As a good person, you might carry a set of beliefs.
EXAMPLE:
- You believe there is no reason to treat others with disrespect.
- You beleive that, in the act of disrespecting others, you become the bad guy.
- So, even if someone treats you like shit, is abusive and toxic, manipulative and controlling, you don’t allow yourself to retaliate out of some sense of keeping your values in tact.
What does that get you?
If expereince serves me correctly, it gets you more abuse.
The abuser is a shark…your passive nice guy/gal behavior is gallons of blood in the water.
The message is clear…
“I am food.”
“I am YOUR food.”
“I will forever continue to be your food until the very last bite…take it all.”
Did you ever wonder why this value of zero retaliation ever seeped its way into your synapses?
Can you think of the hundreds and thousands of books and movies you’ve consumed where the good guy is afraid to somehow become the bad guy if he takes on bad guy behaviors?
"If you retaliate...you're no better than them...you MUST rise above..."Where the fuck does this ideology even come from?
A better question…
WHO does this ideology benefit?
If a ‘bad guy’ can convince you to let him be ‘bad’ and also to never seek revenge on his behavior…wouldn’t that put him in a power position?
Could you imagine if I beat you up, took your money, AND convinced you that trying to get it back only makes you as bad as me?!
Do you maybe see this toxic pattern in close relationships, people at work, and in the evils produced by your own elected officials?
Okay.
Before this goes way too conspiracy theory let’s zoom back into the microcosm of your own life.
There are people you grew up with who abuse and disrespect you at every mother fucking turn…and you allow it to happen.
YOU.
Why?
Because there’s a DEEPER belief than not being the bad guy.
The deeper belief is that you have NO POWER to fight back.
Maybe they control your living situtation on some level…your paycheck…your survivial-based resources.
Every time you rub them even SLIGHTLY the wrong way, they dangle that ‘power’ over you to get you to ‘behave’.
It BURNS on the inside feeling total powerlessness.
So how do you fix it?
Do you stand up to them?
NO.
The reality is that you most likely…
…ALLOW them to destroy you while you PRETEND that it’s WRONG to fight back.
That some how if you don’t fight back, that makes you the ‘better person’, and THAT softens the pain of being the victim…
It also softens the truth that you are CHOOSING to be the victim…that there really IS NO VICTIM…that you are YOUR OWN VICTIM…
Afraid of your own power, taking full responsibility, and the work and risk that comes with standing up for yourself.
It’s not easy.
But you still get to choose.
Do you really need to be liked all that much?
Do you really need to play by the rules created by your abuser?
Obviously this is a pretty heavy handed post.
But power is not something to be taken lightly.
Your power is about everything you do, say, and think day in and day out.
We all have hopes and dreams about what we want in our future and all of them require a version of you that is stronger, smarter, brave, and grounded.
When people in your life make efforts to throw you off your game, you need to KNOW…you are faced with a real decision.
You have to decide let them step all over you, taking you further away from your own goals…
OR…
You have to make every cut necessary to keep moving forward.
At first it seems like a hard decision.
But when you really give your loyalty to who you truly are…the decision practically makes itself.
