I realize my blog is for MY writing but I absolutely have to post this blog from a brilliant writer and spiritual teacher, Hiro Boga because she says it best…… I have been wrangling with one very difficult person in my life for the past six years and have learned – sometimes the hard way – the best way to not only deal but to learn and grow beyond what this person has dished up in the life of my family and myself… This writing below is like a clear, clean bell ringing truth we can all learn from….Please read on… and please visit her website and learn more about her work… she is brilliant. www.hiroboga.com
What happens to a gift you refuse to accept?
Hiro Boga | August 12th, 2009
You’re a loving, giving, sensitive person. You support the people you love generously. You appreciate them openly and tell them so. You share their genius with your friends, telling everyone you know about how wonderful they are, about the fabulous work they do.
You help them move towards their dreams in any way you can.
And then, one of them says something to you that feels like a door slammed in your face. Maybe they’ve just had a bad day.
Or maybe—just maybe—this is a pattern in your relationship.
You give, they take. And take.
They take as though it’s their right to receive from you. As though you owe it to them to give them whatever they want.
And when you don’t give them what they want, or do as they say, they lash out in ways that leave you feeling hurt and bewildered. Wondering what you’ve done wrong. Wondering why things went sour, again, so quickly.
You feel stupid, inadequate, small, defensive–maybe even angry. Or you leave feeling convinced there’s something seriously wrong with you.
Lately, several of my clients have come to me for help because they’re struggling with someone like this in their life. Does this pattern sound familiar to you?
How do you meet difficult people without closing down your heart, resisting them, being defensive, or trying to fix yourself, or them?
Let’s take a look at what’s happening here.
You give them gifts of appreciation, love and support. Maybe you also give them your fear of their unpredictable moods. And the gift of your attempts to placate them, to get them to approve of you.
Mixed gifts. Painful.
They give you gifts too. Pleasure, approval, delight when you give them what they want.
And when they don’t get their way? Contempt, dismissiveness, demands, threats. Attempts to bully or guiltify you into doing what they want.
These are gifts too.
So what happens when you refuse to accept a gift?
No blame, no shame. You simply and politely say “No, thank you”, and walk away.
The gift remains with its giver.
All that pain they’re dishing out? It remains with them.
In walking away, you give them another gift. The gift of being with their own pain. This opens a space of possibility. Which is the first step in healing.
And by saying No, thanks, to gifts that don’t support your heart, you give yourself gifts too. You get to encounter your own pain.
You get to love and heal those wounded parts of yourself that live in the shadow of your own inner judgments.
You get to give yourself the gifts of love, appreciation, support and kindness. Which then adds to the sum of loving kindness in the world.
Everybody wins. ~ Hiro Boga www.hiroboga.com
Respectfully submitted….Om shanti,
Lynn Louise