fears. From a psychological standpoint, this belief really blows the lines between what we call enmeshment, and empathy. Empathy is great. Empathy allows us to feel with someone else. It allows us to see things from their perspective and be compassionate. Emashment, on the other hand, traps us

in feeling for them. It becomes hard to differentiate with enmeshment when their emotions end and hours begin. This is also very costly to our relationships. I think that goes without saying To us, managing other people's emotions might feel like devotion. It might feel like sacrifice and kindness. All things we were taught are very valuable to display in a relationship. But love doesn't require us to be emotional shock absorbers. Real intimacy doesn't thrive in a relationship where one person is always managing the other person. And so they end up feeling resentful and burnt out and they end up feeling kind of like a bit of a quiet grief for what they're missing out on in a relationship. Ironically, I think it also stunts genuine closeness because you guys know this

true connection isn't built on emotional performance. It's not built on perfection. It's built on real deep honesty and intimacy and hard moments and autonomy, but also on mutual recognition. Both people are able to come to the table with their baggage and you sort through it together rather than just one person taking over. Listen, I want to say it's not that you're being cruel, quite the opposite. And it's not like you can't help someone with what they're going through or help them with a bad day. What I'm saying is when this becomes your biggest and only priority, it can become harmful. Holding space for someone else's emotions without shrinking ourselves really starts with understanding that empathy and self-abandonment are not the same thing.

True empathy, the kind we really want to celebrate, means being with someone in their emotional experience, not absorbing it, not fixing it, not making yourself small so they can be okay. It means saying, I see this, I see you, I hear you, I'm here, without saying I'm going to take this all away, without taking their pain on you as your own personal sacrifice. This requires emotional boundaries. It requires the ability to care without carrying and just to listen. Just listen and be present. A key part of this is also just checking in with your nervous system when you're supporting others, because often it is an instinct to jump right in and I want to fix everything and then to see your own nervous system and your own stress response spike. So really ask

yourself, am I grounded? Do I feel safe? Am I abandoning my own needs or values in this moment? Is this upsetting me such that I can't enjoy my own experiences? If the answer is yes, it's a sign you may be overextending and overcompensating. So in those moments, please remind yourself, their feelings are totally valid, but they are also not mine to fix. This person is fully capable of managing their own emotions with my help. I don't need to fix it. I just need to be there with them. It also means practicing honest communication, which I know can be so hard for those of us who are conflict-averse.

I personally really struggle with this. I don't want to stir the pot. I don't want to make things more difficult, so I just ignore it all together. But there are some phrases that you can practice, you can bring into your vocabulary that can really help you out. You can say things like, I really want to be here for you, but I also need a moment to catch my breath. Or I care about how you're feeling and I want to support you, but I don't want to lose myself in the process. This kind of emotional honesty, it's really vulnerable, it's hard, but it also sets a powerful tone and boundary. I love you, but I'm not going to martyr myself for you. In fact, I think it also makes the bond between you stronger. If they're

used to asking you for things all the time, this is you asking them for something. It levels out the playing field. Also, and I know it's going to feel strange doing this, but sometimes you just have to let them be angry and just to watch that feeling and let them be tired. And let them be tired. let them be hungry, let them make mistakes and then let them help themselves. If someone truly doesn't know how to self-regulate, you're not helping them any further by keeping them dependent on you. You think you're helping, you are hurting them if they genuinely don't have the skills to do this. I think what this mantra really invites us to do is just to examine the ways that we've internalized responsibility for other people's emotional states and just to question, is that

responsibility ever truly ours. It's not about indifference. It's about recognizing the limits of our role in someone else's inner world. We can't get into their brain and switch on different switches. We have to just sometimes view what's going on from the outside. Okay, we are going to take a short little break, but afterwards I'm going to share with you all how this has showed up in my own life, especially recently, what I've learned where I've struggled what I'm still figuring out. Stay with us. Okay, now that we've looked at the meaning behind today's mantra, I'm not here to manage other people's emotions.

