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Why We Allow Ourselves To Be Treated Like Shit

Do you ever feel disrespected, disregarded or unappreciated, like your partner takes you for granted or doesn’t even care? Perhaps they talk down to you, belittle you, or walk all over you. 

Maybe you’re in an abusive relationship?

Does this have you feeling scared, resenting, or blaming them and making them the problem? 

“He’s doing this!” “She’s not doing that!” And on and on…

It makes sense. If I’m in a relationship with you, and you treat me poorly, my first knee-jerk response is to make you the problem. “You are doing this to me.” Grrrr.

No human likes getting treated badly, so I hear you.

However, when you’re struggling in your relationship complaining and blaming will only get you where you are currently getting–nowhere.

Pointing the finger at him or her and looking outside of yourself keeps you stuck in the victim seat and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to stay stuck there. 

There is another way…

One of the first tools you learn here at the Relationship School® is personal responsibility where you look in the mirror to own and understand your part in the dynamic.

Because when you take responsibility for your situation, you can actually do something about it, which is the only way to get empowered. If I make you the problem (outside of my control), I can’t.

Try this instead:

And if you look hard and long enough, you’ll see the root of the issue lies in your self-worth. 

That’s right, YOUR low self-worth is at the core of this painful dynamic.

If you want to get out of a relationship where you feel as though you are treated poorly, you have to be willing to value yourself more.

It’s not an easy fix. It takes effort. Most people would rather try and change the other person. “Hey, stop treating me like shit.” And that is a good boundary to set. However, if their behavior continues to be mean and you keep staying, you are dealing with a self-worth issue.

Remember, you’ve attracted this person to learn something. And that something is likely how to value and respect yourself. 

Do some digging here. Find out where you don’t feel valued or are hard on yourself. Discover where do you feel unworthy, and get to know where that lives in you.

Your self-worth will determine your relationship fate… and by being disrespected, you are being challenged to invest in yourself. Right now.

Why would you expect another person to value you, when you are not willing to value yourself?

This is why people stay in hurtful relationships where they allow themselves to be treated badly. They keep wanting it from the outside first. Understandable, but it never works.

Make a choice. Do you want to keep doing this?

This is your opportunity to value yourself way more than you already do.

As you learn to value and respect yourself more, you get stronger and will no longer tolerate relationships where people are hurtful towards you. This doesn’t mean you won’t feel hurt at times or get hurt. It means you won’t allow yourself to be treated poorly. You’ll know the difference.

It starts with you, and it ends with you. That is personal responsibility!

And hey, we all have self-worth issues. You’re not alone. It’s normal. But don’t be another stuck victim. Take action now. You’re bigger and better than this!

Trust me, as you improve your self-worth you can have what’s possible: a great relationship with yourself – and with another!

Want to go further? At The Relationship School® we have a whole class dedicated to self-worth (so powerful!) and the steps to help you address your own self-worth issues.

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Photo credit: Ben WhiteUnsplash

You might also like this: How Do You Measure Your Self-Worth?

The Fear of Losing Yourself in a Relationship

Ever feel like you have to sacrifice who you are in order to get or keep a relationship?

Well, this is one of the most frequent and hardest things people struggle with in an intimate relationship.  “How so I be myself and get the connection I want?”

Think about it this way…

When you were young, you perceived that certain parts of you were not welcome, so you learned that you had to trade in, or hide, those parts of yourself in order to get love or avoid getting hurt. And while this was a brilliant strategy then, if you don’t ultimately learn another way and reclaim those disowned parts, the fear of losing yourself in a relationship will continue to haunt and overwhelm you.

Every human being has been trained in some way to be inauthentic in order to get or kep connection. It’s the most common human injury, and it happened in relationship (I teach about this concept in all of my courses). Since it felt like there wasn’t a choice then, as adults this gets played out, repeated over and over, in our romantic relationships. If you’re not willing to bring who you really are to your relationship, this can take a toll and cause a lot of suffering and frustration over time.

So instead of abandoning yourself to get love, learn to use the container of your relationship as an incredible opportunity to heal this perceived split, to rewire your experience and have both – be your authentic self AND foster a deep connection with your partner, or future partner.

Listen to Ellen and me share our thoughts on this perspective rooted in our own personal journey together.

You can watch the full video and podcast here.

Get onto this folks!

This is SOOOO healing.

This is what a love relationship is about. In fact, it’s being in a mutually collaborative relationship that can actually help you cultivate a deeper sense of your own sovereignty as an individual. How? By using the strength of the relationship for your own personal expression, a renewable resource of energy that supports you to do what you want to do in the world. It’s true! It’s that potent and that possible.

When both people are as committed to attending to the relationship as they are to their own sovereignty, what grows individually and together becomes infinitely more authentic and connected. Who doesn’t want that?

For a fuller slice of this perspective, join Ellen and Jayson in person at the Embracing Conflict Live Weekend Intensive where you’ll learn about the interpersonal neurobiology of this perspective, find out how to do this, and get to hear more about their relationship story. Register by February 4th, 2018.

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Photo credit: Jonathan PendletonUnsplash