I’ve been wrestling around with the ideas and concepts presented in Individual Psychology. Specifically with the idea of task separation.
Task separation is the recognition that every individual has their own responsibility to manage their emotions, choices, and behaviors while avoiding taking on responsibility for other people’s emotions, choices, and behaviors. Problems begin to arise when we expect others to handle our tasks or when we try to take control of someone else’s task.
Of course there are ways we can help each other, but ultimately the power and responsibility falls on the individual to manage their tasks.
Here are some examples.
If you are feeling an intense negative emotion, you can take actions to regulate that emotion and feel better.
Or…
If you are feeling an intense negative emotion, you can blame the actions of someone else and expect them to change. You don’t feel any better and they might take offense to you offloading the responsibility of your feelings onto them.
It gets even more interesting when we look at this outside of interpersonal relationships and start to think about how we take on the tasks of our past and future self. It isn’t too far of a leap to start seeing how this could be the source of some depression and anxiety, which could be relieved if we stopped blaming our past selves and stopped imagining the failures of our future selves.
Like I said, I’ve been wrestling with these theories and thoughts and would love to get some additional insights if you feel like sharing. Feel free to message me directly if you prefer not to chat in a public forum.
