As we move through the holiday seasons where friends and family gather, there’s the real-time aspect of how unhealthy relationships play out and how they can tear us apart. Last week I wrote about the importance of gathering together and creating community, but if we’re still locked into old unhealthy views of ourselves and others, we may end up once again living out unhappy gatherings.

Let’s see what we can do to change all that

Setting boundaries can take some of us years to learn and to put into practice, depending on how deeply our indoctrination went from the people who wished to walk all over us or even abuse.

When I first started learning about what healthy boundaries were and how to set them in a gentle way, I got pushback from the people who were keen on keeping me how I was, the recipient of their bad behavior.

I was no longer being “nice” or “obedient”, depending on who it was, and they felt it necessary to work on correcting my behavior. It was a struggle to keep trying to stand up for myself and my daughter, I felt beaten down by their efforts to get me back in line, hence it took me years to finally learn how to. I was caught in that in-between place of wanting to please others and needing to finally start caring for myself without always sacrificing large chunks of me.

The inner need for approval and acceptance

Part of the difficulty in learning to set the boundaries was my inner need for acceptance from the people who needed wanted me to continue to serve their needs. They knew fully it, so they used my inner need as fuel for their manipulation, which only tore me up more inside. I felt misunderstood, hurt, ridiculed, and emotionally beaten down by the tactics they used. I had reached a point where I didn’t feel I deserved to walk on the earth or to breathe the air, so I had planned my demise during the time my young daughter would be visiting her father over the Christmas holidays.

Thankfully I met someone who seemed to be my champion, someone who would help me. In many ways he was, but since I was still very much a broken person who was very damaged from my past, I wasn’t able to recognize the areas of his own damage and unhealthiness. We married, moved to a different country and started what we hoped would be a good life together. What had started out very promising for both of us, ended up being quite toxic and unhealthy. I ended up leaving him, and that was the new start I needed to once again begin healing.

The turning point: not needing approval or needing to seek approval

I learned to not seek approval of people who were hurtful to me, and instead to give myself the approval I needed. I was trained into this approval seeking behavior by my mother, who was lavish with her criticisms of every single thing, large or small in me and my life, but extremely stingy with any praise or kind words. If she was nice, there was always a price, for she was a master manipulator of the people around herself.

In retrospect, my leaving my 2nd husband was a turning point for me, for it allowed me to take back the emotional remote control that I had allowed others to use against me for so many years. I learned that it was okay to not have their approval, and that gaining it came at a steep price to myself.

What happens when we stop worrying about “losing their love”

I had been so deeply fearful of “losing their love” that I kept dancing the steps in their manipulative dance they had laid out. Only when I heard someone say that wasn’t actually love, and certainly not healthy love, was I able to emotionally pull away from that very unhealthy dance.

I worked up my courage to stop seeking approval from people who would never approve of me, because the goalposts kept shifting. No matter how much I gave of myself, no matter how much I did for them, it would never be enough, because a master manipulator learns early on that keeping the people around them on a string allows them to keep reeling people in.

By releasing the need to seek approval from others, I was emotionally free to set healthy boundaries for myself and no longer feel intimidated by them withdrawing the approval. This mindful action gave me so much inner strength and deeply surprised me.

I found the boundaries I needed to set first were inside of me

Setting the inner boundary inside of myself first, helped me to then set healthy boundaries with others, for I was no longer torn and showing I was torn. I learned I could say no and the world wouldn’t fall apart. I learned I could say, “if you say those kinds of things to me, I can’t be around you. If you choose not to say unkind things to me (and my family) I can look at being around you again.”

Yes, they will give you pushback. “You’re trying to change who I am!” Honestly, if they’re content to be unkind and mean to you and to others, then they will see any attempts to set time limits or limit how they speak to us as being disloyal, disrespectful of who they are and what they feel they’re entitled to do. Trust me when I say they feel entitled to walk all over the people around them!