It's time to get personal with you guys and share some of my own insights and reflections about this phrase. The place and the spaces where I feel most responsible for other people's emotions. is in big group situations. And I'm sure a lot of you can relate to this. When I have invited people to my house, when I am away on a trip with my girlfriends, when I'm hanging out with a big group of people, I always feel like I have to make sure everyone is having fun. Everyone is enjoying themselves. Not a single person can feel left out or feel bored or feel any sort of bad feeling. And if they do, like, that is terrible. I have failed as a host. I have failed as a

friend. I don't really know when I first learned to do this. I just kind of know that I always have since I was very young. I think I saw discomfort, conflict, so-called negative emotions as kind of a threat, especially if someone else was feeling them. I thought that how they were feeling was a reflection of the emotional environment I was creating in that moment. What that doesn't recognize is that people are going to come into a situation with all kinds of emotional baggage, all kinds of stuff that's annoyed them and frustrated them from their day, all kind of stuff from their past. I feel like sometimes when we try to regulate other people's emotions, we kind of have this

somewhat God complex that we are that significant in this person's life, that we could change their feelings more than the combination of everything else that's going on with them, which is not true. I was talking about where I first learned to do this, and I do think upon further reflection, probably in my case it has to do with being an eldest daughter. Being an eldest daughter, I'm sure a lot of you, eldest daughters relate, it often really intensifies the pressure to manage other people's emotions because from an early age, a lot of us are cast into the role of emotional anchor, caretaker, third parent, whether explicitly or kind of asked or silently expected, we are often the ones who move over the conflict,

we look after younger siblings, we support overwhelmed parents, and sometimes we do set the emotional tone for the household. So it's not just about a sense of responsibility, it's about invisible labour, a form of, you emotional and relational work that a lot of women do, that often goes unnoticed, but really shapes how we as eldest daughters come to see ourselves, that this role as caretaker is part of our identity, everything and everyone must be happy, safe together. This early emotional caregiving thing, as I said, does become part of our identity. We learn to anticipate the needs of others before their own needs even register. Sometimes we might actually enjoy it a little bit.

I know this is going to sound strange, but we might really kind of revel in the fact that we are so helpful and revel in the fact that we are so emotionally aware, because that's another component of this. People who feel like they have to manage other people's emotions are often incredibly emotionally intelligent and incredibly emotionally perceptive. That feels like a good thing because it is. That feels like a positive attribute and a positive quality. So it's hard to disentangle where that quality becomes quite negative and dangerous. Because if we've only grown up or taught ourselves to see this as a positive trait and as something that should be celebrated, recognizing the downsides of this is very hard because it means recognizing that perhaps

not that we have flaws, but there are some downsides to our identity. As adults as well, a lot of eldest daughters, a lot of people who feel this position may find themselves in friendships or romantic relationships where, again, they just keep replaying and revising the same role, the role of fixer, peacemaker, therapist. At some point, not because they want to anymore, but because again, it feels natural because love to them has meant doing more, being more, absorbing more, managing more. The consequences of this have become a lot more apparent, the older I've become. Tell me if you relate to these feelings. I feel like I always feel stressed in social situations.

I have less fun. I always feel like I'm the person having the least fun sometimes. I also feel resentment towards people that don't deserve it. I'm the one who has put them in the position where they have been forced to kind of rely on me. I'm the one who has tried to control the emotional tone of the situation. It's my fault in a sense. Part of this also is that I avoid things that need to be said. I'm also a very sensitive person, and if someone is even slightly upset or mad, I believe

that they are upset or mad at me, and that can be very devastating. So when there are things that actually need to be said and that would actually improve our friendship or our relationship, I just don't say them. I would prefer the lesser discomfort of being hypervigilant towards their emotional reactions than a full-blown conflict. Something I've learned probably in the last couple of years is that avoiding conflict is, A, sometimes a sign of emotional immaturity that you don't think you can handle big emotions so you avoid them.

B, it's also 99 to 100% of the time going to make your relationship suffer more. When you just put something out on the table or put something out into the open and say, I'm upset about this, I'm scared about this, I'm angry about this, you resolve it so much quicker than if you let it sit in your stomach, in your brain, in your heart, in your mind for so much longer. Often, managing other people's emotions also goes hand in hand with avoiding conflict and with avoiding speaking up for yourself and just reflecting on your truth. So here is how I'm trying to change this, people pleasing, sense of ownership, emotional responsibility. Firstly, I'm just trying to notice when I'm doing it. The first step in anything

is awareness. I've really been training myself just to pause when I feel that urge should like jump in, to just like pause when I feel like that tension in my chest, to pause when I feel like I need to start over explaining or when I feel overly responsible for how someone might react. I just ask myself, am I speaking or am I acting out of fear of how they feel rather than what's true for me? Does this person actually need my help right now? What am I trying to prove or say for this person by trying to help them. Is it empathy? Is it enmeshment? Just naming it and saying, I'm trying way too hard to manage their emotions right now and this is not going to be helpful. It helps me step out of that autopilot kind of eldest daughter response. Secondly,

