by Jenny Rose | Jun 22, 2024 | Emotional Intelligence, Needs
In a recent conversation, someone asserted to me that ultimately everyone does what they want. I felt an immediate fury. That does not describe my life at all. I chewed on my outrage and resentment for a few weeks, simmering, until I decided to get over it and figure out why I was so hijacked.
I was immediately lost in the puckerbrush. Making choices about what we do and don’t do is intimately tied to needs and wants, and I have yet to be able to distinguish between the two once beyond the level of survival needs, or find any kind of clarity from someone else. Needs and wants are unpleasant territory I don’t want to explore. (See? There it is. I don’t want to. Yet I am, and I might need to.)
Photo by Bryan Minear on Unsplash
Then there’s the whole actions versus words aspect. People say they want things but don’t act accordingly. If we really want something, our behavior reflects it. If our behavior does not reflect our stated wants, we’re deceiving ourselves, or someone else, or both. I deeply distrust mixed messages. More unpleasant territory and old trauma.
Choice is in there, too. Choice is a big subject and a major theme in this blog. As I’ve mused on the statement ‘we all do what we want to do’ and made notes (you know I always make notes), I’ve wondered how we can compare a parent in some war-torn place attempting to keep their starving child alive another day with a wealthy person trying to decide if they want to fly their private plane to Paris for dinner or stay in and watch a movie in their in-home theater and have their chef prepare a seven-course meal. With wine, naturally.
One person has limited choices, all excruciating, to achieve continued survival for a few hours. The other has almost unlimited choices, all luxuries. How can I possibly compare the two? Can we say the parent trying to keep their child alive is doing what they want to do? Come on! Yet they do want to keep their child alive, right?
Perhaps it seems complicated and confusing because it’s complicated and confusing.
I wound up with a page full of notes, some sobering personal revelations, and a hairball.
On an internet search, I found articles pointing out the distinction between doing exactly what we want to do in any given moment (a toddler or a hedonist) and doing things we don’t want to do in service to an outcome we do want. That made sense to me.
If we focus on wanted outcomes rather than individual actions, we must have the ability to plan, look ahead, anticipate, and understand possible consequences of our actions. We also must attempt to predict the responses and reactions of the people around us to our actions, which means we have to understand something about emotional intelligence …
Photo by Manuel Sardo on Unsplash
… and now we’re back in the puckerbrush. I hate predictions. I don’t like leaps of faith. (I have a magnet on my fridge that says “Leap and the net will appear.” I don’t know why I keep it. It makes me mad every time I read it. Show me the warranty on that net. Show me the weight testing. Show me the damn net, in fact. Who will set it up when I leap? Are they paying attention or looking at their phone?) I trust my intuition, but I know I can be wrong. People are unpredictable. Life is unpredictable.
And yet we humans, including me, make choices all day long every day based on what we think will or might or could happen next. I’ve written about attachment to outcomes before. As I get older I’ve replaced a lot of my desired specific outcomes with simply wanting to know I did my best, regardless of outcomes. I may not like the outcome I get, but my integrity remains intact.
And then there are the people who don’t seem to understand actions and consequences in any kind of relationship. They choose what they choose in the moment and are hurt and/or outraged to discover the downstream consequences of that choice, especially in the context of many other choices. I observe this is a frequent divide along male/female lines. Women generally see everything as connected. Men generally see most things as discrete, in their own box. This is just one reason why I think “romantic” male/female relationships can be so devastating. We are often on different pages without knowing it.
If it’s true that we all do what we want in service to a desired outcome, what happens when my choices collide with yours? If you perceive me as blocking progress to your desired outcome you’re going to feel angry, and vice versa. We’re going to want each other to make different choices aligning with our personal desires. Most of the time, people won’t do that. We’re all attached to the outcomes we want.
A big piece of this for me is emotional labor, that hidden torrent winding through my life, sweeping away incalculable energy, time, and innocence. One of my priorities is healthy relationships. Close healthy relationships require time and attention; the ability to make choices for the good of the relationship rather than considering only our own wants and needs. This is an ongoing practice, not doing something we really don’t want to do once every six months and expecting applause. It means we have to face our own demons, learn to communicate clearly and honestly, negotiate, share power, and problem solve. It means boundaries and respect. It means reciprocity.
