[Neurons] 2022 Neurons #5 DISTINGUISHING RESPONSIBILITY TO/FOR

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2022 Neurons #5

January 31, 2022

Distinctions #5

 

DISTINGUISHING

RESPONSIBILITY FOR / RESPONSIBILITY TO

 

Here is a distinction that most people do not know and do not make and
because they don't, it creates tremendous mental and emotional distress in
their lives.  What's also interesting about this one is that in many
languages, it is not easy to even talk about this distinction.  That's
because, for the most part, it does not exist in that language.  Here is the
distinction short and sweet:

           Responsibility For describes what you are able-to-respond-to
that belongs to you and for which you can be held accountable.

           Responsibility To describes the person or persons you are
responsible to, namely, the relationships that you have and the obligations
that are inherent in them.

 

So one refers to personal accountability and the other to relationships-two
very different subjective experiences.  They are not the same, not at all!
What is inside of  responsibility for are all of the things that you and
only you can do.  Most essentially are the four personal powers that enables
you to respond- thinking, emoting, speaking, and acting.  These are your
powers and only you can make these responses.  Your mental responses are so
much yours, you cannot say that anyone else "makes" you think, imagine,
question, doubt, remember, etc.  Those are your functions.  You are
responsible for them.  And whatever responses you make mentally, you will
experience the consequences of them.

 

Your emotional responses are also so much yours, that you cannot say that
someone else "makes" you feel something.  Your emotions are yours.  You
create them.  When you experience an emotion it is the result of your
thinking, valuing, believing, etc. that you have learned or experienced.
Someone may trigger you with a word, a gesture, an action, but your
emotional response is yours no matter how much you wag your finger and try
to blame them.  So also with all of your linguistic and behavioral
responses, they are yours.  They may be in response to what someone else
said or did, but they come from you and so you are responsible for them.

 

Think of all of these responses as your "response zone" or your "locus of
control."  Imagine standing in a circle and out of that circle comes these
four crucial responses.  And if every adult lives inside of their circle of
responses, then you are not responsible for their powers- what they think,
feel, say, or do.  They are.  But if you have a relationship to them, you
may be responsible to them.  If so, then the kind and quality of the
relationship will then determine what you are responsible to give to and
receive from them.

 

Imagine two circles.  The circle you live in and out of which you make your
mental, emotional, verbal, and behavioral responses.  That is the circle you
are responsible for.  Then the circles of the people all around you in your
life- family, friends, associates, colleagues, acquaintance, the public in
general.  Each of them, operating from out of their power zone, are
responsible for themselves.   To some of them you are responsible to give
and receive certain things- whatever conditions that the relationship
requires.  Generally, adult to adult, it will be an equal and mutual
exchange so that what we want, we receive, and what the other wants from us,
they receive.  In that state, we say the relationship is working.  If you
are giving but not receiving, then eventually your relational "bank account"
with that person will go bankrupt and the relationship will explode or die,
or possible be reconstituted. 

 

The adult-child relationship is a dependent one, the parent gives and the
child receives.  As the child grows older, and becomes more and more capable
of responding, more is expected in return.  So with any other dependent
relationship, as boss-employee.  The big distinction in responsibility to
relationships is that they are conditional.  All relationship are
conditional.  There are conditions to be met in order for the relationship
to thrive.  That's why it takes an independent person who has identified and
developed her response-powers to be capable of healthy relationships.

 

 

 

Post Script

A long time ago in a galaxy far away when I was in a different profession, I
wrote a long article on Drawing the Line between Responsibility To/For.  I
have attached it if you're interested.




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com 

 

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134324 NeuroSemantics Inside Out Front Cover

 

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