We Teach People How to Treat Us

Do you commonly feel like you’re mistreated, used, abused, or abandoned? Do you frequently ask yourself the question: “Am I really that bad?” If so, YOU NEED TO READ THIS!!!!! The bad news is that you tell everyone in your life exactly how to treat you, you choose situations repeatedly that reinforce these concepts, and then when it doesn’t work out you ask yourself why? Why wasn’t I good enough? Why couldn’t they love me? Why did they have to do that? What makes me so bad? Why do I deserve this? The answer is because that is exactly what you feel you deserve, but the GOOD news is that you can change it and I am going to attempt to show you how right now!!!

Yep, I just said that, and unfortunately it’s true. Very little of our interactions with others are verbal. They appear that way because of how our senses work, yet underneath all that small talk, there is so much more going on that we don’t even perceive. Have you ever met someone and just gotten a bad feeling about them, or knew you weren’t comfortable around them but could never put your finger on why? That’s because of how we read and interact with one another. We have the innate ability to feel another person’s presence, and most often their feelings on some level or another.

Think about your best friend for a second. If they’re having a bad day or feeling down you can tell immediately by their facial expressions, how they’re holding themselves, the way they talk, and the general energy they put off. We feel this, and we know this because of how we connect with each other as human beings. When you have a connection with someone you often feel like you know them so well that you can pick up on the slightest incongruity in their actions. Taking all of this into account, it is easy to see that we can perceive people, specifically those closest to us, on levels that are so much deeper than the words they speak.

Now, we also need to consider the other side before we can really understand how we teach people to treat us. Let’s think about when WE are that friend; when we are having a shitty day or feeling blue. We’ve all been there, something happens that sets the tone for the day, and what started as a shitty day just keeps getting worse. Could be small simple shit like running out of toilet paper and then stubbing your toe, locking yourself out of the house on the way to work, having to break back into your own house to get your keys only to end up being late to work. Maybe you were cheated on or dumped—it could be anything that set that feeling tone, but the fact is you’re feeling shitty. So, you head to the store to buy yourself some chocolate ice cream to numb the pain of today’s existence, and you run into an old friend. As your greeting each other and being chatty they notice you seem down and ask you, “What’s wrong?” Or maybe they just ask, “Are things OK with you? How are you doing? Are you OK?” Even without telling them anything about what is going on they were still able to pick up on the fact that you are not feeling well, and it’s because of your non-verbal communication, the way you hold yourself, the tone of your voice—many people have altered expressions when in the grips of a depressive or negative state. You tell people how you’re feeling without ever verbalizing it directly. This is something that every single human being on the planet does! We all can perceive this, and we also put it out there when were affected by negativity, that’s just how it

But its also much much deeper than just picking up on someone having a shitty day. Now that we’ve discussed the fact that two thirds of the way we communicate isn’t even verbal at all, would it be unreasonable to suggest that our deepest feelings about ourselves seep out in the very same way? I know that’s a bit of a mindfuck for a lot of people. Nobody wants to be abandoned or mistreated, nobody says, “Hey, I want you to ignore me,” or, “Be sure to treat me like I don’t matter to you.” Nobody wants to be made to feel like they’re not loved or lovable, or even worthy or deserving of that love. Yet we do, and it all comes down to how we feel about ourselves. Our beliefs about ourselves show through in literally every relationship we have, both romantic and otherwise. If we don’t feel like we deserve to be loved, we unconsciously choose people who cannot or will not love us. This all comes back to the adage of having to love ourselves before we love another. If we don’t love and respect ourselves anyone who tries to love us will immediately be suspect. You will be deemed a fool for loving someone who is so obviously undeserving of that love. And the icing on the cake to this twisted mess of a paradigm; many of us still think that that we just need to find someone that will stick it out and show us how worthy and deserving we really are. We believe that it’s someone else’s responsibility to help make us feel whole again, that someone else is just going to walk into our lives and fill the massive holes inside of us and everything will be great again! WRONG! It is wrong and that belief does nothing but end badly and then reinforce the initial beliefs that caused the whole situation to begin with. And so many unfortunate motherfuckers get caught up in this cycle thinking they just haven’t found the right one. NO NO NO! I have said it before and I will say it again, ANYTHING THAT WE GET FROM SOMEONE ELSE IS ONLY TEMPORARY!!! If you don’t learn how to find and fulfill your own happiness, anyone you expect to or hope to do this for you will only last for so long. It’s not someone else’s responsibility to convince you of your worth! The answer does not lie outside of yourself, in any form, for any reason. You cannot expect another person to give you the things you lack!

But here’s the good news: You can begin today to alter your beliefs about yourself! You can start right now to put yourself first and value yourself on the levels you keep wishing someone else would. Our deepest feelings of ourselves seep out in everything we do, positive or negative. So I challenge you, right now, to make a definitive decision to take the time off and put the time and effort into yourself that you keep expecting someone else to! Nothing outside of yourself could ever live up to those expectations and the reason is because they’re not supposed to. Simple as that, it’s not their fucking job. The answer always was and will be by turning inward and putting in the work that scares you so much.

Yes, looking inside yourself and having to confront your fears, emotions, and shortcomings can start out as a painful process. Sometimes you gotta pound through the rock to get the diamond. You must sift through the shit to find the gold. But that’s OK because once you do and you finally start to understand and begin to make lasting changes, it is literally worth its weight in gold!!

How can we do this? I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass here, its going to be hard, its going to hurt and it's going to take work. I need you to trust me when I tell you that in the end, the pain and suffering is worth it. I’m not even all the way to the other side yet but I’m getting there. I can feel how much better I feel, how much more confident I am, how much less I second guess myself, how little I have to deal with all my self-hating thoughts. It has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and that’s no exaggeration .

It starts with a decision and once that decision is made, start taking steps. Open yourself up to new concepts and understandings. The fact is that you’re never going to change your beliefs about yourself subscribing to the same old concepts. Visualization is another key tool that has helped me to alter my feelings and beliefs about myself. I set aside specific time to meditate every single day. In that time, I take just a couple minutes to picture myself being more confident, walking tall, keeping my head up as opposed to walking around staring at the ground (which is just another one of the outward things we do when we don’t feel good about ourselves). Create a room in your mind where you store all your beliefs, see it as rearranging the furniture of your mind. Each piece of furniture represents a different negative belief about yourself, then take that furniture out, set it on fire, I don’t care what you do with it, so long as you get rid of it! Then start to move in new furniture, beautiful new beliefs about yourself. Visualize you replacing the old beliefs with new, more loving beliefs. Change “Nobody loves me” to “I am worthy and deserving of love.” Take “Everyone always leaves” and replace it with “I deserve more than the people in my past were willing to give.” Take “I am nobody and I am insignificant,” and change it to “I am important and amazing just as I am.” Do this in a way that is comfortable for you, sit down and write out all the negative beliefs you have about yourself on a piece of paper, then next to them write the positive affirmation you would like to replace that belief with. Then visualize going into the storage space of your mind and destroy the old ones and put the new positive ones where the old ones were. Understand, you will need to do this more than once, it could take a few weeks before your new beliefs begin to take hold in your sub conscious. Remember that you are trying to re-write the way you’ve been conditioned to think for your entire life and it wont be easy!