Having learned about reciprocity, I now prioritize my relationships to the degree the other does. I will not sign up to do all the emotional labor. I’m not interested in a close relationship like that. The price is too high. I’d rather put my energy into my relationship with myself. At least I appreciate my own efforts!
My conclusion about this ‘we all do what we want’ thing (gritted teeth – it still makes me mad), is it may be true if we consider our choices in the context of outcomes. I’ve made a lot of choices out of the clear knowledge that they were simply the right thing to do, too, choices that have been terrible for me, terrible in some of their consequences, yet ultimately still were the right thing for me to do. I had no outcome in mind. I don’t regret those kinds of choices, but they left permanent scars.
Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
I want to blame others for all the time I’ve spent doing things I didn’t want to do, but it seems what we do and don’t do are entirely in our own hands, our own responsibility. Our lives are built on the choices we make, big and small, every hour of every day. If we don’t like our lives, we need to pay attention. Perhaps the useful question to ask ourselves if we hate what we’re doing at any given moment is, “Why am I doing this?” If we’re focused on a particular desired outcome, we may need to stop and think about whether our actions are effective in getting us there. Spending years of our lives desperately hoping and trying to reach an outcome and doing things we hate is not effective. I know this from personal experience. Our wants and needs change over time; what we once longed for may no longer be something we’re interested in. Sometimes we need to reality check ourselves. If we’ve been trying to get loved, for example, or please someone for a long period of time, it might be time to acknowledge our goal is not attainable or not worth attaining. Sometimes no matter how hard we work for an outcome it’s not achievable.
Then there’s the flip side: None of us do what we don’t want to do. That one is equally hard for me to swallow, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Questions:
- How much of each day do you spend doing things you don’t want to do? Why?
- What desired outcome(s) in your life requires you to do things you don’t want to do?
- Do you see your daily choices as isolated or part of a larger context attached to your wants and needs?
- Do you feel forced to labor emotionally? What would happen if you stopped?
- Who in your life reciprocates your level of emotional labor?
Leave a comment below!
To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here: 
by Jenny Rose | Apr 27, 2024 | A Flourishing Woman, Mind
A few weeks ago I explored self-trust. Until I wrote that piece, I had not realized how deeply I distrusted myself. (As a writer, I find nothing clarifies my thinking better than written inquiry. The process uncovers so many unconscious and hidden things.)
In that post I speculated about choosing to trust myself, as trust is a belief, and beliefs can and do change. I thought it would be interesting to consciously trust myself for a few days and see what happened.
What has happened is a profound change in my interior life and my mental health. What happened is the realization that learning to self-love, while a healing and valuable practice, was not, after all, what I most needed.
This still seems strange to me. We are certainly taught love is the greatest feeling, the closest to the Divine we can come, the best we can be as human beings. We define love endlessly, discuss it, long for it, search for it, tell ourselves it will fix everything if only we can find someone to love, if only someone will love us completely, unconditionally, forever and ever (or at least until death do us part), amen.
But my experience has taught me love is changeable and elusive. All kinds of abuse masquerades as love. We don’t all mean the same thing when we express love.
By Marianna Smiley on Unsplash
Perhaps most heartbreaking of all, we don’t always value the love that comes our way, and we may learn to distrust it. Every master manipulator in the world recognizes the power of our need for love. Once that need is used against us, we are on our guard against love.
Love hurts. Love can endure, but a withered, starving love living on memories and perhaps based on delusions or the simple call of blood is a desolate ghost haunting our hearts. Love can scar us so deeply we’re never the same.
The daily practice of loving oneself is less complicated than loving another. At the very least, I know what I mean when I say it to myself, and my self understands my demonstration of it. Nothing is lost in translation. I can trust my own love.
And there’s that word – ‘trust’. Trust and love: does one require the other, or are they separate? One is a feeling (love), and one is a belief (trust). Both can be manipulated. In terms of our love and trust of ourselves, both are highly subject to interruption or even amputation by those who influence us, especially as children. If we are repeatedly given to understand we are not lovable or not to be trusted, we internalize those beliefs before we even have language. We don’t learn to love and trust ourselves.
