When you spend time with friends who love and accept you, do you think you feel good because of them or because their behavior matches the way you feel about yourself? When you’re around someone who criticizes or judges you and it feels bad, do you blame them for making you feel bad or do you realize that their opinion is in alignment with how you feel about yourself? Others are just mirrors reflecting back to you how you feel about you. If their opinions of you don’t resonate with your own…
They won’t stick.
Steve and Jarl
I’m having a little trouble understanding this one. When I feel bad because I’ve been criticized, I don’t blame the person making the statement, because I know it’s my reaction to what they said. But if what they say is plain untrue, then how is it in alignment with how I feel about myself? I feel bad for being so misunderstood. If my partner says I don’t care about her then I feel isolated and misunderstood, because I do care about her. I can’t see how it’s in alignment with the way I feel about myself. Hope you can help.
Hi Larry, Thanks for the comment. 🙂 If someone said to me, “You’re too tall”, I wouldn’t feel bad because I’ve never felt tall, (I’m 5’3″) and the shortest in my family. But if someone said, “Gee, you’re short.” I might feel bad because I have been self-conscious about that in the past. That’s a mild situation. In your example: When your partner says that you don’t care about her, you feel isolated and misunderstood. If that comment didn’t strike home on some level, you wouldn’t take it personally and you’d feel compassion for her and you’d try to make her feel better. Or it might be, and you realize, that she has unreasonable expectations (ones that you’ll never be able to fulfill) because she won’t allow in love, no matter what. If the later were the case and you continued to be in relationship with her, then you would be demonstrating a lack of self-caring by staying in the relationship with her. If you don’t care for yourself, you can’t really care about anyone else. So she might, in that case, be right! I know that sounds like a tautological explanation, but can you see the point? Another example that actually inspired this post: A homeless woman who is clearly mad, sits on the street and screams obscenities to passersby. Most people understand that she’s crazy so what she’s saying doesn’t affect them. Then along comes someone else who’s also mad (at least in that moment) and takes what she’s saying personally because there’s a vibrational resonance and they get into a screaming match. Hope this helps. 🙂