Happy Independence Day weekend. It is a lucky coincidence that this is our topic, because emotional freedom is truly about personal revolution. It is an end to collaboration with and submission to abuse. It is an end to the emotional slavery of feeling responsible for other people’s feelings and other things that are beyond our control.
Emotional freedom is something that might be difficult to imagine when we are in the first stages of healing — especially if it’s the first time we’ve ever processed an abuse-related trauma all the way through to the end. At least once, we need to go through all the stages to take a good look at patterns of denial or bargaining that made us vulnerable to abusers or tolerant of their behavior. We need to develop internal strengths — like easy access to anger and confidence in our rights to defend ourselves — that might have been suppressed before. We need to learn for ourselves that we can live through loss and letting go, and actually learn something from it.
But if we get to this point — thinking about the idea of emotional freedom and working on developing it in ourselves — we are close to the end of fully integrating this experience. Turning it into a gift rather than a disaster, and coming out of this long tunnel with our new selves in a new world.
What does respect have to do with it?
In the last article on self-love, the concept of respect was introduced. It is connected to self-love, because as we come to love, trust and believe we are entitled to care for ourselves, we develop a sense of separateness. Of boundaries. We come to realize that we have private interests, concerns and needs. They belong to us. They are our responsibility. They are also the sources of good in our lives. And we are entitled to explore them, define them for ourselves, pursue them, and plan our lives around them.
If anyone reading this finds the last paragraph triggering an emotional reaction, a feeling like you really need to get away from this article, go find something else to read here on LoveFraud, you have clear evidence of something important in yourself. Because that paragraph contradicts all the emotional training of abusive, enmeshed, victim-rescuer environments that demand loyalty, silence and compromises of identity and self-respect in order to be loved or simply survive.
The first time I ever encountered information like that, I read it over and over. The words made sense. But they didn’t compute. I had phrases popping up in my head like “easy for you to say” and “you don’t live with the demands and pressures that I do” and “I would be rejected by everyone I need to support me, if I thought like that.”
If you are having a reaction like that, I understand and respect the reality behind it. This push-back is coming from a normal strategy for survival that works. If we are willing to give up pieces of ourselves — our independence, our individuality, our ethics, our expressiveness — we can get paid for it. One of the real challenges that every person faces in life is to walk a fine line of balancing what we can do, need to do and are willing to do to fulfill our survival needs and our discretionary (but important) wants.
Where this becomes dysfunctional and self-destructive is when our sense of what we can give away — and still survive as whole people — is broken. When we have been “trained” in some excruciating and threatening situation to deny important aspects of our identity or fundamental human needs in order to get through it. When that situation is finally over, we are often left with warped ideas of relationships. But more important, our relationships with ourselves are damaged . Because it felt like a choice, even we perceived it as life or death. Some part of us holds us responsible and simply does not trust us anymore. We may live around it. We may develop all kind of strengths to compensate. But it feels as though some wires have been pulled inside of us. As though the lights have gone out in certain rooms of our mind.
This is why, for so many people, it is necessary to find a good therapist, experienced in trauma or childhood abuse, to help us untangle these situations. The “cure” is to go back and reject the deal we made. Not reject ourselves, but to reject the unfairness and inhumanity of the circumstances that forced us to do this damage to ourselves. Do it in memory, but also in our emotional systems. To identify the causes as abusive and wrong and not respectful of our normal human needs to maintain our own integrity. And to say to ourselves, and possibly the people involved, I no longer agree to this deal. I am taking myself back.
Integrity, like respect, is one of those words that many of us barely understand. We talk about integrity in terms of ethical issues, and that’s part of it. But integrity is much more than that. The world means wholeness, like “integer” means a whole number, rather than a fraction of a number. For our purposes here, we can imagine it as having all the internal “electrical” parts that we are supposed to have — all the natural emotions, open connections among the various parts of our brain, a balanced and high-functioning nervous system, vivid sensory awareness — adding up to keen animal survival instincts and the full range of sentient consciousness we have as human beings.
