Posted by sunny10 on May 18, 2005, at 16:51:05
In reply to Re: another possible way to handle it » sunny10, posted by rainbowbrite on May 18, 2005, at 12:27:27
and, yes, it is absolutely, positively true.
Unless you drive a car over someone, or in some other way take an ACTION that physically harms another human being, you are not the cause of them being hurt.
Them's fightin' words here at Babble sometimes, but it's true.
You can say anything you like to me- I'm the one who needs to choose how I will respond to what you say or think about me. And that will, knowing me, entirely depend upon how I am feeling at that given moment about many other things. You don't have the power to hurt me emotionally- only I do.
You can calculately, mean-spiritedly, choose a time to pick on me when you can tell I am already down, and I will hurt more, but you can not bring me down emotionally unless I let you.
By the same token, no matter what you say or what you don't say, how you act, react or refuse to act or react, has no bearing ultimately on what another person chooses to do. Drink, do drugs, engage in violent behavior, whatever. Only we have the power to make choices for us. We can HAND over the power (dependency and co-dependency) in our MINDS, but not in reality.
As a former co-dependent, I have learned these difficult lessons. A lot of them didn't make me feel too highly about myself for a while, but then I realized that I can't change what has already passed. I could only choose to change how I act, react, et cetera, in the present and in the future. Oh, yeah, and not emotionally hand my life over to someone I "love" on a silver platter to allow them to abuse me in any way they see fit...
These were my lessons. If parts of them feel familiar and you can incorporate them to help you in your situation, please do. If not, then thanks for reading what I've learned.
-sunny10
poster:sunny10
thread:496819
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/subs/20050506/msgs/499529.html