FREEDOM From Narcissistic Abuse
By Will Perry
You need to grow a backbone
And how that doesn’t mean selling your soul
You're Too Soft.
Being told that you’re too soft, emotional, weak, that you give in too easily or cry too easily are all negative judgements, often given by the people closest to our hearts - and that’s why it hurts.
But of course it’s not true.
My daughter is only 6, yet I can already tell that one of her ‘Super-Powers’ is her sensitivity to emotions and I’m so proud of that, yet I know it takes WORK to harness that power.
I too have that power, yet being a man and in the generation I grew-up in, it was less understood and being so emotional certainly felt like a weakness.
However I have found my place and interestingly my backbone too. And if you think about it literally; being ‘spineless’ has such a negative tone, it isn’t helpful - we need to stand proud and stand-up for ourselves and for that we need - a backbone!
We often call people with a sensitivity to emotions ‘Empaths’ and it’s a lovely thing, yet you can serve far MORE people as an empath when you learn to put yourself FIRST…
A Simple Two-Letter Word...
When you’re a People-Pleaser, learning to say ‘No’ can seem like the hardest thing to do. By default you want to say ‘yes’ and so often you run yourself ragged, leaving no time for yourself, creating this perpetual cycle of helping everyone else and then needing time to recuperate before you can repeat the cycle.
But it’s not just about serving others, not being able to say no gets in the way of everyday life. One of my clients said to me the other day that it took ages to just go to get a few things from the supermarket - how come? Because she bumped into three different people she knew along the way and had conversations with each “Hi, how are you doing… haven’t seen you in a while… how are the kids…” etc which is all perfectly normal…
So why was she so frustrated?
Because she only had about half an hour to spare and due to these conversations she took and hour and a half.
So why didn’t she just NOT have these conversations?
I suspect you either have that as a question or you already know the answer - and you too suffer from a real difficulty in saying ‘No.’
I used to also avoid confrontation at all costs - it’s part of being a people-pleaser and I understand where it comes from in my past but saying ‘No’ or sticking up for myself was such a difficult thing to do in the moment - it was always later that I’d come up with ‘what I should have said’ but never at the time, can you relate to that?
Grow A New Belief.
So I asked my client why she didn’t simply say, politely that has to rush and nice to see you? And the answer was a familiar one “I didn’t want to appear rude.”
We get so worried about what other people think, when we should be more worried about what WE think and, crucially, be able to act upon it.
So I suggested a few phrases she could have said and yes, it all seems so simple in hindsight, yet it’s in the moment we make these decisions and that’s driven by your core beliefs.
If you have a strong self-belief it’s much easier to protect your time - it’s your backbone!
Learning To Say No.
So stop giving your time away to people who don’t fully deserve or appreciate you!
Simple to say yet a lot harder to do because the belief that is driving our behaviour is buried deep in our subconscious, out of sight and mind - it’s not an obvious connection to us.
Surely it’s just a case of learning to say no and protecting your own time more?
Sure - and how’s that going for you?
The reason that it’s so difficult to change this behaviour is that it’s so much a part of us that we simply can’t differentiate the belief from ourselves - to us they are one and the same.
But they are not.
And that’s where things get interesting. This is where we get to adjust and fine-tune our beliefs for the future we want, rather than the situations we continually get ourselves into. And I love helping my clients take that journey.
Conclusion.
By seeing the problem differently, we can approach it in a new way. If you think you need to change your behaviour then you’re going to struggle because your negative self-belief will guide you back to the outcomes you’ve always got before.
However, if you see that you need to change your self-beliefs, then you open up the discussion to what behaviours you want to change and therefore which beliefs you need to work on - and that’s a whole new conversation.
Having taken that second pathway myself, I can now say ‘No’ without guilt and I no longer avoid confrontation, appreciating that resolving issues quickly causes me much less stress over time.
And my challenge is to help my beautiful little 6 year old to learn to wield her Super-Power for good, without it draining her unnecessarily.
If you would like help with your Super-Power, I invite you to watch this short video on how I can help.
Thank you for your time
Will
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