If something disrupts or corrupts our integrity in any way, we feel it deeply. We live with the pain of knowing something inside of us is not right. For many of us, that pain is the way we know ourselves best. But as we start to resolve these issues, to go back and reject those deals and repair ourselves, we become more conscious of something we have mutely longed for — the simple but powerful feeling of wholeness. Our integrity.
Even if we get there by incremental resolutions of the sources of pain — which is how most of us do get there — every step forward delivers a breathtaking new awareness of who we really are. It’s not that we are special exactly, although we are. Or good, although we are. But that we are. The word “I” becomes different. It’s no longer associated with any sort of battle for recognition or acceptance or love. It is awareness of some central identity that is the backbone or hub or inner seed of everything about us.
And when we grasp this, this permanent center in us, it is easier to understand the concept of respect. Because as we look around us, we realize that every living thing is also organized around something like this. We could talk about this from all sorts of angles — genes, souls, whatever — but when we find it in ourselves, we recognize it in other lives. In this we are alike, but also separate. We can relate, and we also may find that we have a great deal in common. But our identity, our integrity is our own. As theirs are theirs. Knowing this is the cornerstone of respect. The knowledge that we have boundaries, that something inside of us belongs to only us.
Having grown-up relationships with ourselves
It’s logical that we can’t have adult relationships with anyone else, if we don’t have adult relationships with ourselves. That doesn’t mean that we lose touch with our inner child. Or that we don’t experience the less “practical” states of emotion or awareness that enrich our lives.
What it does mean that is that we take our own needs seriously. That we recognize our needs as needs. Necessary. Not optional.
A whole, healthy human identity has different layers of needs. Some relate to physical survival. Others are about emotional health, intellectual development, social connection, and more. The study of human needs has interested many brilliant people. But for me, the most helpful of them has been Marshall Rosenberg, creator of non-violent communication (NVC) and the man who introduced me to the concept of emotional freedom.
NVC is based on the premise that all people have needs, and ultimately the most effective type of communication is about sharing information about our needs. Rather than going more deeply into that concept, I recommend two brief videos on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dpk5Z7GIFs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbgxFgAN7_w&NR=1. If you find this article challenging, I guarantee these videos will help you make more sense of it.
Rosenberg points out that a lot of our language is basically about power and control. That is, keeping power and control in the hands of people who have it already. There is a lot of judgment in our language, ways to make people — including ourselves — wrong. And this language serves to separate us from our needs, or minimize the idea that everyone has normal human needs. As a result, compassion becomes subjugated to “rules.” Even though we are aware of our own suffering or the difficulties faced by other people, our responses are not compassionate or questioning of their (or our) circumstances. Instead, we are trained to assume there is something wrong with them, they are bad in some way, or they have some contagious problem we should avoid.
A few examples of this are racism, elitism and ageism — ways that we “name” other people that makes it easy to blames them or judge them, without having to consider their realities and how lack of resources may be contributing to their “lower than” status or behavior. Another example of this is the Magna Carta, the foundation of English law (and U.S law by extension), which is not about human rights at all, but only a concession by the Norman king of England to honor the property rights of Norman nobles who had come from France to claim and rule English land and the “serfs” attached to it. One of the difficulties we face as victims of sociopaths is that common law incorporates very little recognition of human needs, beyond our property rights to our own bodies, and even that is limited in many ways. The rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and free speech and religious choice in the U.S. Constitution were huge advances that shook the world of absolute monarchies.
To get back to needs, here is a partial list of needs from NVC website (www.cnvc.org), which has been developed over the years by people working with this type of communication:
Connection — acceptance, affection, appreciation, consideration, mutuality, support, to understand and be understood, trust
Physical well-being — air, food, movement/exercise, rest/sleep, sexual expression, safety, shelter
Honesty — authenticity, integrity
Play — joy, humor
Peace — harmony, order
Meaning — clarity, competence, contribution, effectiveness, growth, hope, mourning, purpose, self-expression, to matter
Autonomy — choice, independence
The first time I saw this list, I was mind-blown. It never occurred to me that I was entitled to even want most of these things. At the time, I was still struggling with whether I was allowed to feel angry, because the sociopath made me feel bad. The idea that I could unapologetically pursue any of these things in my life was staggering. All of a sudden all those internalized voices with comments like “You’re getting too big for your britches” and “No one likes a crybaby” and “You have to suffer to go to heaven” and (the monster of them all) “You owe us” became more clearly what they were. Coercive “rules” to convince me to forget about my needs.
