Tag: narcissisticabuse

  • Respect is not earned

    Respect is not earned

    The old saying of ‘respect is earned’ robs you of self respect and replaces it with entitlement.

    How we treat others is a reflection of who we are, not who they are.

    Our ability to self regulate our offering of respect to those who may treat us badly is a reflection of how much we need them to treat us well before we feel good about who we are.

    In other words, the less grounded we are in who we are, the more likely it is that others will impact our moods, our temper, and our overall emotional wellbeing.

    Trust, on the other hand, is earned through consistency of effort about what’s important.

    Trust cannot be negotiated or contracted.

    If we have reason to doubt someone showing up for us, we won’t trust that they will.

    That reason is sometimes because of them being unreliable, but is also often because of how someone else in the past may have disappointed us or betrayed our trust when we needed a similar thing from them. Like comfort, support, or just being there for us.

    If we go through life trusting recklessly while withholding respect to those who, in our eyes, don’t deserve it, we will find ourselves reeling from betrayal long after it has passed while disrespecting those who don’t understand our pain.

    Problem is, even we won’t understand our pain, so we’ll never be able to communicate it in ways that will allow those close to us to understand why we’re raging.

    It all starts with self respect and self worth.

    Without that, you will need others to treat you well before you treat yourself well.

    Own your life.

  • The struggle for self-worth

    The struggle for self-worth

    Our relationship with our father, whether they’re present or absent, still with us or passed on, shapes how we feel about ourselves more than any other influencing factor in our lives.

    It’s not about whether they were good or bad as humans or as parents, but rather what we took from our experiences with them, or what we took from their absence.

    A father who is absent because he has to work long hours to provide for his family, could still have a positive impact if he is not harsh and impatient with his children when he does have a few moments to share with them.

    Similarly, a father who is present but always fixated on rules, boundaries, rituals, and the like, will create an emotional barrier between him and his children that will convince them that who they are doesn’t matter, and that what they achieve is all that matters.

    That directly conflicts with our core human need to be of significance.

    What we take, or what we believe to have been their motivation to be that way towards us in our early years, is what shapes how we show up for others in our later years.

    Most people who have had a difficult relationship with their father know exactly how they don’t want to do things, or how they don’t want to be as parents, but that doesn’t mean that they know how to achieve what they want in their relationship with their children.

    That’s how, without meaning to, we often become exactly like the parent/so that we once judged harshly for failing us as a parent.

    The most effective way to break this cycle is to understand the true reasons why your father may not have been what you needed him to be despite his best intentions or efforts.

    It’s only in seeing the demons of others that we will realise that how they showed up for us was not because of who we are, but rather because of how our needs from them provoked the demons that they were grappling with.

    That’s how we learn from the shortcomings of others, rather than falling into the same deficiencies because we think we’re better than them.

    See the human behind the role and you’ll feed the soul of those who desperately need it.

    #toxicparents

  • Don’t outsource your dignity

    Don’t outsource your dignity

    Dignity is the ultimate social currency.

    With dignity comes accountability and self awareness.

    Or perhaps dignity is only possible through self awareness and accountability.

    But accountability is an outcome of self respect and integrity which in turn demands that we care more about who we are and what we stand for than what we want others to think of us.

    That’s when it gets complicated.

    It gets complicated when we focus on what we are likely to lose from others if we take a stand about what we believe to be important.

    But that complication is not because the issue is complicated.

    It’s because we complicate our lives by contaminating it with what we want others to see in us instead of being true to our values and principles regardless of what they think.

    Dignity demands that we be open to correction because of the shame we feel when we are dishonest.

    It demands that we protect the dignity of others because we must not be able to live with ourselves if we willingly and consciously look away when another is treated poorly.

    What we would want from others in our time of need or vulnerability is what we must offer.

    If not, we sow seeds of hypocrisy in our hearts which eventually contaminate the entirety of our being because dignity is lost and validation from others becomes the only peace we will know.

    Your dignity is yours to claim.

    Don’t outsource it in exchange for popularity or personal gain.

  • Check your entitlement

    Check your entitlement

    Expectations breed entitlement.

    Like the entitlement of privileges that weren’t earned, or a free pass to abdicate responsibility because we’ve got it tough. Or entitlement to a homeland that belongs to someone else.

    Conviction and sincerity are lost when we do things hoping for a good return.

    We should do good because of who we are and what we choose to stand for. Not because we expect a return.

