You might be shocked to learn how many shame and guilt themselves over another’s reactions to what we say to them. Even if we’re just speaking our truth, conveying our hurt feelings, or simply communicating what’s on our mind or in our heart~ if it’s taken the wrong way, we can’t help but presume we are at fault.
Accountability is characteristic of one who operates with personal integrity in all realms of their life. I often mentally replay my client sessions, to assess whether I’ve hit the mark, missed something important or made an error. When I recognize I’ve made a mistake, I call and offer a sincere apology, and hope the other will allow me a ‘do over’ on MY dime, to make it right with them.
While it’s true we usually feel like we’re walking on eggshells around a friend or partner who has Borderline Personality Disorder features, because they go thru life as if they have no epidermis, and are a tangle of exposed nerves and oozing, raw flesh that’s emotionally hyper-sensitive and reactive to nearly anything you might verbally convey, is it actually our job to skirt our own feelings and needs in favor of constantly having to guard and protect theirs??
I’ve always said, consider the source. Even operating with the best intentions, we might be programmed and conditioned to measure our every word, facial expression and action~ and give an extraordinary amount of time to predicting or presuming how what we say will ‘land’ with someone who has BPD traits~ ‘cause there’s often HELL to pay, if we don’t. This is not a life folks~ it’s emotional imprisonment and censorship of the worst kind! How can we ever be true to ourselves, if someone close to us is so easily triggered? We can’t.
Millions of people were raised in such a way, they became pathologically Codependent from an early age onward. Codependents NEED to feel needed, as it forms the crux of their sense of worth. These are the Super-Givers on our planet, and God bless ‘em~ ‘cause there are occasions when they’ve gotten us out of tough scrapes when life has thrown us a curveball. But when someone is only comfortable GIVING but not RECEIVING, it’s an entitlement issue that sends ripples out into one’s lake, in context of being able to build a rich, gratifying Life filled with love, monetary success, joy and contentment.
The tide of the ocean goes out to sea, but it has to return to shore with sand and shells it deposits, or we’d have no beaches anywhere in our world! Giving has to be in balance with receiving. The opposite of giving is NOT “taking,” and you must surrender the faulty idea that you’re taking away from or hurting someone, by graciously receiving what they wish to bestow upon you, whether their gift comes to you as a compliment, or in a box with pretty wrapping paper and ribbon!
The one who needs the least in a relationship dynamic, is always the one in power. They control and run the whole show! Their need to fix, rescue and assist others stems from a primarily subjective viewpoint, based on their own unmet needs from infancy onward. We learn to give what we’ve desperately needed, but could never get, throughout infancy and early childhood. The PAYOFF we derive from this, is vicarious satisfaction, that at least someone is getting their needs met, even if we can’t!. My book published several years ago entitled, DO YOU LOVE TO BE NEEDED, OR NEED TO BE LOVED? explores and reveals these issues in great depth. I think of it as THE quintessential primer on the subject of pathological Codependency, and the accompanying narcissistic traits “Super-Givers” refuse to see in themselves.
Codependents never consider the harm they do to others. If it gives YOU a sense of satisfaction, pleasure and ego bolstering to give to others, WHY would you ever want to deprive anyone else of these richly rewarding emotional experiences?!
I’ve known people who are profoundly uncomfortable, just receiving a compliment! I had a friend and colleague who’d always compulsively diminish any compliment I gave her (like, every single time)! I had enough ego strength under my belt in those days, to recognize and deal with her frequent invalidation of my perceptions of her, but I felt annoyed by it, just the same.
Did I hold up a mirror one day? Yes, I did~ but the behavior never changed. My former friend, the “couples therapist” was pathologically codependent AND Borderline Personality Disordered. She’d go out of her way and give you the shirt off her back to help ya, but emotionally and psychologically tormented her lovers and husbands (five, by my last count) behind closed doors at home.
When you stop and consider a Borderline’s powerful tendency for cognitive dissonance and thought distortion, does it even make sense that you guilt or shame yourself if you trigger in them a highly reactive emotional response to virtually anything you’ve said to ‘em? Of course not… unless you’ve got poor self-worth. Under these conditions, you’ll blame and guilt yourself for hours, even days over having touched a raw nerve in this person who has no skin holding them in!
It’s literally impossible to live a balanced, satisfying life, without occasionally disappointing or inadvertently hurting someone. How long did it take YOU to rebalance emotionally, after having been let down by someone who may have made a commitment to you, but with the passing of time, couldn’t followthro ugh? Maybe two or three days went by, and you struggled with difficult feelings and maybe resentment, in relation to that disappointment~ but you managed to rebound and find your footing again, did you not?
My point is, the sky didn’t come crashing down on your head, the bottom of your world didn’t suddenly drop-out from beneath you, and you were able to move on and navigate your way thru another day, week or year. Isn’t it a bit egocentric of you, to presume others have zero capacity to do this, as well??
Rational, emotionally whole and healthy people are seldom highly reactive to stimuli. Oh, we’ve all ranted, raved, cursed and sworn now and then, when someone or something violates our boundaries or rights (like our current administration) and our anger has to be expressed! If it isn’t, it festers and eats us alive from the inside out (cancer in the body is emotionally related to long-held resentment and repressed rage).
Anger and rage are normal, natural and passionate human emotions that far more people oughta try learning to accept and embrace, rather than punishing themselves endlessly, for feeling! Incidentally, when you kill off passion in this zone, all other creative and passionate endeavors in your life (including sexual passion) lose their vibrancy. I guarantee it!
QUIT shaming and guilting yourself for how someone else might react to you! It’s far better to offer a heartfelt apology for unwittingly stepping on another’s toes, than to constantly need and seek their approval, and kill off the beautiful little light inside ya, that’s the authentic essence of YOU.