Listening to someone complain chronically not only drains you, it enables them to keep on being powerless and complaining about their life.
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Someone just said this to me: "I've enjoyed this experience. I've gotten a lot from it and I'm sure you've had some insights too."
Don't tell me what my experience has been. You have no idea. I replied back to the person that what my experience has been is for me to know and not for him to dictate to me. Don't tell other people what their experience was. All you're doing is projecting your wants onto that person and hoping they'll confirm them for you. And it has nothing to do with them, but what you want to hear. It interferes with their free will to have whatever experience they want to have and not to deny it. If the experience was negative, then it was negative. If it was good, then it was good. But that's totally up to them to decide, not for you to dictate out of your own needs. People behave selfishly all the time. When you're more aware you understand this and you just don't listen to them anymore. You walk your own path. Many violations of your rights are conducted in the name of "being nice." This list is NOT all inclusive. There is lots more.
Yup Watch your boundaries. Where are you in others' heads? Where do you let them into yours? If you take control of another's life, are you willing then to take responsibility for whatever happens to them? Do you ASK another person first before foisting your demands on them? Do you automatically expect others to take care of your needs without their having said they would? Do you respect others' free will to be themselves and to take charge of their own lives or do you interfere, thinking you know better? Do you give advice even when it was never asked for? Do you automatically assume people don't know what they're doing and they need your help rather than understanding we're all at different levels on our own paths? Do you believe that others' irritating behaviours are faults of theirs you have to control or do you believe that you need to change your reaction if you find it irritating? Are you capable of disconnecting, of not reacting to others' behaviours? Do you label them as annoying when in fact it is you that gets annoyed and it might not bother anyone else? Are you detached from others' behaviours that used to trigger you or still reacting? Do you judge others and yourself because you're afraid of not being perfect? Do you attack others before they get a chance to attack you first? Do you spend the day pointing out others' faults rather than compassionately looking at your own? When energies are up and you get moody, do you restrain yourself or lash out at anything including coffee mugs, slow computers and toilet paper that's rolling the wrong way? Do you allow other people to "make mistakes" or to try and fail, which is part of the natural process of life? Or do you step in and take control because you think you know best for them. Do people resent you? Do they get annoyed with you? Could you stop for a moment and look at what you might be doing that makes them respond to you that way or do you see it all as their shortcoming and just blame them? Do you just blame others? Is everything everyone else's fault and never any of yours? Are you perfect or are you just completely defended against seeing any of your own shortcomings out of fear of looking inadequate? Do you argue with others? Do you believe that you need to dominate others in a festival of opinions or do you value your peace more and believe others are entitled to their own opinion? Do you ever consider you could be wrong and others could be right? Do you see everything in black and whites, like yes/no, positive/negative, I do/I don't ever.... or can you look at the shades of grey in between? Do you compromise with others? Is it always your way? I can go on. This is only the beginning of how hard I've had to and continue to look at myself. Do you allow yourself to be manipulated? When neighbours come over looking for sex do you fall for their attempts to keep you from diverting off topic by saying that your cat looks healthy when its hair is falling out? Do you allow their cheap talk of "your apartment looks nice, I could be very comfortable in here," without seeing their true agenda of trying to get laid? Do you not see what people are trying to pull over on you and fall for it every time? This leads to poor self esteem, by the way. Do you think people are basically honest or liars? Can you tell the difference. The way to tell the difference is to be honest yourself by the way. Do you fall for flattery? Do you soak up people's insincere compliments while you allow them to run their manipulative agenda on you? Or can you tell the difference? Do you believe there's no such thing as just liking a person for who they are? Do you believe that the only friends are people who can do something you can't and you expect to manipulate them into doing this by befriending them? Do you try to trick people? Do you tell people what they're supposed to think of you, or do you let them make up their own opinions, even if they end up hating you. Do you believe that when someone tells you about you that it's really you they're talking about or a reflection of themselves? I had a conversation with a guy recently who did this and I was reminded.