    A return on investment is for business transactions, not for moral positions.

    If you choose to fight for a cause, do it because it resonates with your values.

    You honour your value system when you live by it, especially when it’s inconvenient or unpopular to do so.

    When your values are used as a trading commodity with others, they’re not values, they’re tools for manipulation.

    Accountability is a trigger for too many.

    If you feel triggered when someone calls you to account, you have work to do on yourself.

    Our triggers, frustrations, annoyances, anger, and emotional volatility is ours to own.

    We cannot make others responsible for tiptoeing around it just because they ‘don’t know what we’ve been through’.

    Their empathy or compassion towards us is a reflection of who they are, in the same way that ours is a reflection of who we are.

    Outsourcing that or claiming that someone deserves not to receive it from us is an indulgence of our entitlement mentality, and not a defendable moral position.

    Own your life. It always starts with you.

  • The victim-hood of self-loathing

    The victim-hood of self-loathing

    No good deed goes unpunished. I was reminded of this in recent days when the bitterness of a self-loathing human distracted me from what is important about life. It’s not the bitterness that was jarring. It’s the intensity, and the immensity of the self-loathing that has become the battle cry of too many that jarred me most.

    The delusion that doing good attracts goodness adds to the mind-numbing effort of being human. We don’t attract what we do or what we give, we attract those who are most in need of what we’re offering.

    That’s why the vapid seek the wholesome.

    The weak seek the strong.

    The self-loathing seek the grateful.

    And the cursed seek the blessed.

    But the twist is a terrible one. Just because you’re self-loathing doesn’t mean that you’re not blessed. It just means that you will not see in yourself what others see in you.

    It’s easy to lose yourself to the bitterness of a world full of ingrates disguised as humans parading as the wounded selfless ones. But in that lies the clue to recognise the twist of that dagger of self-loathing before it is inserted into your tender flesh.

    The selfless, the truly selfless, never parade.

    The ones who wear their heart on their sleeves, their struggle on banners of goodness and humility, and their inaction as a claim to exhaustion from their reality are the ones who are ungrateful for who they are and what they have. That’s why they look for validation for what they parade in sometimes subtle tones, but most often in blatant distortions of their reality.

    Naivety is the knife that you drive into your own gut when you trust blindly, serve loyally without question or wisdom, and when you surrender who you are for who you believe you must be.

    Joy is ephemeral when not shared. It becomes a fleeting moment celebrated privately when what we honour comes to pass, but is just as quickly set aside because it doesn’t really matter if we don’t matter. It is this core of being human that turns our humanness into a frailty that is exploited by the self-loathing.

    Self-loathing is born from our assumption that we are incapable of what is needed to earn affection or inclusion. Such an assumption demands that we must present our best case to defend our pitiful state before others see us as pitiful or lacking. That’s when our struggle grows to define us. That’s when we need everyone to revere our struggle and not dare to advise us to rise above it because rising above it becomes a threat to our sense of self.

    If we don’t recognise the self-loathing in others, we’ll exhaust ourselves to the point of depletion in our efforts to be enough for them, or to inspire them to be better, or to believe in them until they begin to believe in themselves, while never holding them accountable for their ingratitude for everything that the have, and all that they are.

    If we don’t recognise the self-loathing in others, we’ll assume that they’re victims of life, while losing sight of the victims of their carnage as they go through life taking from everyone but always having reason not to reciprocate in equal measure. That’s how a healthy self-esteem in one who is sincere in uplifting another can easily be exchanged for crippling self-doubt after struggling to understand why we may never be enough for one who seems so full of potential if only…If only they see themselves the way that we see them.

    Self-loathing doesn’t create space for such realisation because self-loathing is the abdication of accountability for who we choose to be. Without accountability, there can be no healthy self-esteem because we need accountability to take a stand for what we stand for before we will ever experience the self-respect that results from standing for something that we believe to be important, rather than chasing things that make us important to others.

    Self-loathing is the ultimate barometer of gratitude, or more accurately, ingratitude. If we can’t be grateful for who we are, how can we possibly be grateful towards others for what they do? We cannot give what we don’t have. Which means that we can only give what we have. That is how our behaviour, when understood clearly, reflects the light or the darkness that we court within.

  • Honour yourself

    Honour yourself

    Self-respect is more about who you want to be, rather than what you are willing to tolerate.