I just have to remind myself at the end of the day, I don't see my emotions as anyone else's responsibility. They don't see their emotions as my responsibility. Their emotions are not mine to fix. When someone is upset, I want to rush in, I want to soften it, I want to fix it, I want to make them feel better so I don't have to stick with the discomfort, I'm actually doing it for me. I'm the one who is uncomfortable. But when I gently tell myself, I can care without carrying, this person is fully capable of managing this themselves, if I say to myself, I can help someone with the negative consequences, I can't help them with the cause or the origin, that small shift really changes

everything. I also am trying, perhaps not always successfully, just to speak honestly, even when it's uncomfortable. Instead of managing their emotional responses, I'm trying and I'm practicing saying, what I really mean without cushioning it or diluting it to protect their feelings. That might sound like saying, I know this may disappoint you, but I need to say no. Or I can see you're upset and I just trust that you can handle that in your own way. I can see you need space to think about this. I can see you need space to manage this. I'm going to just step away for a second and let you do that. I don't need the answer right now. It's respect. I respect them. I respect me. The final step to this process is just being okay with being uncomfortable, being okay with

awkward silences, with someone frowning, with someone obviously being upset at you. Don't chase reassurance. Don't clean up their reaction. Breathe. Ground yourself. Remind yourself, I'm not doing anything wrong by letting them feel what they feel. Over time, I've noticed, you know, the world doesn't fall apart when I stop managing it. And neither do my relationships. They have gotten more honest. They've gotten more fulfilling. They have gotten healthier.

I feel like I know people on a deeper level now because I'm seeing parts of them that previously maybe I avoided seeing or maybe I kind of incidentally like covered up for my own sake. It's a hard truth to really recognize it. yourself but once you get there there's no looking back and also you'll just realize how much happier you are how much easier and lighter your relationships feel all right now that we've unpacked what this mantra really means and how it has shown up for me it's time to look at what we can do to bring this idea into action in our day-to-day lives i'm going to share of course some journal prompts so you guys know i will always do that but also our weekly challenge so please please

Please, my lovely listeners, stick around for more after this short break. On his podcast, Chasing Life, I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta. CNN's chief medical correspondent brings you the secrets of the happiest and healthiest people on the planet so that you can live your best life. Are some people just born happier than others? And what might they be doing that the rest of us aren't? Follow Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Apple, Spotify, IHeart Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Let's take a few minutes just to really ground ourselves in this week's mantra.

I'm not here to manage other people's emotions. The first thing I want to do is start with our deep thought of the day. You guys know in every mantra episode, I like to bring in some wisdom from, you know, a bunch of people who are smarter than me and who have probably thought about this a great deal more than me. Today, our deep thought is coming from someone called Netra Clover to Wop. The greatest gift you can give someone is the space to deal with their own emotions. This quote, what I think is saying to me is, I believe you are capable of holding your own sadness, your own anger, your own uncertainty, even when it's hard.

I have confidence in you. It's resisting the urge to rescue, to interrupt, to reframe their experience before they've had the chance to fully feel it. And it's choosing to witness without interfering. That is a gift. That is a gift. You're helping them learn to swim. Yeah, maybe it's the hard way, but they're never going to learn if you don't take a step back.

When we try to carry someone's emotions for them, we may be doing it out of care. In fact, I think 100% of the time we're doing it out of care, but we're also sending a quiet message. I don't think you can handle this. That's not a good feeling for someone else. Giving someone's space, however, is an act of deep respect. It honors the fact that growth often comes with really uncomfortable moments that you have had to endure, moments of grappling that you have had to endure. But the emotional strength that you have has probably been built in that struggle because of it,

not because of the avoidance of it. So it's not absence. You're not ignoring them, avoiding them, wanting them to be hurt. It's presence without the pressure. It's letting silence do its work, letting discomfort speak, letting them arrive at their own clarity, not the one that we hand them. That's really powerful. And again, that's a gift. With that in mind, let's sew down and just sit with this week's mantra. We're going to do our journal prompts. Now remember these journal prompts, they're just here to help you check in with where you are, what's coming up, where this mantra might be guiding you. There are no wrong or right answers. And like I say, every single week, if journaling isn't your thing, I know for some people it doesn't really resonate with them.