But the needs didn’t go away, because I agreed to give them up in order to stay in that family. Unmet needs continue to generate demands and feelings. All of us are familiar with the how it feels to be treated with disrespect. You can find another list of it feels when our need are met or unmet here at the NVC website. If you want good reason to start thinking about getting your needs met, you’ll find it here. In a nutshell, would you rather feel happy, confident and fulfilled, or angry, helpless and despairing? Not a hard choice.
Empathy and self-interest
Structuring our lives to meet our own needs means several things. First it makes us responsible for our own feelings, because we realize that they are generated by our needs. If our needs are not being met, it is our responsibility to take care of ourselves. This is part of survival and also integrity. It is the essence of compassion for ourselves. Thinking about our needs also helps us interpret our experiences in ways that don’t make us wrong, but simply people who trying to get their needs met, often in situations that are not particularly supportive and that force us to look elsewhere in creative ways to keep ourselves healthy and whole.
It also makes us less inclined to take responsibility for other people’s feelings. We may empathize with them. We may see that our mothers are dissatisfied with how their lives turned out or our fathers are suffering because they feel like failures. We can see they are expressing negative emotions at us, because they have unmet needs. Or trying to manipulate us, because they are trying to get their needs met. But we also see that this is their stuff. The language they use of disappointment, anger, regrets and demands is about them — their inner landscape, how they view themselves and the world — and not about us. Even when they are trying to recruit us to their reality by making it about us.
One of the ways we can define sociopathic interactions or N/S/P relationships is that someone wants us to take responsibility for fulfilling his or her needs, in ways that cause us to abandon our needs. All the love-bombing, gaslighting, guilt-tripping and various types of abuse are just strategies to obtain this result.
A reasonable question would be: if we become emotionally independent, does that mean we become just like sociopaths? If we don’t feel responsible for other people’s feelings, does that make us unfeeling monsters?
I think you already know the answer to that. Not feeling responsible is not the same as not caring. (Just as caring doesn’t mean that we are responsible.) If we choose, we can offer support in ways that don’t compromise our integrity or well-being. We may feel sorry for our sociopath’s hard luck story and sympathize, but not agree to help him murder his ex-wife. In less extreme situations, we may give our friend or family member the gift of sympathetic attention. The key is to decide what we can afford to do without compromising our primary responsibility to take care of ourselves.
For practice in emotional independence, here are possible responses to use with people who are pressuring us, complaining about our behavior, judging or naming us (“you’re always so selfish”) or using any confusing or indirect means to get their needs met through us.
“I empathize with you, but I’m not certain what you’re telling me you want from me”
“What do you need to make you feel better?”
“Is there something you want from this relationship that you’re not getting?”
You are looking for more concrete requests, so you can decide whether you can meet their needs without damage to yourself. Often, with non-sociopathic people, these discussions are very fruitful. Both sides come to understand each other better, and often find simple things they can do for each other that un-trigger the feelings of unmet needs. (“I don’t feel like you really respect me” often turns out to be nothing more serious than a request to share the dog-walking responsibilities.)
However when we’re talking to people who are cannot be honest about their feelings, needs or wants, or actually have a control-related reason for hiding these things from us, our questions may be treated like an invasion of privacy or cause an attack of criticism, more emotional acting out, or obvious dissembling.
If we choose, we can do some empathetic probing (“I hear that you’re angry, but I’m not sure what you’re asking for.”) or suggestions about what’s going on with them (“Is this about you feeling lonely?”). But if they still refuse to say anything that sounds like they are talking about their own needs (rather than talking about us) or making specific requests, so that we can make choices about what we want to do for them, we also have the choice to stop participating in their game.