Internalized beliefs are enormously powerful right up until we examine them closely, at which point they can vanish like a wisp of smoke. Once we’ve seen them as false, we become conscious of their pervasive influence and our internal structure changes in astounding ways.
This is what has happened to me.
When I set out to live a few days consciously trusting myself, I realized within an hour my obsessive and unending loop of review and preview. Just like a fish in water, I have no memory of ever living any other way, so I never noticed it before. Well, that’s not true. I noticed it, I just called it anxiety. As I’ve always been anxious and expected I always would be, I didn’t think further about it.
In an example from my childhood, when I was very young, kindergarten age, my mother had a lot of pain and was quite unhappy. I had a younger brother and we had cats and dogs. In an effort to take care of my mother, I learned how to do things like make beds, sort laundry, set up the coffee maker, make orange juice in the blender (frozen concentrate), take care of the animals, tie my own shoes and teach my brother to tie his, etc.
I vividly remember lying in my bed, my brother across the room in his bed, reviewing everything I’d done that day. I had trouble with hospital corners on the beds because I wasn’t strong enough to tuck the sheets in properly under the mattress. Mom had to bend over and do them again, so I failed to help and caused her pain. I didn’t turn a sock right side out when I sorted the laundry. I could tie my own shoes, but I was baffled trying to teach my brother to tie his while facing him. And so forth and so on.
Review: I hadn’t done it right. I hadn’t helped. I hadn’t been perfect. I hadn’t made Mom happy. I had to do better. Preview: Next time I would look at every piece of laundry, be sure nothing was inside out. Next time I would remember how to sort it properly so Mom wouldn’t have to bend down and do it herself. Next time I would figure out a way to get the hospital corners right, but I wouldn’t have to face that again for a week or so. Maybe I’d be stronger or bigger? If I got behind my brother and tied his shoes from that angle, could I do it? I had to do it! It hurt Mom to bend down.
This habit, this ongoing internal review and preview, has never stopped. Whatever I’ve just done, I review it. Whatever I’m about to do, I preview it. Racing thoughts. Circular thinking. Problems with sleep and chronic tension. Adrenal overload and exhaustion. The need to distract, to make it stop. The inability to have a quiet mind. Most of us are familiar with the symptoms of anxiety.
I believe my anxiety has been rooted in my self-distrust. When I decided to behave as though I do trust myself, I became conscious of my lifelong review and preview habit, as much a part of me as my blue eyes. At the same time, I discovered the solution. The minute I catch myself either reviewing or previewing, and it’s many, many times a day, I say, “I trust you,” to myself.
And I stop. I don’t need to review. I don’t need to preview. I did the best I could, because I always do that. I’ll do the best I can, because I always do that.
“I trust you.”
I’ve also realized, after long experience of sorting through my own psyche, this self-distrust is not mine. It doesn’t smell like me. It’s not home grown. It came from someone outside me, like so many of the unmanaged, unacknowledged emotions and beliefs I’ve carried, recognized as not mine, and let go.
By Danijel Durkovic on Unsplash
I discovered, as I wrote that post on trust, I do trust myself. I’ve always had cognitive dissonance around trust. Those around me didn’t trust me, yet I trusted myself. I trust my intuition. I trust my empathy and sensitivity, I trust my intention to do the right thing, I trust my flexibility and my ability to learn. I trust my ability to love. I trust my ability to think critically and recognize the truth, no matter how unwelcome. When I assure myself of my trust, it’s not a lie. It’s a truth buried for years under trauma.
I suspect many of us review and preview, consciously or not. It’s wholly ineffective in terms of healthy functioning. It makes us less flexible and resilient. It tires us out, creates long-term chronic stress, and is a constant no-confidence vote we give ourselves. It doesn’t make us more perfect; in fact, it does the opposite because it encourages us to be brittle and fearful. It doesn’t stop us from making mistakes. It turns us away from presence and authentic expression and towards behaving like automatons with a rigid script.