If you just don't have your journal nearby, that is totally okay. You can always pause this episode between questions just to take a quiet moment to reflect, or just save these prompts for later. Typically, I share three questions a week, but this mantra felt very, very important. So I actually have four. Let's get into them. First, when do you tend to take on emotional responsibility that isn't yours? And what do you fear might happen if you stop? Next, what childhood or early life dynamics shaped your instinct to manage other people's

emotions. Can you trace this urge back to perhaps an emotional origin in your past? Now, do you ever confuse maybe keeping the peace with being at peace? What is the difference between keeping the peace and being at peace for you? And finally, when you over-explain, when you apologize unnecessarily or downplay your needs, who are you protecting and why? Now that you have made the space to reflect, let's give your mind a moment to rest. In just a second, you'll hear a music track. I just encourage you to take this opportunity to process this week's reflections in whatever ways feel right to you, no pressure, no expectations from me.

And if this isn't something that you connect with, that's totally okay. Just skip ahead about 30 seconds and we will be back. But as you settle in, please keep our mantra in mind with you today. I am not here to manage other people's emotions. As the music plays, just let this mantra shape your thoughts. Take the time to just connect with whatever it is bringing up for you in this moment. Beautiful. Now that you've had that very nice special moment just to reset and to ground yourself, let's take that energy. Let's bring it into action with, of course, our weekly challenge.

I'd love to hear how this goes for you. So if you want to reach out to me, on Instagram at Mantra Open Mind. Please share any follow-ups, whether this helped you in any way, what you learned, and also any questions or dilemmas you might have relating to this episode or any other for our special bonus episodes which are available exclusively on Open Mind Plus. Okay, are you ready for this week's challenge? This week's challenge is the unfiltered no challenge. I want you to say no to something this week, without over-explaining, without softening,

without trying to manage or overthink how someone else might take it. Just a clear, respectful no, and then pause, then move on. It's going to feel uncomfortable. Just notice where you're feeling that in your body. And notice when you find resolution from it. Because this emotion will pass. You can't live with discomfort for very long. it's not how your body is wired.

So don't fear an emotion that really isn't going to be there for all too long. Good luck with your challenge. Let me know how it goes. I'm also going to do it. And I'll let you guys know how it goes for me as well. All right. As we wrap up this week's episode, I feel like it was a big one. I just want to share a few final thoughts about this mantra.

I'm not here to manage other people's emotions. My final thought is this. when we try to manage other people's emotions, we are self-abandoning and we are basically saying your emotional state and your emotional reactions mean more than my own. Because when you try and help that person, hold them up, support them, often you're doing so and you're creating your own discomfort and you're creating a situation that you're not enjoying and you don't feel good about it. Why are their emotions any more important than yours? How come you are fully responsible for your emotions, but you can't recognize that other people can be fully responsible for theirs as well.

This is not about ignoring people, neglecting people, not offering a helping hand when you see them struggling. It's about this not being the status quo for you. This not being the only way you can help someone. If you take one thing away from this episode, let it be this, you are not here to regulate the emotional weather around you. You are here to live in alignment with your values, your truth, your peace that's going to make you a better friend. It's going to make your relationship stronger. I promise you that. Letting go of the need to manage other people's emotions, it's not selfish. It's actually very helpful for them as well to learn and to feel their own personal sense of emotional autonomy and personal responsibility. This week and beyond,

celebrate that return, honor that return. And trust that when you do, what's real is going to remain and you're going to be okay. Thank you for joining Mantra, an exclusive Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios. At Open Mind, we value your support. So share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For ad-free listening and early access to Mantra with me, Gemma Speg, we invite you to subscribe to Open Mind Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'll share another insightful and introspective mantra with you next Monday. Until then, keep showing up for yourself and your journey. I'm Jemisbeg. See you next week. Mantra is hosted by me, Jemisbeg. It is an open-mind original powered by Payne Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Incredible Mantra team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Stacey Warenker, Sarah Camp and Paul Leibiskin. Thank you for listening. If you missed my live show, do not worry, you can still watch it on demand until November 30th. Head to pave.org, to catch the real talk, big feelings and the unfiltered VIP afterparty before it's gone.