    Claiming your space while diminishing the contribution of others in your life is not self-respect, it’s unintended ingratitude.

    Self-respect is reflected in how you hold yourself accountable for the impact of your actions on others, and not just for your intentions towards them.

    It’s about showing up beyond words or explanations, and ensuring that your actions reflect your intentions, especially when the feedback you receive confirms that how you treated others is not what you had intended.

    But none of this is possible if you don’t have your own internal compass by which you hold yourself accountable.

    That compass is the values that you claim to stand for.

    When you lack that internal compass, you will be driven by how you feel in the presence of others.

    When our feelings dictate our reasons, we hold others accountable for what we took from them, or from life, without stopping to consider that maybe we were wrong.

    Maybe we understood things poorly, or interpreted things incorrectly.

    When feelings drive rationality, our struggle becomes our war cry and everyone around us becomes responsible for honouring how we feel regardless of the merits of our reasons for why we feel that way.

    That’s when we become oppressors while feeling oppressed.

    Self-respect is born when we choose who we want to be regardless of what bad behaviour others may deserve because of how we think they treated us.

    In that choice lies peace and the promise of contentment.

    Anything less will leave you a slave to society, or an oppressor towards those who fear your outbursts.

    Who do you want to be?



  • Stop judging. Be human.

    Stop judging. Be human.

    ⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING

    This meme showed up on my timeline earlier and highlighted everything that is wrong with the way in which we treat each other.

    There are a few terms that I generally disagree with (sometimes very strongly) if used to describe people.

    These terms include broken, damaged, toxic, and basically anything that reduces a human to a single repulsive notion.

    We lose our humanness when we see someone’s bad behaviour and assume that to be the totality of who they are.

    No one is toxic. We may have destructive behaviours, or dysfunctional perspectives and so on. But that doesn’t make us toxic.

    It makes us a human that is struggling to find our humanness in the absence of understanding or compassion from someone significant.

    What’s more ‘toxic’? A single person that is allowed to define the tone of an entire family, or a family that lacks any conviction in their own self-worth to be defined by a single person?

    Enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, not only when it’s fashionable or easy, but especially when it’s difficult.

    If we give up our ability to create good with those around us, we lose our right to complain about them letting us down.

    If someone is angry or bitter, they’re feeling unappreciated.

    Reduce a person’s sincere efforts towards fulfilling their part in a relationship to nothing more than duty and minimum expectation, and you’ll very quickly inspire ‘toxic’ behaviour on their part.

    Drop the labels and start seeing the human behind the behaviour.

    There will come a time when you will need others to show you the same empathy and compassion.

    Just because you’re struggling to strike a balance between enabling bad behaviour versus understanding it doesn’t mean that the bad behaviour is toxic. It just means that you are not equipped or are not the right person to influence the positive change that you’d like to see in them.

    Stop judging. Be human.

  • You are your own worst victim

    You are your own worst victim

    The victim mindset wreaks the most destruction and creates the worst of oppressors.

    The victim mindset is established when we find ourselves nursing wounds of experiences and betrayals that have long since passed.

    The victim mindset is nurtured when we are emotionally impacted by the behaviour of those who play no meaningful role in our life.

    The victim mindset becomes more deeply entrenched when we expect others to make up for our experiences from long before we ever knew them.

    The victim mindset is the most debilitating, demoralising, and destructive mindset of them all because it takes offence from being challenged, insult from observation, or feels attacked when advised.

    The victim mindset is set firmly on the belief that we are defined by how others treat us, or treated us.

    The victim mindset denies us the mindfulness and accountability needed to own our life because we’re waiting for our perceived injustices to be remedied before we allow ourselves to move on.

    The victim mindset confuses meaningful action with blind rage.

    The victim mindset destroys, but never creates anything of benefit.

    The victim mindset wastes away life while lamenting the past.

    The victim mindset is a corruption of the soul that fails to separate the moment of being a victim with what we hold onto from the experience long after the experience has passed.

    While we’re caught up in that victim mindset, we lose sight of how many around us become victims of our rage, our neglect, our self-consumed approach to life, and our abdication of responsibility in how we’re supposed to show up for them.

    The victim mindset therefore spawns more victims, and the only way to rise above it is to own it and want to be more than that.

    When you claim your rights before you honour your responsibilities, you’re in a victim state of mind, and you cause oppression while using your feeling of oppression to justify your behaviour.

    It always starts with you.