Telling the truth about how we really feel has this incredibly magical quality to it: it instantaneously brings us back into connection with ourselves and others and our own true power.

So what happens when we don’t tell the truth? Yep, you guessed it, we get the opposite: we feel disconnected and powerless.

How does this work? Why does it matter? Why does anyone else need to know how I feel?

Because when we don’t let ourselves feel our feelings and tell the truth about them, they get all bottled up. The mind then gets ahold of those feelings and tries to make sense of them by creating all kinds of really great stories that pull other people in to explain the feelings. We might hear ourselves in a snarly, sort of a righteous undertone of the villain: “What an idiot. He thinks he’s gonna get to me? I’ll show him.” Or maybe we hear ourselves playing the victim: “you made me feel this way! You’ve ruined my life.” For others it might look like the hero: “I must help! They can’t do it themselves, they need my help!”

All of these reactive positions are on the Drama Triangle, a concept introduced by Stephen Karman in the 1960s to explain human conflict. When we are on the Drama Triangle in one of these roles: victim, villain/perpetrator, or hero/rescuer, we aren’t presencing with our feelings. Instead, we got stuck in projection, looking outside of ourselves to explain (read: find someone to blame for) how we feel. We either pull other people into the Drama Triangle with us (or get pulled in by others) or we hop on the triangle with ourselves. No matter how we get there, though, it’s all a result of the same thing: not feeling our feelings.

When we can simply face into our emotional experience and notice what’s happening; ie – let ourselves feel our feelings and tell the truth about them – “oh, my heart is racing, my stomach feels fluttery, I feel sad and scared” – we immediately begin to shift. And, if we’re in conflict with another person, often so does the conflict. Instead of staying locked in a position on the triangle, we begin to move off of it as we feel the things that took us into the conflict in the first place.

Because my feelings are my responsibility – no matter what the other person has done or said – I am the only one who is responsible for shifting them (no matter what kind of stories my mind has concocted to try and convince me otherwise :). And, as much as this can be tough in the moment – to take responsibility for how we feel – it’s actually quite miraculous. Because eventually, I no longer have to live at the whim of other people’s behavior/choices/feelings – wanting them to change or not change or be or feel differently – they get to be who they are and I get to be who I am, because I’m no longer outsourcing my ability to feel “good” (or not “bad”) to things outside of myself.

If you really want to get out of conflict and stop feeling frustrated about what other people are/are not doing, telling the truth in a blame-free way about what you’re feeling – both to yourself and to others – is the magic sauce. In time, you’ll find that when you no longer believe that something outside of you is responsible for your feelings, not only will you feel more connection, vitality, and aliveness, but you will begin to see that anything is possible when you’re living in your truth and your real power.