We can choose that because we meeting our own need to participate in things that are meaningful, respectful and effective. (Or whatever needs are “alive” in us at that moment.)
This is just a brief introduction to emotional independence. It’s not all about self-defense. A lot of it is about being honest with ourselves about our needs, and specific with other people about what we are requesting from them. They are free to turn us down, just as we are free to do the same. But clarity is a wonderful thing.
Imagine how much different our lives would be today if we had said to our ex-S, “You’re a charming person, and I’ve enjoyed our time together. But before we go further, you should know a few things about me. I need fidelity in my sexual relationships, respect for my decisions about myself, appreciation for what I do for you and reciprocity in all financial arrangements. And I need to be able to trust you to be honest. Anything less does not meet my needs.”
Can you imagine saying this? If so, hooray for you. If not, practice in the mirror, with a warm smile on your face as you assume the other person will say, “Wow, excellent list. I’m very comfortable with all of that, and feel the same way myself. Except that I also need fun in my life. Are you down with that?” When you can do this without worrying about what other people think of you or how this makes them feel, you’ll be a lot closer to being able to manage healthy friendships and intimate relationships. The next article is will be about love.
Namaste. The happy independent spirit in me salutes the happy independent spirit in you.
Kathy
Kathy,
Once again, you’ve spoken to my heart. This article was thought provoking, challenging and scarey. I am on the right path – just feel so friggin’ good to be on the other side with no intent of going back. I DO have something to compare this with, and that is the cult involvement with which I was a member beginning in 1971 and exiting in 1987. When I left I didn’t yet know it was a cult; only that I could no longer do it because the last 4 years the 12 step program I was involved in taught me that I had to check my motives. I realized my motives for remaining in the “church” were fear and guilt. I left with only that much knowledge. Two weeks later I saw an article in Portland regarding a seminar on cults, which piqued my curiosity so I went. While there I was given a book relating to the cult I was in. I had been taught that reading any outside material was a no-no. I kept the copy by my bedside and would fearfully read a bit at a time and put it down when I started feeling God might zap me. What transpired was that over the next few weeks I began “thawing”. It was as if my emotions were coming out of the deep freeze. The next two years were wrought with sensations of floating, depersonalization, derealization, feelings that I couldn’t keep living, anxiety, depression,etc. I eventually ended up in a support group that included survivors from Jonestown, Moonies and others. In fact, I was in the cult with the Psychopath and our children. We left the cult together in 1987 and the Psychopath left our family in 1991. When I went to Wellspring in Ohio for in-patient treatment in 1996 for residual issues, I was told that the cult “contained” the Psychopath’s madness. It still took me another 13 years to internalize that I had indeed been married to a Psychopath and what that meant. Prior to my aha moment in April, (the Psychopath and I had gotten back together in November 08 for Thanksgiving at our daughters), I began having lots of red flags regarding him. I attribute this to the fact that I had 18 years apart from him, had acquired an MSW and much counseling, with continued recovery in the 12 step program.
Where I stand now is that for about 3 1/2 weeks after I broke it off with the Psychopath, I experienced feelings of trauma of a magnitude off of the Richter scale. I lived on LOVEFRAUD. Then things slowly receeded. It was just like my cult experience, and since I had been through the whole experience, I had that to compare it with. I knew when I broke up with him that I “got” it and would never go back. It hasn’t been an option for me, nor have I ever wanted to. I feel “deprogrammed”. I realize that is an ancient term, but for lack of a better term will use it.
The issues I am faced with now are that I used my marriage to the Psychopath at 19 years of age to cover up the pain of my childhood. I am in therapy to deal with what I ran from at 19 and am now 62. My childhood involved trauma of such a magnitude that I was bordering on Dissociative Identity Disorder. Thank God for a nurturing aunt and a delightful doting 3rd grade Catholic nun – dear little Sister Mary Blanche.