People who say the word "sorry" for any reason at all, repetitively, time and time again, are victims. They have most likely taken responsibility for other people's "stuff" throughout their lifetime, and have used saying "sorry" as a way of assuaging the anger of the perpetrator they dealt with repetitively. Fact is, it means nothing other than they think of themself as a victim and they're playing a role of being submissive to others. When it all comes out in the wash, will they be sorry for whatever it was they apologized for? No. Victims are often extremely resentful of others who put them down. And rightly so. Understanding what made you so angry at others ultimately leads to your freedom as you go back through your life and try to put the past to rest. When you become captain of your own ship, self empowered and self loving, you will have little need to take care of others' feelings by saying "sorry" all the time. You will say what you need to and if others don't like it, they'll have to own it themselves instead of projecting their part of themselves onto you. Yes, projection is involved here when people react negatively to what you say: they don't want to see something about themselves, and you just reminded them of what that is. You stop caretaking others' feelings and start speaking your truth. You realize this might not make you popular but you sleep better at night. When you die, you leave all behind you on earth and it's yourself you need to make peace with most importantly. Some people will never forgive you for anything you have said or done, and that's on them. Has nothing to do with you. Another one of our rights: We have the right to be ourselves, to make mistakes and not to be corrected on them by someone who positions themself as our superior. Advice givers and rescuers are who I'm specifically talking about. This is an example of the power over others structure being enacted. Any behaviour where one seeks dominance over another is.
We have the right to say "no" to what appears to be offers of help. These people seldom give us help out of compassion for us, but rather they appear to be helping us in order to condescend to us and enforce their feeling of superiority over us. This is their egotism in high gear. I've found in the past that these so-called helpers are also gossips who laughed at me behind my back. One of them was my mother. Mistakes are part of the learning process we're all engaged in. Anyone who's intolerant of your mistakes needs to take a look at their own selves. However, people have the right to choose who they wish to engage with in life. If your process doesn't resonate with the person, they have no need to engage with you if they don't choose to. It goes two ways. People have rights you need to respect.
One of these rights is to determine for ourselves the next course of action. We don't need others meddling into our problems and trying to fix us. Often the reason people try to fix or rescue other people is because THEY'RE not comfortable with what you're going through. This is because in our intellect-based world, people are uncomfortable with emotions. We spend our time trying to repress them so we can get through a stressful day at work. Can you imagine what any high stress workplace would look like if everybody vented their emotions at the time that they felt them? It would be crazy. However, if people did, they might start to clue in to the fact that there's something wrong in the way we do things and that we need a better system for ourselves that doesn't require people to stifle their emotions to partake of it! And a system that doesn't produce as much stress as ours does. The need to quell one's emotions often leads to mood management through addiction. This is highly dysfunctional. The other right that people have is the right not to have you tell them how to feel. Your boundaries need to stop around yourself and should not include managing the feelings or any other aspect of another person's life unless you're ASKED FIRST to help. And again, because of our society is so emotionally damaging, others can become very uncomfortable with you if you tend to show your emotions readily. I was taught to repress my emotions, particularly my anger, by my father who claimed the right to be the only one in the family allowed to express anger. Why? Because he was projecting all his inner rage at life back on his kids. His self-centered attitude proclaimed he was the only one allowed to be angry at the world, not us. This is extremely tyrannical but people do this in ways that may not be as obvious as my father's tactics were. It's done all the time. Ever hear the term, "Forget about it?" We even have a joke, mimicking the New York Italian accent "fuggetabutit." That's how common it is to tell others, "Drop it. I'm not interested in dealing with your feelings." Listening to your emotions is the path to wellness, and suppressing them for any reason will bring on poor emotional and mental health. I spent many years learning to feel, tolerate and re-connect with my emotions again when I went into recovery. Emotions make people uncomfortable because we live in an emotionally-repressed society. They are necessary for many reasons - I use them as an empath to understand my reaction to lower energies, for example and to understand when I'm being confronted by an energy vampire. Might be the title of my next book.
Victims make assumptions. That's how they become victimized. They don't check it out, find out, research or ask first before they assume everything is going to go the way they want it to. Making assumptions will always trip you up. Ten people have done this for you, so for sure the eleventh person will do the same. No they won't. These last 3 jobs have been so easy, surely the fourth job will be a cinch. Guess what? I believe making assumptions is something victims do because they have been disappointed in life. They have been disappointed by people who were supposed to be there for them, like their parents. They have been disappointed and because of that, they always assume that they'll never be disappointed again. Unfortunately, that's called deluding yourself. There is a way not to be disappointed again: understand that you've learned how to re-create that problem of being disappointed by making assumptions. After all, all children rightly assume that their parents will meet their needs. It's just natural to expect that. However, how many people can say that their parents were 100% perfect for them all of the time? Yeah, not that many. You wouldn't be reading this if they had been. You made the assumption, and of course no fault to you in that, and you continue to make assumptions with others expecting them to be the parents you didn't have. You blind yourself to the reality of being disappointed again by making an assumption, but in fact you are setting yourself up for further disappointment by not checking it out with others first. I once had a friend who was a sweet guy. He was a great photographer. He and I would go on little trips with our cameras and he'd give me tips on how to take better shots. He was around my age so it would have been easy to assume that he was interested in a further relationship. HOWEVER, I didn't make that assumption. It was awkward but on one of our jaunts I asked him outright, "So, what are we doing here?" He asked, "Whaa?" First not understanding. I asked him outright, "Are we friends or are we working on something more for ourselves?" "Oh!" he said, "I'm just interested in friendship." And you know what? That was great. We were great friends and he was a dear friend to me. And boy, was he a good cook! Wow! It was okay and I saved myself a load of victim pain by asking. The first time I came across this concept was in the Four Agreements, by Manuel Ruiz. Because of my empathy, I still struggle with people who project at me. People tell you who they are when they speak to you, not who you are.