It gives us anxiety.
Most of all, reviewing and previewing doesn’t keep us safe. It doesn’t help us feel loved.
The compulsive habit of reviewing and previewing took up an extraordinary amount of space in my mind and required enormous quantities of energy and attention. Without it, I feel an internal spaciousness I’ve never had before. I read more. I write more. I can rest and relax. I’m far less driven, far more comfortable in my own skin. I’m more present and mindful in the moment, and with my feelings and my body.
I’m far less anxious.
Learning to love myself has been a gift. Reclaiming trust in myself has changed my life.
Questions:
- Do you love yourself? If not, why?
- Do you trust yourself? If not, why?
- If you could only have one, would you prefer others to trust you or love you?
- What do you think is more important socially: love or trust? Why?
Leave a comment below!
To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here: 
by Jenny Rose | Aug 5, 2023 | Power
Last week a Substacker I follow, Candace Rose Rardon, illustrated a memory I shared with her. I was absolutely thrilled. The union of my words and her art spoke to one of my core values: collaboration.
Collaboration is about power management. It’s defined as working with someone. Not directing them. Not submitting to them. Working with them. In other words, sharing power – power-with rather than power-over.
Image by Bob Dmyt from Pixabay
Is it just me, or are we as a culture moving away from sharing power rather than toward it?
Collaboration and cooperation lie at the heart of my fiction. All my life I’ve been preoccupied with working together, but I never had adequate language or studied power until I learned emotional intelligence. At that point the light dawned. I reviewed my relationships, both family and otherwise, through the lens of power.
It was a grim review. I set out to reclaim my power.
Let’s be clear: reclamation is not stealing.
I didn’t want to take power away from others. I wanted to reclaim what had been taken from me.
This involved needs, boundary work, and many other moving parts, most of which I’ve written about here over the last seven years (almost exactly seven years … wow), and all of which are woven into my books.
Speaking of my books, I have a dream that one day a visual artist will read my work, become inspired, and want to illustrate it. That’s not all. (Might as well dream big, right?) In the same dream a musician (drums and flute or pipe, at least) reads my work, becomes inspired, and adds music and a soundscape to it. I even dream one day we’ll develop the ability to incorporate scent into reading. 
I am a sensual person, and my writing reflects that. I myself see my characters and my world of Webbd vividly, but I’m not an artist. I respond deeply to music physically and emotionally, but I’m not a musician.
In every relationship I’ve sought collaboration. I’ve wanted a safe place to have an authentic voice, express an opinion, make a contribution. I’ve wanted the power to make choices. This has been true in the context of family, friends, spouses and boyfriends, coworkers, and community.
I have not been noticeably successful until the last ten years.
No matter how talented, strong, or knowledgeable we are, healthy collaboration can only make us bigger. Collaboration is tricky, though. It’s messy. We’re forced to deal with conflict, with different visions and voices than our own, different backgrounds, different belief systems, different ways of looking at the world and interacting with life. It’s work. It stretches us uncomfortably. We might have to be wrong (gasp!) and someone might find out we were wrong (horrors!).
Plenty of people say they want to collaborate when their true intention is a hostile takeover. Others seek collaboration as a way to make money or leverage other aspects of social power. Their agenda is to accrue power, not share it.
What Candace Rose Rardon did was extend a gift of generosity. When I sent her my memory I had no power over whether she chose to illustrate it or how she would illustrate it. I handed her my words and went on with life. I had no expectations. She sent back something beautiful woven of my words and her art. I’ve never met her. We exchanged no money. I know very little about her, but I do know this: she’s part of my tribe. She’s a creative collaborator.
Collaboration requires a willingness to be flexible and the willingness to accept someone’s vision regarding our art. As creators, we need to loosen our grip on our masterpieces and allow others to widen us. Perhaps someone else visualizes our character slightly differently than we do. Perhaps they see the character more clearly, or more fully than we can. As collaborators, we may be pushed to do more than we’ve done before, take new risks, try new things. Healthy collaboration makes us all more powerful, more expansive, more interesting, more textured.
We are stronger and more beautiful together than we are apart.