I still FEEL needy, abandoned, helpless and terrified of doing life apart from someone else to be the grown-up. The difference is that I am doing it regardless of my feelings. I am making healthy choices for myself, learning who I am apart from another, saying the Serenity prayer alot and navigating the terrain sometimes quietly on tiptoe. I journal, have developed a social life, am learning to spend time alone, even if it feels horrible, doing a little volunteer work, spending time with my children and grandchildren as we are able, going to the church of my choice, grocery shopping like a big girl, having the car serviced and whatever else life presents. I don’t pretend anymore to be more brave than I feel. I just choose to do the action step and feel the uncomfortable feelings.
Kathy, thank you so very much for the love, companioning and honesty you share with us. You are a jewel!!!
housie, thanks for your response. And for saying the article was “scary” as well as the other nice things you said. I think this is scary stuff, in the sense that we have to be willing to break through deeply embedded training to even consider becoming emotionally free.
You, of all people know this. And I don’t know how to adequately express my admiration for your persistence in getting yourself free and my respect for the huge amount of work that has gone into it.
I love the way you talk about what you’re doing “like a big girl.” I know exactly how that feels, stepping out into the unknown with a sense of that I need to learn how to do something, and then learning on my feet. This is what I mean, when I talk about unblocking a developmental path, and then letting it “grow up.” It’s scary and funny and kind of breathtaking to feel some lost childish part of myself awakening, then zooming up through maturation, catching up with the rest of me.
And I much admire that you’re doing things that feel uncomfortable. I was listening to a CD by one of my favorite teachers, Arjuna Ardagh (who is great on deprogramming issues), talking about how we tend to meditate in ways that play to our strengths, rather than in ways that challenge us or that we feel “aren’t allowed.”
Doing the action and feeling the uncomfortable feelings, as you write, is just such a great way to discover yourself. As you know, a lot of us have come to really love become the “sole proprietors” of our lives.
So finally, thank you for the kind words. I never know if my writing will land well, and your encouragement is gratefully received.
Kathy
Kathy,
You’re funny!!! Let me tell you, I’d rather be having dinner at June Cleaver’s house and hanging out with the “Beav” than growing. I do it kicking and screaming with claw marks on the nearest object. It’s survival of the fittest. Today I listened to a tape my counselor let me borrow by Mark Grant (who is Austrailian), on EMDR. It’s called Calm and Confident. I am not a CD person, but the pain today was a great motivator. That Austrailan voice was very soothing and I camped out at the ocean in my own living room.
Your writing landed exceptionally well, and I’ll be reviewing it prn. Sally
Kathy, Thanks for your thought provoking article. What I got out of your article was empowerment to take responsiblity for “my” feelings and comfort zone,. In doing this we are not being selfish by honoring our own wishes, and desires- instead we are freeing ourselves to have better, more honest relationships that are MUTUALLY satisfying.
I have been in several relationships, and friendships ,- even aside from the x n/p. that were so needy or drama based that I felt my only role was to “fix” their bottomless pit of needs or even worse, make (and Keep) them smiling in some way . Most of these people were miserable human beings to begin with, and I had no chance of making a dent in the frown that was permanently etched on their face or the forehead with MISERY tattoed across it.
I completely lost sight of the “purpose” for the relationship to begin with which was to MUTUALLY enjoy each others company. I can’t ever understand why in the midst of these relationships, I don’t just stop and tell the person that I can’t DO whatever they are asking or that I am not happy in the situation as it is!! It never seems to dawn on me that I have this choice!WHY is that, I wonder? I’m sure my comfort zone of avoiding conflict at all costs is a major reason. If you asked:, So how is that working out for me? You’d see a frown on MY face with a resounding – Not (working). As pointed out in this article-working on my emotional independence must be the answer.
Thanks, Kathy for pointing this out- would love to see more on this subject and on setting strong boundaries. This for me, is still a difficult subject and I find myself isolating from others due to fear of getting caught up again in the dysfunctional roller coaster.
