Teaching People How to Treat You

Teaching People How to Treat You

You teach people how to treat you (thank you Dr. Phil). This is true, however sometimes people teach you how you need to treat yourselves. Learning self-respect and balancing that with not getting grandiose or arrogant is a lifelong art. The differences between humble and doormat, self-affirming and narcissistic, helping others and enabling, self-sufficient or using that to hide your shame, the list of balancing acts is endless. Psychic, energetic, and emotional balancing may at first seem overwhelming, but like physical balance which anyone without a physical disability takes for granted, will become pretty automatic after some practice. You will have to make some adjustments, just like you need to do to keep your physical body healthy, but it will not stay a full time job. If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, or suffered trauma (sexual assault, war, extreme poverty, physical violence, alcoholic or drug use family etc.) self-care will have to become a learned skill.

How do you know if someone is treating you badly, or with disrespect versus the Universe is asking you to step up into newer behaviors and sent you a “teacher”?  That’s a good question and difficult to answer in a short article. Ultimately for each person this will be very specific and the choices you make to maintain balance and promote your self-growth will be unique not only to you, but to where you are in your life, as well as looking at the person currently “in your face” and the details of the circumstances. So if you are looking for an easy answer or fix, stop reading this now.

One thing I suggest you look at is to try and distinguish if something is a pattern or an event. If it is a pattern, meaning it is happening more than once and with more than one person, and it is causing you distress. If so, that is the Universe (Spirit) trying to get your attention and letting you know it is time to teach people how to treat you differently. It actually means that first you need to do some healing first because you somehow allowed, created, or didn’t notice until now (meaning your energy and consciousness just took a leap forward) that the behaviors that were once “okay” with you, are no longer okay with you.  If it is a pattern, start with you. First you must learn what is bothering you when people in the pattern react to you or treat you a certain way.  You are not analyzing them, you are looking at you, and how you present yourself in certain situations.  Does this occur when you are nervous, when you feel threatened, or attracted?  How does this make you feel? The pattern is Spirit trying to show you how you actually feel about your Self and to make it so painful that you can call up the courage to change. You then are at the place of choice, evolve or repeat. Both, at this point will be painful choices.

Typically here you will have to do some heavy lifting. You can pray, and Spirit will show you what you need to learn and perhaps send you a Teacher, but you are still the one that has to do the learning. You can pray and Spirit might turn you on to books, or online resources regarding boundaries, healthy behaviors, etc. but you will have to do the reading. You can work with a therapist, a group (church, 12-step, support group etc.), a Teacher. You will have to take a deep breath and practice, and practice, and keep learning from your mistakes. What will you learn? First off you will deepen your learning and understanding of what it is you have been feeling that has created this pattern of people treating you a certain way. You might trace it back to childhood or some specific dramatic event in your life.  You will have to discover what are the behaviors or language you have been using unconsciously that create or provoke this pattern of how people react to you and how they treat you. You will have to bring what is unconscious, or subconscious, to consciousness in order to be able to apply the new choices you have studied. Now, if this is about racism or any other kind of prejudice, those are not the patterns I am addressing here. Those are patterns of societal sickness and is another topic altogether.

If you have determined that you are dealing with an event, instead of a pattern, that is slightly different. An event is something that happens once, with a person. There are different lessons to be learned here, primarily how to hold your space, how to stay with your Self when someone else is tripping out, spinning.  Your job is not to analyze the other but instead to keep your focus on what is happening to you just like if a tiger was stalking you it does no good to analyze why or to try to “understand” the tiger at that moment. Your job is to not take the tiger’s actions personally, and to be able to tune into your Higher Self by going inside, going “home” so you can “receive” a “broadcast” from Source. At that moment are you able to receive and use the energetic guidance given to you on how to handle what is going on, how to react. Of course, if you do not have a regular Spiritual Practice, tuning in at this moment might be quite challenging, maybe even impossible if you are overwhelmed by threatened and are filled with fear or anxiety. Sometimes the Universe gives you an event to test you on your new found skills of having boundaries, or being able to stay “connected” under pressure. If you have been working hard on correcting a “pattern”, learning and practicing new skill, the Universe (Spirit, Source) will often create a kind of graduation test where you get to apply your new knowledge and strengths to a different situation. It is only after the event is over will you be able to have some hindsight on what it was about. Your job during the event is to stay with You as best you can, that is what will keep you “connected”.

What is the point of know all of this?  So you can be proactive in your growth, become a warrior rather than feeling like a victim. Rise to the tests, embrace the challenges.  One way you can know for sure you are evolving is when you are dealing with new problems. We will always have problems and challenges. When the same ones recycle over and over, in a pattern, you are stuck. When you have new problems and circumstances you have moved up a grade. This will continue until your transition and by that time hopefully you will be at the PhD level of evolution for this lifetime.  Don’t give up. Learn to love the challenges.  Choose them because, after all, you did, when you set up your life before you incarnated.

Journey On