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
Collaboration is everywhere. It’s the falling rain and early birdsong on a spring morning. It’s the calling of shorebirds against the background of surf. It’s the buzzing of a fat bumblebee in a fragrant blossom. The world is unbelievably sensual. Walking through tall grass this time of year, the stems and heads turning straw-colored, the small scratching prick of grasshopper legs on my bare skin, the scent of warm grass in my nostrils, is a miracle of collaboration. A garden exists because of collaboration between countless forms of life and the weather.
We can’t collaborate in every situation all the time. Leaders lead. Parents parent. Bosses must manage their people, teachers their students. We all have areas in our lives we like to manage solo, including areas in our creative lives. On the other hand, we are seeing the consequences of no collaboration: chaos, fear, hatred, division, destruction, and social breakdown. We are now successfully being manipulated into choosing not to collaborate even with ourselves, but with consumerism, capitalism, and ideology instead.
Collaboration is wide. It’s not only about human-to-human interaction. If we don’t figure out how to collaborate with our planet, with the human and non-human life around us, and (perhaps most importantly) with ourselves, we will not thrive. We’ll solve no problems. Nothing will change. We’ll meet challenges as individuals and as communities and countries poorly. We will keep ourselves small, disorganized, and weak.
Or we can choose to combine our knowledge, our skills, our vision, and our humanity.
Questions:
- How have you collaborated successfully with others?
- How have you struggled with collaboration?
- What’s the hardest thing for you about sharing power with another?
- Are you open to collaboration? Why or why not?
Leave a comment below!
To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here: 
by Jenny Rose | Nov 19, 2022 | A Flourishing Woman, The Journey
I was taught, as a child, it was my job to alleviate distress. One must always respond immediately and help the sufferer. It went far beyond duty and obligation. If I did not fix the distress of others, my childish world would fall apart. Everyone would leave.
Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
For a child, such consequences are death.
I was also taught “help” meant doing anything and everything I was asked to do, immediately, unquestioningly, and unendingly. My own distress was of no consequence at best and a direct threat, an unwelcome competition, at worst.
That core teaching stayed with me as I grew up, and has been a keynote of my behavior and experience most of my life. I wanted to help people. When people around me suffered, I felt an overwhelming, painful panic, as well as complete responsibility. I had to do everything I could, give the situation my all in order to “help.”
I also grew up with an inability to respond to my own distress. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, emotional and physical pain, were all ignored. My disconnection from my own needs and experience led me into chronic pain, eating disorder, depression, and anxiety. I was unaware of my traumatic wounds. I had no interest in helping myself. Helping myself was selfish, bad, and unloving.
Then I studied emotional intelligence and all the work and therapy I’d done over the years with guides and teachers as well as on my own (see my Resources page) wove together into an intention to reclaim my health and my self.
This blog has been a key part of that work.
I still don’t like to watch people suffer, but I’m more careful now about “helping.” I’ve learned suffering is not necessarily the enemy. We get ill, have painful emotional and physical injuries, have uncomfortable feelings. We age and our bodies and sometimes our minds wear out. To be human is to experience these things; they’re inescapable. We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we deal with such events. When someone is suffering, I’ve learned to be less reactive, to remember it’s not my fault or my responsibility to fix it. I’ve learned to notice whether the sufferer is helping themselves before I jump in.
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
I have learned a bitter lesson: No one can help someone who will not help themselves.
I realize now we can’t always go back to where we were before we were wounded; we can’t always heal the wound itself. Sometimes our wounds and suffering are taking us into something new and what’s called for is not healing, but tolerance and patience.
What does “help” mean? This is an important question. Does help mean we respond promptly to all demands, whether or not they are safe, sustainable, or even possible? Does help mean we make thoughtful, intentional choices for safety and practicality even if those choices go against what we are being asked to do in terms of “help?” Do we decide what the best “help” is, or does the sufferer get to choose what kind of “help” they want?
I’m still uncomfortable talking about my own pain. Honestly, I’m still uncomfortable even noticing it, but I practice every day at staying present with how things are with me. It feels selfish and wrong, but I know that feeling doesn’t mean it is selfish and wrong, just that it’s very different from my early training. Sometimes the choice that feels worst is the best choice. Sometimes suffering is the only possible road forward into peace, growth and resilience.