Housie, I am so glad that your continueing your healing journey and am proud of your shopping,taking care of yourself, etc. like a “a big girl.: 😉 I feel the exact same way, as I am having to do many big girl things in my life now. Alittle scary, but I feel so proud of me every time I accomplish something that I didn’t have the confidence to do alone before! take care.. xoxo
Housie,
Since I’ve been progressively venturing out into the world doing job search, my niece tells me I’m “wearing my big girl pants”! Love it!
Kathy,
Thanks a million again! This article is incredibly helpful: I can see how my family of origin was very adept at managing me with controlling language — and I can see some wonderful ways refrain from playing the game. Which I believe will be good for all of us.
The Non-Violent Language information: that’s astounding! What an incredible way to deal with one’s self and others! At first I thought, but what about destructive people? Won’t this set me up for more abuse? Then I read your example of setting healthy limits in a romantic relationship, and I was cheering! That’d do it alright! When I can say something like that and mean it, I’ll quickly know what kind of person I’m dealing with.
This article, like the others, is a real gift.
Thank you,
Betty
Kathy,
When I first read your article, I found myself saying,Whoa-I can’t do that! It feels so selfish. I have spent my whole life being the fixer, the peace keeper, & always putting myself last. This is still a struggle for me today. I think I have made some baby steps in trying to put myself first on occasion, but it still feels so foreign to me. I have also been terrified all my life of any type of confrontations. The consequence of this aspect of myself has led me to always be the one to give in to the wants & needs of others. I somehow convinced myself that as long as the peace was kept, my needs didn’t matter. Another area I need to work on. Thank you so much for this continuing series, I am baby stepping myself along the healing path.
Thank you all for your wonderful comments. Clearly you all “get it” and you’ve given me great feedback on making this more clear and more useful.
housie, you crack me up. I’m familiar with the kicking and screaming part. I think it’s survival of the fittest parts of ourselves. This whole series is about discovering, supporting and ultimately living through our own power, because it’s the only way to greater things like joy, creativity and compassion.
sabrina, it sounds like you and I have similar backgrounds of taking on “project relationships” with people who are depressed, needy or manipulative. We think we can fix them and then we find ourselves slogging in the same swamp. Other than just “no,” my favorite boundary setting phrase is “that doesn’t work for me.” Before I knew about needs, it was just another form of “no.” Now I can add “I need this to be more fair to me, and here’s what would work for me.”
If you’re anything like me, doing this for the first time(s) can be nerve-wracking. I never realized how well-programmed I was to never ask for anything for myself, until I tried to do it. It was like all the punishment I’d ever received for trying to speak up for myself was in my bones. I felt like one of those people trying to learn to walk again after a major car wreck. And I’d already been through assertiveness training. And of course, all those dysfunctional people among our families and friends weren’t exactly helpful.
So I found myself practicing mostly on people I didn’t know. First dates. People who were rude in the supermarket line. Customer service people on the telephone. Until I figured how to say it without stuttering, and so that I was clear enough that people understood. Eventually it becomes easy to do it politely and gracefully most of the time. (“That sounds like a wonderful idea, except I’d like to make one little addition. I’d be glad to lend you the $500 if you’ll leave your mountain bike here until you repay it and sign this note saying the bike is mine if you don’t repay it. That way neither of us have to worry about this ruining our friendship.”)
Betty, you wrote “I can see some wonderful ways refrain from playing the game. Which I believe will be good for all of us.” You’re right it is. However, if your family is like mine, you’re going to get the most resistance from the people who feel the least empowered to speak up for themselves, and who are most likely to use passive-aggressive or indirect means to get their needs met. They will interpret this as you trying to bully them or get power over them, or you being insensitive or discourteous.
The only way I’ve been able to handle this is to just be quietly consistent in my dealings with them without making an issue of it. Being a role model for how this works, especially with people who are inclined to assume the “power over” position. It’s really common for people who feel powerless to get angry or afraid initially, but they’ll watch and think about it. And the words we use — like “this doesn’t work for me” and “I’d like this to be more fair for both of us” — will be something they chew over in their minds. Eventually they’ll figure out that they can do this too, though it can take a while. We can’t jam personal power down the throats of people who have been trained to be submissive (no matter how much we’d like to, because we can wait until people we love figure out that they’re allowed to ask for what they want.)
