Once I had a client with a bad habit. I made her keep track and she found she was complaining to friends, several times a day. It seems like if we aren't busy putting others down to make ourselves feel better, then we are busy putting ourselves down to supposedly make someone else feel better. Ugh.
Or we are busy trying to win at "misery poker" so others do what we want them to. For example, always having some ailment or predicament that turns the conversation to your needs -- not the other person's -- and puts them in a position of feeling like they need to help or save you.
Or we are busy hiding our real selves for "fear of rejection." For example, not being honest about your sexuality with people you love.
We are such manipulators. None of this works or makes us feel good, but we are just so chicken that it's where we often stop in our relationships.
Here's the problem with each case.
Case #1: You hide your success or fake-complain to make another feel better. This covers up that you are judging them; you see something awry with them; you have some wisdom to impart or some harsh reality to wake them up to and you are too afraid to do it. You justify your fear with the arrogant assumption that they can't handle it. You do the dialogue in your head instead of with them. You become "better than" and supposedly powerless to speak (all at once), while they become a mute pawn of your unspoken judgments.
Then we wonder why we don't feel totally powerful and peaceful. It's because we live in compartments, never unifying our voice and speaking as ourselves, our real selves, even when it's ugly. Especially when we have something true, harsh or ugly to say, we need to say it. When the thoughts see the light of day and the other person gets to respond, only then can the thoughts change or lead to some good.
Case #2: The problem with manipulating others to feel sorry for you and do stuff for you is that it's never enough. Also, you have to be so convincing that you start to believe you have no power and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Plus, because your real purpose in life is to empower yourself, and there is no substitute, you will never be fully satisfied with other people's help anyway.
Case #3: The problem with hiding yourself or something about you in the name of being loved is that you never feel real love anyway, because you aren't being the real you. Sure, someone could reject you when you tell the truth (though they usually don't if you do it with grace), but you fulfill the prophecy of being rejected and alone by not being the real you. Plus, in your arrogance of "knowing" how they will respond, you turn them into mute pawns in that they don't get to choose their response. Again, the dialogue is in your head, not in real life. And then by golly, it seems to you that they have rejected you, when you have rejected them.
Yikes! What is the solution?
Start telling the truth. Today. Immediately. Go back and fix one of the cases in your life where one of these things has occurred. Set the record straight and start a real honest dialogue. Geez, it's exhausting to avoid them any longer.Let me know how it goes. (Share it with me in a comment below.)
Can you tell I have a head full of steam? I do. I am on a warpath for making the truth sexy and getting people to buck up and get real. If you want to feel better, be realer. It works every time.
Love, Laurie
P.S.- Join me live for a weekend workshop Nov 11-13, The How of Sustainable Happiness at Menla Mountain Retreat Center, with amazing teachers: Patricia Moreno, Dr. Frank Lipman and Bob Thurman.
Follow Laurie Gerber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HGLifeCoaching
To live in reality to listen more than we speak. We have been given two ears, two eyes, to observe four times as much before using our one tongue.
This is why its so difficult these days to stay in a lasting relationship, or spend alot of time with family members who are not pleasing to our ego.
It creates quite the conundrum. On the one hand we want connection, but on the other hand the ego finds less and less to be happy about when we do connect, so we can end up isolating ourselves.
These days masses of people are finding similar things to connect about - finances, unemployment, natural disasters. Maybe starting to connect through these adversities will lead to something bigger than trying to please our ego. Maybe we will have to connect and learn to get along despite our distaste for each other and our differences, in order to find a way through these global adversities. Maybe the next generation of relationships will be more meaningful because we learn this.
Unfortunately, some so called "real" people take this as license to say whatever is on their minds, be it the "truth," or any garbage they want to lay on someone else to make themselves feel better.
The problem is that some people don't know the difference between what they think and what they truly know. More accurately, they're not interested in the difference because their motivation is ego driven. These people have no compassion for others. These are the people who brag about how no one can deal with their honesty.
The truly "real" people I've met attract other people because their honesty is delivered with compassion. They don't leave a trail of hurt and angry people behind them.
I've known a couple people who can't filter a single thing they say. Of course many acquaintences around them say how refreshing it is to hear someone speak so directly and bluntly.... but the people closest to them always strike me as miserable.... and never hang around these people very long.
I am beginning to realize that most people are inherently wary and suspicious of people that are just like that because they tend to think there must be something they are really hiding and they are seemingly so very good at it that they must be really duplicitous in some way. Suspicion is rampant these days it seems and some type of artificial performance is almost expected.
I actually treat everyone the same whether they are complete strangers or old friends and I never modify my behavior to suite the situation as quite frankly faking it does not appeal to me and besides it is far too much work.
Alas though, people tend to think I am a bit eccentric which I don't mind, but, it would be less exasperating if people were more comfortable with their intuition and understood perfectly what "no side nor edge" really meant in real world relationships.Not everyone has to put on some kind of act just to be accepted in social relationships.
I was sexually assaulted, tased, pepper-sprayed and otherwise treated brutally by cops...was then re-victimized by the system for reporting it and spent eight months in jail. Everybody dropped me like a hot rock - and I never really understood why. Now I know.
I never asked anybody for anything...aside from moral support. But they were too pre-occupied with their own problems to even discuss it with me.
I think I'm gonna puke...
Really? That's my real purpose in life - to empower myself? What a bunch of silly nonsense. Our purpose is not to empower ourselves - it is to love those around us.
The advice you gave on not manipulating others is good, but if all it comes down to at the end end of the day for you is "empowering" yourself, you'll find the happiness you are looking for still very allusive.
"The problem with manipulating others to feel sorry for you and do stuff for you is that it's never enough. Also, you have to be so convincing that you start to believe you have no power and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
try to avoid - run as hell - any prospective 'mate' who sounds like the one described above... if their last 'partner' was controlling & their boss unreasonable, their parents too 'something-or-another', Bush destroyed them etc..... give them some Xanax and then pretend you have to go to the bathroom, RUN and don't look back !!!
True intimacy comes from knowledge, trust and respect. This istarts with the knowledge and trust of our own feelings and motives and the self-respect we have that our choices are driven by compassion rather than manipulation. It also includes our trust that our relations will handle themselves similarly.
As presented, Ms. Gerber's cases threaten the creation of "mute pawns" from our exercise of discretion. This smacks of self-judgment. While it may be the case in some relationships, it is not a universal truth. Sometimes when we choose not to share certain aspects of our own life, we are right not to do so, whether we are protecting ourselves or the other party. To presume that we should eschew all such discretion is disempowering and leads away from deeper intimacy, not towards it.
Relationship may very well be humankind's most important beautiful and creative act. Like a great painting or musical score, sometimes we create and emphasize our highest intentions best by not filling the space completely.
Namaste
They seem to love it as dearly as I do.
Twelve steps seemed to have worked for each of us early on. Very early on.
But even my two year old grand-daughter has caught on. She loves growing now even more than she did when she was two months old. I love it. So does everyone close to her
until her honesty floors them. Then they gotta' live with the consequences of their actions and/or speech in her presence. I encourage every moment of it. She rewards me with the tightest hugs in the world, and the biggested smiling tearful, "POPPA!" while she is grabbing my neck and squeezing tightly in her powerful little arms.
Is it true?
Is it kind?
Is it necessary?
If the answer is "no" to any of the three then I keep my mouth shut.
This isn't to mention that many truths will become necessary as time goes on, and as time goes on that truth becomes more and more unkind. Till the day comes around and everything comes crashing down and you find your friendship is dead.
to grow through their fear of such idle self-congratulation for choosing to be irresponsible.