None of us has the power to help anyone avoid suffering. I confess I’ve argued with that reality all my life, but it hasn’t done a bit of good. In fact, it’s done harm, most of all to myself.
I have occasionally, in the depths of anguish, asked for help. When I do that, what am I asking for?
Nothing tangible. Not money or a thing. Not love. Not sex. Not a gallon of ice cream. I’m not asking for someone to come along and fix it all, or take responsibility.
I’m asking to be heard. I’m asking for someone to say, “I’m here. You’re not alone. I believe in you. I know your goodness, your strength, your courage.” I’m asking for a safe place to discharge my feelings. This might involve snot, wet Kleenexes, rage, and a raised voice.
A safe place is not a place where someone else takes responsibility and fixes, or asks me to stop feeling my feelings, or is clearly uncomfortable with my suffering. A safe place is provided by someone with healthy boundaries who is willing to witness my distress without feeling compelled to fix it.
Witness. A witness. That’s ultimately what I want. Just someone to be there with me for a little while. I can face my own demons and challenges, but I can’t do it all alone.
Photo by Gemma Chua Tran on Unsplash
None of us can. We are social animals. But we can witness for one another. We can sit quietly, holding a safe space without judgment or a fix or advice, and just witness. Pass the Kleenex.
It’s the hardest thing in the world for me to do. Simply witnessing seems so passive, so weak, so useless. Someone right in front of me is deeply distressed and I simply sit like a bump on a log witnessing? Are you kidding me?
Surely, I can do better than that. I can do more than that. It’s up to me to make their suffering stop!
And yet. And yet. Isn’t finding a witness incredibly hard? How many people in our lives can take on such a role? What an inestimable gift, to be willing to walk beside someone who is suffering, to be willing to stay, to not look away. What if our boundaries were so healthy we could do that? What if we weren’t afraid of suffering? What if we were wise enough, strong enough, to make room for it and sit down beside it?
Someone I love is in great anguish of spirit. They beg me for help, but a very specific kind of help which is ethically and practically impossible for me or anyone else to give. Which makes me an enemy. Which makes my loved one even more alone than they already feel, more victimized, more powerless, more confused.
There is nothing about this that doesn’t suck. I dread the phone calls beyond words because I don’t want to witness this suffering. It feels unbearable. But my loved one must bear it, and if they have to, I can. I choose to witness. It feels like nothing. It’s not what’s wanted. But at this point it’s all I can do. So I will keep calling and answering calls. I will get up in the morning and talk to case managers, nurses, CNAs, palliative care consultants, nursing homes, and whoever else will talk to me. I will update friends and family. Then I will get up the next morning and do it again.
I pray there is some power in witnessing, some rightness. I pray that somehow my love and willingness to remain a witness does a little bit of good, provides some small comfort, lights a candle in the darkness of dementia, even for a moment.
And I search inside my own suffering for wisdom, for healing, for grace, and for faith.
To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:
by Jenny Rose | Aug 27, 2022 | Connection & Community, Emotional Intelligence
A little over three years ago I wrote a post titled “Questions Before Engagement.”
Since then, the world has changed, and so have I.
I’m not on social media, but my biggest writing cheerleader is, and he tells me people are talking about how to recognize red flags. He suggested I post again about problematic behavior patterns.
A red flag is a warning sign indicating we need to pay attention. It doesn’t necessarily mean all is lost, or we’ve made a terrible mistake, or it’s time to run. It might be whoever we’re dealing with is simply having a bad day. Nobody’s perfect.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
A persistent pattern of red flags is significant. Ignoring problematic behavior sets us up to get hurt.
The problem with managing red flags is we may be flying several ourselves, and until we figure out our own behavior we’re going to struggle to deal effectively with others.