Betty, I hope you write more about your family adventures with this.
sstiles, your post was exactly what I hoped to hear. I think that fear of confrontation is a big issue with our hesitation to speak up about our own needs and wants. And I think that’s especially true if we’ve grown up with verbal or physical violence. As you say, you’ve taken on the role of the fixer and peacekeeper, and that is a role in which we essentially disappear and invest our energies in other people’s issues (with the ultimate goal of just keeping our environments safe).
We can take those skills and make careers out of them. I think that’s how a lot of people get into fields like psychotherapy or public relations. (I’m continually astounded at how many people in PR come from abusive families.) We’re background people, smoothing things out so that everyone gets their needs met. (And getting paid for it, though money isn’t a total repayment for being invisible. I know in my case, I used a lot of that money for therapy, as well as pain-killing pursuits like shopping and supporting various men who were supposed to make me feel better about myself.)
The thing about confrontation — the thing I think we’re so afraid of — is that it can be a power struggle, if we’re dealing with people who are heavily invested in having the power. In more equitable circumstances, this is just a negotiation. Here’s what you want, here’s what I want, and how can we both get our needs met. All relatively straightforward, and people who are interested in mutually good outcomes are great to deal with.
But when we’re dealing with a bully (or even someone who is less obviously invested in power, but is very effective at using indirect techniques like guilt-tripping or “don’t you care about me?”), we can feel like we’re under attack. And we are. Because their view of the world is that someone has to lose if someone else wins.
With this kind of person, the thing that saves us is getting firmly grounded in our own needs. That means, remembering them, even if we have to write them in ballpoint on the inside our our wrist (my favorite technique) when we enter a negotiation with them. It may be our needs (like fairness, autonomy, acknowledgement) or it may be the associated wants (a written contract, closed-door private time, public acknowledgement for what we do), but it helps to keep us solid with ourselves, so that we don’t get gaslit or otherwise bamboozled.
This isn’t exactly about putting ourselves first, though it can feel like that if we’re asserting ourselves in an environment where everyone expects or is accustomed to us submitting to their needs. It’s more like making sure that our needs are part of the ambient stew,and they are recognized and considered in decision-making processes.
In interpersonal relationships, we’re not trying to be selfish, as much as making sure that what happens is good for us, as well as everyone else. (And we’re the arbiters of that, not someone who imagines it’s their role to tell us what’s good for us.) In our private lives, the way we deal with ourselves, it’s about getting clear about how we want our lives to run, to be shaped (in terms of focus and effort) and how we want things to come out for us.
It can feel like putting ourselves first if we’re dealing with people who don’t want us to put ourselves anywhere at all, except at their service. (Typical situation in a sociopathic interaction.) Our efforts to make sure that our needs are considered can draw a lot of flack from these people. And we just have to be very firm about getting information and commitments about how our needs and wants will be taken care of, if we help them pursue their grand schemes.
In my professional world, which is public relations and marketing, that means that I negotiate for fair payment, for written testimonials if I do a good job, and I ask for referrals when I need more work. In my personal life, it means that I ask for what I want or need, and speak up about it when my feelings are triggered because something doesn’t meet my needs.
As I said, it can create some tension with people who, for whatever reason have problems with other people’s assertion of power over their own lives, but this is the way we graduate from being doormats to people who are respected and whose contributions bring good back to us. These are our lives. We are responsible for them. And if we don’t act like we care about what happens to us, we are showing people how we expect to be treated.
Finally, if acting as though our needs are as important as anyone else’s draws personal attacks or any kind of violence or abuse toward us, it is a clear message that we are not in a safe place. There are a lot of levels of “safety.” If we are clear in this way with our mothers, and they say, “Well, you always were the selfish one,” this is a personal attack. Arguing with this sort of thing is a form of condoning it. It makes more sense to point it out as a personal attack, and say that we are willing to discuss what she wants and needs, if she wants to share that information, but unless she can keep her unsolicited opinions to herself, this conversation is over. (Whew. But yes, we can do this.)
