How to ‘break’ the cycle….

If .. 

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are loosing theirs and blaming it on you..
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowances for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or be lied about , but dont deal in lies,
Or being hated, dont give way to hating,
And yet dont look to good, nor talk too wise……”

By Rudyard Kipling

I felt that this verse of this particular poem is a good start to what I am going to begin talking about , it encompasses the many negative feelings or actions that you may be have to deal with in any given situation and the positive way you can react.  I wouldn’t like to tell you how many times I have read over this verse in recent months… but it has been A LOT!, especially when faced with the feeling of injustice and unfairness or as it says in the poem ‘or being lied about’.

Lets discuss that point.  Why do people tell lies about others?, why are situations exaggerated or just completely fabricated?.  If I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this blog!!  the answer however,  I have become to realise , doesn’t matter.  Dealing and coping with it in the right way does.

 

They go low we go high!

It works!, I promise you!. Remember this is about how to handle situations for you and your wellbeing.  None of us are perfect and instinctively when someone comes for us our first reaction is to fight back and protect ourselves , that is just nature, but you must remember that some peoples mentality is to keep fighting back and to keep going lower, and lower and lower … and where does it then end?.  In a heap of unpleasantness with no winners and more often than not your health, both mental and maybe even physical severely compromised.

There is nothing more frustrating than keeping quiet when you know someone is being dishonest, the feeling of being backed into a corner where you have two choices , to say nothing or to shout from the rooftops.  I know that shouting from the rooftops is the preferred option, but I have also learned that it is also most of the time futile, those people listening are usually listening for the drama and scandal , not for the boring truth.

Over the years I have preferred to keep my private life private, in as much as I can, however a week before Christmas last year that was hugely compromised through no choice of my own, it was a deliberate choice made by someone else with the intention of purposefully trying to hurt me because they know my privacy is my achilles heel.  There had been a build up of them trying to get a reaction from me through various ways of negative communication and bullying behaviour and I never fought back, I guess this was the only tool they had left in the bag and therefore felt they needed to use it, and did in the most horrible way possible.  This was the straw that finally broke the camels back. This is when I realised the true extent of what I was dealing with and I no longer felt like there was any point in trying to reason or even keep ‘going high’,  it was one of ..’we have now entered crazy town with our pedal to the metal and brakes have been cut!….  I need to get the hell out of this car’!!!.

 

‘When a toxic person can no longer control you, they will try to control how others see you.  The misinformation will feel unfair, but stay above it, trusting that other people will eventually see the truth just like you did’.

 

Understanding 

There comes a point where you need to stop trying to understand someones behaviour and just walk away.  Even with my life being turned upside down, amongst the trail of chaos and destruction that this person left I was still trying to understand , I was still not telling people the full extent of the situation , still trying to protect the person causing me harm,  I was still looking to make excuses for them,  and each time I did, each incident that I tried to explain away and find forgiveness for led to another more destructive or damaging event, until I eventually had to stop and realise that by trying to understand them , I was compromising me.

I have always tried to understand peoples behaviour and always looked to reason or get closure on a situation and most of the time I have been able to achieve it, however I know now that is not possible in every situation, nor is it always healthy to keep pursuing it, you cannot keep knocking on a door of someone who is so filled with rage and anger towards you and get them to explain why.  Its just a waste of your energy.  When they open that door all that person sees is an opportunity to keep hurting you so its down to you to stop knocking on that door.

 

Realisation.

Of course there is a reason for the way people behave, its life experiences that mould us into who we are, tragedy, trauma, relationships, all play a part in who we are, that is the wonderful crazy ride that is life.  Its breathtakingly amazing one minute and soul wrenchingly awful the next. In between those times we just need to navigate as best we can cherishing the amazing and surviving the awful.

We cannot control what happens to us , and believe me this I learned the hard way, but we can control how we let it affect us and how we let it impact our life and those around us, those currently around us,  and those in our future.

I have always been aware of why people may or may not be treating me in the best way possible , but I think this has also led to me being a little more forgiving than I should have been, and led me to put up with a little more than what I should have.

Do not beat yourself up about this, its never bad to look for the good.  It may also be that people have very contrasting sides to their personality, it was only a couple of weeks prior to the person in my life delivering the final blow we had spent the most wonderful weekend in each others company.  When people are living in their own confusion, it can be very confusing being the other person too. You can be very often blindsided by behaviour, and as hard as it can be to have to come to the realisation that you are going to gain nothing from the situation in its current state , sometimes the sooner this comes the better.

I have listed below a few things that I think are important for maintaining your own sanity and dignity in difficult situations.  Life is full of challenges and tricky situations and the way you choose to react is everything, you can choose to minimise the pain and fallout of a difficult situation by behaving in a considered and kind way, or you can spend you life taking bad situations and making them worse , running roughshod over peoples lives and leaving a trail of destruction in your wake.  I know which option I prefer and also which allows me to sleep easy in my bed at night.

 

Here are a few things to think about when you find yourself up against a difficult situation :-

1. THINK. BREATHE. THINK AGAIN. BREATHE AGAIN. REACT – You take away peoples power to hurt you when you take away your reaction.
2. INTEGRITY IS EVERYTHING – Dont compromise your integrity by engaging in tit for tat behaviour or revenge. Sometimes this is the ONLY thing it is possible to walk away with. Dont let anyone take this away from you, you can rebuild anything with a solid base of integrity.
3. RESPECT – Dont engage in name calling or mud slinging.  If this is an issue with a ex partner , remember , you loved them once, you chose them and they chose you. Things happened, keep the name calling in your head, write it down in your diary, speaking badly about someone is never a good thing.
4. ACT WITH HONESTY – The only people who are troubled by the truth are those who live amongst lies.
5. BE KIND ALWAYS – Be kind to unkind people. They need it the most.
6. FORGIVENESS – This can be a tricky one, I guess what I mean by this is don’t let the bad times harden your heart.  The title of this article is ‘Broken people Break people’ , if you find forgiveness too hard, just let go , don’t hold on to negative feelings and become a person who wants to hurt people. Life is too precious for that.

I hope you enjoyed reading. It was certainly good for me to write. Finally one of my favourite quotes of all time and something for us all to think about…… xx