Since we can’t actually change them, all we can do is choose the if and when we will be around them. Sometimes we can tell them honestly why we’re limiting our time with them, but if they’re totally fine with their own behavior, then nothing we say will make anything change.

I had to learn to respect and to like myself.

Learning to like myself became my task. I set out to teach myself to like myself.

I had to start very slowly and gently with myself, the way one would approach a wounded wild animal, so that it can learn to gain trust that we mean them no harm and they will be safe. My inner spirit had been so shredded that I was wildly aggressive within my own head towards myself.

It was a long uphill battle to teach myself to like myself, but I realized that until I did, I’d keep repeating old behaviors of allowing myself to be a doormat to abusive people, for deep down I struggled to believe I was worth treating well. After all, the proof seemed to be in how people in my life were treating me.

When we teach ourselves to respect and to like ourselves, we gain the inner strength to not accept being a doormat for anyone else, and they in turn see a different light in our eyes. We become a person who expects respect because we give it to ourselves by not accepting things that aren’t for our good or well-being.
– Tamara

When we learn to respect ourselves, we only want respectful relationships with other people

What surprised me the most was seeing how people stopped trying to manipulate me. I was no longer sending out the same vibes as I had previously, so they no longer saw me as a target. I was able to raise an eyebrow and maintain emotional distance from their drama.

The type of relationships we choose changes. If people aren’t willing to be respectful of our boundaries we’re more comfortable with letting those relationships go. Any new relationships need to be based on a mutuality of respect, and usually the people who have learned these lessons are the kind of people who value healthy relationships and are willing to do the work to keep them that way.

Yes, you too can make those inner changes

I’m not going to say that if I could do it, so can you. I will say that I believe in you! I’m going to say that if you keep trying, that eventually the way you see yourself will change, and that’s going to change the dynamics of your relationships.

As you change, you may lose some people. That’s okay too. You may actually end up just as surprised as I was when I changed, and people no longer treated me the way they used to!

I have some guided journals to help you get started to see your patterns and to find the solutions you need:

Removing Inner Blocks ||  Anger Journal || Guided Anxiety Journal  ||  Joy & Mindfulness Journal   ||  My Boundaries Journal  || My Inner Thoughts Journal 

The paradox of boundaries:

We worry that they’ll push people away, but in truth they reveal who’s willing to meet us with respect. Boundaries don’t end connection – they protect the ones that are worth keeping.

@yourbeautifullife – Michell C. Clark

• Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.
• Habit Power: We are what we repeat
• It’s easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk and change.
• You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that.
• Changing our thoughts and habits Part 1: how does it physically work in the brain?
• Changing our thoughts and habits Part 2: how does it physically work in our body?
• Accepting and Embracing the Depressed Side of Ourselves
• The Power of Positive Words!
• It turns out this isn’t as woo-hoo as I thought it was!
• Challenge: When a negative thought enters your mind, think three positive ones. Train yourself to flip the script!
• As you think so shall you be!
• Even after a setback or negative experience, we can create a “reset” button in our minds!
• Turning Poison into Medicine
• Your triggers are your teachers
• Change the tapes!
• Baby steps serve a purpose to allow us to keep moving forward!
• Baby steps start the whole change happening!
• Teach ourselves to feel positive in order to see more positive things in our lives!!

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for liking, sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts Main page divided up into 3 sub-pages: Mental Health and Rewiring the Brain || Healing and Developing Ourselves || Positive thoughts and Affirmations to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
https://tamarakulish.com/

My books: Developing Happiness When You Can’t Find It and How to Heal Your Life on a Deep Heart Level are available in paperback and Kindle. Audiobooks are available for the busy person!

Guided Journals help you work on a particular issue by answering questions to help see patterns and to find solutions:

Removing Inner Blocks ||  Anger Journal || Guided Anxiety Journal  ||  Joy & Mindfulness Journal   ||  My Boundaries Journal  || My Inner Thoughts Journal   

Thanks for buying my books on Amazon!

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