Big safety issues come up in situation when our assumptions that we are entitled to discuss our needs and wants draws more violent responses. And they will in physically abusive relationships. In verbally or emotionally abusive relationships, they will draw whatever techniques the other person uses to keep us submissive. The point here is not to endanger ourselves. We don’t need to fight with people we already know are invested in separating us from our legitimate needs.
What emotional freedom can do for us — and even toying with the idea privately in our minds without saying anything about it — is clarify what’s really going on here. That it is impossible for us to be whole human beings in this environment, and to motivate us to get out of it.
In truth, we can be whole human beings in any environment. There are many stories of people maintaining their power over their own values, and acting with clarity and compassion even toward their persecutors, while they were in unspeakably inhumane circumstances. But most of us have the power to give ourselves much better lives, and emotional freedom enables us to make those choices.
Namaste.
Kathy
Kathy, Wow I’m thinking about posting your words all around my house just as I have bible verses posted on my bathroom mirror! I’m gonna really need to focus on this thread.
I think so many of us are needing to get out of our comfort zone of “keeping the peace at ALL costs.” As Kathy pointed out there IS a deep cost involved. We are negating our own emotional needs ,and sanity in alot of cases. It comes down to the fact that our actions (thru not standing up for ourselves) shows that we love the abuser more than we love ourselves. Very sad.
This causes strife and conflict internally- we are upset and tend to blame ourselves that no one has spoke up for our needs, and are angry that we aren’t being courageous or strong enough to defend those needs. So in a way we are getting abused two- fold ,by our wishes being dismissed/ignored by the other person ,and our part of not attending to our needs or standing up for ourselves. I think focusing on being good caretakers for ourselves is needed. We know and have been conditioned to take care of others, so when do we finally get the benefits of it?
take care, xoxo
Kathy…I haven’t read it yet. I will, and it probably has a lot of stuff I’ll need…is there anyplace safe out there when we’re not on Lovefraud…LOL…I’ll be back!
Jim, there are safe places, in the sense of good, mature people to deal with. And organizations that are shaped by good, mature principles.
But you know, anything that is successful or rich is going to attract sociopaths. We talk about the fact that sociopaths cut the weak and the sick out of the herd. That’s not all they do. They infiltrate healthy organizations, usually through someone who has unresolved trauma issues, and they are like deer in the garden. Gobble, gobble. Someone (Elizabeth, was that you?) recently posted an excellent article on narcissists in the workplace. These people are about nothing but their overblown needs masking their empty centers.
But fortunately, as many of us are discovering, the combination of getting emotionally free and having the gut knowledge of how these people operate, can add up to early alert systems and the ability to be fearless and clever in getting rid of them. (If it were them, we’d call it Machiavellian. If it’s us, we call it ErinBrockovickian. The difference is that we are capable of pitying them as cripples, as we boot their sorry and dangerous a**es out.)
This is only my opinion, and I think it requires a certain temperament or possibly a level of healing — I’m not sure which — to view environmental clean-up as part of our life work. We start by keeping them out of our lives. But an extension of that is making life difficult for cruising sharks.
I’m not saying that everyon is going to be interested in that activity. But I think that ultimately it’s going to be part of the resolution for some of us. We can’t do if we’re still shaky, I think. But there’s a difference between living in fear and having a healthy respect for the damage they can do. I’m going to be afraid if an N/S/P has me backed into the corner, because the fact that I’m a feeling person puts me at a disadvantage in close quarters. But until the situation becomes that extreme, I’ve got the advantage. Because I can use social systems, because I’ve got more depth of character to call on (and therefore more flexibility), and because they’re so predictable.
If they were literally sharks, and we were dolphins, dolphins are known for attacking sharks that try to hunt in their pods. They don’t create vigilante squads. They just do it on an ad lib basis when the need arises. I like their style.