We all have an excellent built-in system alerting us to possible danger. We call it intuition, going with our gut, or having a hunch or a feeling. We may not know why we feel uneasy, but we subconsciously pick up on threatening or “off” behavior from others. The difficulty is we’re frequently actively taught to disregard our gut feelings, especially as women. We’re being dramatic, or hysterical, or a bitch. We’re drawing attention to ourselves, or making a scene. What we saw, heard or felt wasn’t real. It didn’t happen, or if it did happen, we brought it on ourselves.
We live in a culture that’s increasingly invalidating. Having a bad feeling about someone is framed as being hateful, engaging in profiling, or being exclusive rather than inclusive. Social pressure makes it hard to speak up when we feel uncomfortable. Many of the most influential among us believe their money and power place them above the law, and this appears to be true in some cases. In the absence of justice, we become apathetic. What’s the point of responding to our intuition and trying to keep our connections clean and healthy when we can’t get any support in doing so?
If we grow up being told we can’t trust our own feelings and perceptions, we’re dangerously handicapped; we don’t respond to our intuition because we don’t trust it. We talk ourselves out of self-defense. We recognize red flags on some level, but we don’t trust ourselves enough to respond appropriately. Indeed, some of us have been severely punished for responding appropriately, so we’ve learned to normalize and accept inappropriate behavior.
So before we concern ourselves with others’ behavior, we need to do some self-assessment:
- Do we trust ourselves?
- Do we respond to our intuition?
- Do we choose to defend ourselves?
- Do we have healthy personal boundaries?
- Do we keep our word to ourselves?
- Do we know how to say both yes and no?
- Do we know what our needs are?
- Are we willing to look at our situation and relationships clearly and honestly, no matter how unwelcome the truth might be?
Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash
Once we’ve become familiar with our own motivation and behavior patterns, we can turn our attention outward and focus on the behavior of those we interact with.
Red flags frequently seem too bad to be true. In intimate relationships with partners and family, the anguish of acknowledging toxic or dangerous behavior and setting limits around it cannot be overstated. Those we are closest to trigger our deepest and most volatile passions. This is why it’s so important to be honest with ourselves.
The widest lens through which to examine any given relationship is that of power-over or power-with. I say ‘lens’ because we must look and see, not listen for what we want to hear. Talk is cheap. People lie. Observation over time tells us more than words ever could. In the case of a stranger offering unwanted help with groceries, we don’t have an opportunity to observe over time, but we can say a clear “no” and immediately notice if our no is respected or ignored. We may have no more than a minute or two to decide to take evasive or defensive action.
If we are not in an emergency situation, or dealing with a family member or person we’ve known for a long time, it might be easier to discern if they’re generally working for power-with or power-over. However, many folks are quite adept at using the right words and hiding their true agenda. Their actions over time will invariably clarify the truth.
Power-over versus power-with is a simple way to examine behavior. No labels and jargon involved. No politics. No concern with age, race, ethnicity, biological sex, or gender expression. Each position of power is identifiable by a cluster of behaviors along a continuum. We decide how far we are willing to slide in one direction or another.
Power-Over
- Silencing, deplatforming, threatening, personal attacks, forced teaming, bullying, controlling
- Win and be right at all costs
- Gaslighting, projection, DARVO tactics (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)
- Fostering confusion, distrust, disinformation, and violence
- Dishonesty
- Poor communication and refusing to answer questions
- Emotional unavailability
- High-conflict behavior
- Blaming and shaming of others
- Refusal to respect boundaries
- Inconsistent
- Refusal to discuss, debate, learn new information, take no for an answer
- Lack of reciprocity
- Lack of interest in the needs and experiences of others
Power-With
- Encouraging questions, feedback, open discussion, new information, ongoing learning, critical thinking
- Prioritizing connection, collaboration, and cooperation over winning and being right; tolerance
- Clear, consistent, honest communication
- Fostering clarity, trust, information (facts), healthy boundaries, reciprocity, authenticity, and peaceful problem solving
- Emotionally available and intelligent
- Taking responsibility for choices and consequences
- Words and actions are consistent over time
- Respect and empathy for others
We don’t need to be in the dark about red flags. Here are some highly recommended resources:
- The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker
- Bill Eddy’s website and books about high-conflict personalities
- Controlling People by Patricia Evans
Image by Bob Dmyt from Pixabay