Can other people know more about you than you know about yourself? Ultimately the answer is no. They can only relate to you through their own filters, their own experiences, and in the case of those who haven't done inner work, through their own subconscious programming which comes down from their parents. This is the programming people run on autopilot with, unexamined thinking and consequential behaviour. My super keeps coming over to finish the repairs on my apartment. He keeps trying to fix me. He's codependent and the type of person who enjoys helping others. That's great. When others want his help. When they don't want his help, it's not appreciated and then you're dealing with a boundary violator. I don't appreciate someone coming over and telling me to change my life. How can anyone do that because they're not me, they don't understand who I am, they don't understand what I'm dealing with. There's a lot about me this guy doesn't understand - he's looking at me from a superficial perspective. Yet he still does it. He comes over and tells me to change my life. What he's doing is giving me practise in not blowing up. I used to explode before whenever people would do things like this. Or even argue with them, which is only engaging and encouraging them. Which is really the wrong tactic to use because then you're triggered. I sat there yesterday while he tried to fix me again, quietly letting him talk, then I changed the subject to the reason he came in in the first place. Do I find it annoying? Yes, I do. But I didn't blow up. Self control is self mastery. If it weren't for boundary violators we would never master our emotions and thoughts but in fact we have to. That's the point of life. He is telling me who he is - a meddler that minds other people's business. He is doing this in order to escape from his own problems which plague him. He fancies himself superior to others. I look for other evidence of this: one example would be his snorting when I said I have better things to do than hang out in the kitchen and cook. He believes that every woman should live in their kitchen, apparently. So many play at this game. The "I'm better than you are," game which to some gives them the right to either fix you, talk down to you, bully you, gossip about you, laugh at you, swell their pride, and more. Fact is, like I said, he has NO idea who I am and no idea of the fact I'm perfectly capable of fixing my own problems. People tell you about themselves; not about you. How does this affect the empath? You're around people who are projecting low vibrational energy at you. It's best to shield yourself from things like this or occasionally meditate and run higher vibrational energy through your body. Cutting cords is also very handy. I've been writing and thinking about him, so I'll cut cords now, for example. When you're around people who threaten to leave you if you don't do as they wish, you're being manipulated.
When you're a child and are around people who are uninvolved in your upbringing, have a "couldn't care less" attitude, and who outright neglect your emotional needs, you're being set up to be a people pleaser. Your focus becomes meeting their emotional needs or risk being totally abandoned. Why would the child not think that? They're suffering from this much already - emotional neglect on a daily basis and a parent or parents who don't seem to care about them. Unfortunately many children who are abused suffer this at the hands of their caretakers. They have to please their parents otherwise run the risk of being abandoned, they believe. The reason they believe this is because of unreliable parenting. Inconsistent, unreliable, resentful, abusive parents make the child believe that they may be left behind if they don't do exactly as the parent wants. Of course, I'm speaking from experience. They believe people will abandon them if they show anything less of themselves than a perfect child. The child ends up suffering an extreme loss of self in doing this - with your needs constantly focused on pleasing others, you lose contact with your authentic self. This goes into adulthood as well. People are so focused on being perfect and looking good - looking good... why? To be acceptable. Why do you have to look good to be acceptable? Because you fear being left out, left behind or rejected. This is no way to treat another person and no way to treat yourself. Being a people pleaser is a good way to get more abuse. People sense you're there to please them and the less scrupulous of us will take advantage of this. The people pleaser has a lot of healing to do. They have to jump hurdles and face their fears, not the least of which is risking others' anger, risking others' displeasure, risking being fired from jobs, losing relationships, risking being ostracized but in the end - knowing yourself which is worth far more than any of the losses you might encounter, by the way. |
AuthorI have lived this nightmare and have overcome being a victim. Archives
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