My Daily Reflections: The Insidiousness of Verbal Abuse

I have been pondering why verbal abuse is so insidious?

Why did I suffer from years and years of verbal abuse in so many of my relationships and do nothing about it?

Verbal abuse is so easily hidden. 

Verbal abuse is often hidden behind the veil of “I am telling you this for you own good”.  Or even “I only want the best for you that is why I have to tell you this.” It is hidden behind comments of comparison or “helpful critique”.  Some verbal abusers hide their digs inside jokes or in how they re-frame the stories they tell about you.  In short verbal abuse is often disguised to appear innocent.  However that does not alter the damage it does.

You have to know what to look for to even realize that it is happening.  

Abusers don’t want to be exposed so certainly they are not going to tell you what is happening.  They will even deny that they are doing anything, they will act all innocent, “who me?” or “I don’t do that!” 

Instead they will imply that you are too sensitive.  They will make their habit of verbal abuse be your fault!   They may even be unconscious that they are doing anything hurtful.  But even if they are good people with an underlying unaddressed issue, verbal abuse is very corrosive to any relationship, even the most loving.

Because of this you have to sort of figure it out all on your own and they will fight you every step of the way!  They use the tactic of verbal abuse to keep control in their lives and to do that they must keep you under their control. As long as you are controllable you are not a threat to them and their self-image, and they can get from you whatever it is they need.  All of their verbal abuse has one goal, to gain some sort of advantage for themselves.  They use their verbal abuse to keep you in “pleasing them mode”, to keep you feeding their egoic needs, to use you to make them feel good about themselves.

Verbal abuse tears you down, slowly and insidiously.  Sometimes it can take years and years before you hit the rock bottom of total devastation, feeling worthless and shamed to the point that you wonder if you really are this horrible person they say you are.

This means that most of this learning you have to begin during your healing journey and figure these things out while you are still hurt and confused.

And then you start to realize what has brought you to this low point and you can look back and see all those “moments” when you were verbally abused but did not recognize it.  Your “gut feelings” may have known that something was wrong…but verbal abusers make sure that you don’t trust your “gut feelings”, because responding to your gut feelings / your intuition would break the control cycle.

If you are a recovering “people pleaser” look back to see those moments of verbal abuse that kept you locked in that pattern of behaviour. 

#1.  Verbal abuse happens where no one can see:  Verbal abuse is something that abusers do in private, they make sure there is never a witness.  This is so that they can deny what they said, imply that you misunderstood them, and make you, the victim, appear crazy which is why it is then so easy for them to use your own sense of guilt in the shaming process.

#2.  Feeling unappreciated:  Verbal abusers never appreciate the actions of others.  There is always a judgement or a criticism or comparison. Whatever someone does it is never good enough.  They talk about others in front of you in the same way, pointing out their shortcomings.  Then when they point out your shortcomings you think it is just them being “honest”.  However this lack of appreciation over a long period of time leaves a sense of emptiness in the victim. It is that sense of perpetual emptiness that is a sign that you have been verbally abused.

#3. Name Calling: Verbal abusers use name calling to control others by making them feel inferior or shame. A shamed person will then blame themselves.  A shamed person looks for what is wrong with themselves and try to figure out what they need to do differently.  A shamed person remains confused because they can’t seem to figure out what exactly is wrong with them.  That is how the abuser gets to continue the abuse because they precipitate self-doubt in the victim.
The most insidious part is that the names don’t have to be that horrible.  Simply being called “selfish” for taking care of yourself is devastating! How about “you would look nicer if you changed this about your appearance” not quite calling you ugly but certainly implying it.  Not calling you fat directly but telling you that this “big article of clothing ought to fit you” combined with a “look” or condescending sneer and you have the equivalent of something just as bad as any of the horrible name calling words. How about when someone “takes over” and does things “for you” implying that you are too stupid to do them for yourself?  These are just some examples of different ways you can be called names without the verbal abuser actually even saying anything that appears to be so “bad”.  But your gut screams out in pain! 

#4. Mood killers: When someone feels good or is happy about something, abusers like to kill that joy.  They only feel powerful and in control when others are less happy than they are.  You have good news, they have better news.  You have a great vacation; they interrupt and tell you about their better vacation.  You are happy about an accomplishment; they give you the deadpan face and switch the conversation to something about themselves.   You share something you are proud of or did well, they will tell you about a friend who did it better.

#5. Attack other people’s interests:  Abusers denigrate and put down other people’s interests.  This is another way for them to remain in control by making the other person feel worthless.  They can do this with a simple look, a scowl, an eye roll or simply by changing the topic to something they are interested in. They can also do this by always having an example of someone who has more worthy interest, or by pointing out that someone else does it better, more proficiently, or gets paid for doing it etc. 

#6. Abusers are always right: Abusers never apologize or admit that they have done something bad. They believe they are superior and right and therefore you must be inferior and wrong.  When a wrong action of theirs is pointed out they act offended and go on the attack by putting you down or pointing out something they want you to feel ashamed about. If you insist on an apology they will avoid you or give you the silent treatment, they will play the victim and even try to make you feel that you are a bad person for wanting the respect of an apology. They will even try to make you feel that you are a bad person for holding them accountable for their words.

#7. Isolation:  People who have been abused seek isolation to remove themselves from and keep themselves safe from further abuse.  They feel unsafe, uncomfortable and anxious around people because verbal abuse leads to low self-esteem.  They fear the next attack of verbal abuse and start looking for it and expecting it so they can set up some sort of protective emotional armour before it occurs. They know it is coming they are just not sure when. 
And interestingly the verbal abusers will then try to make the victim feel shame or that there is something wrong with them for preferring alone time.  The verbal abuser will imply with their words that the victim’s desire to be alone means there is something wrong with them.

#8. Blamed:  Verbal abusers blame others for everything.  Nothing is ever their fault. Even the verbal abuse is not their fault because the victim made them do it.  The victim is told that if they were different then they would not need to be put in their place.   This leaves the abuse victim feeling even more blamed and shamed, unworthy, and not good enough.
The recovering verbal abuse victim will even be blamed for pointing out the abuse. 
They will be blamed for saying NO I will not allow myself to be treated this way anymore.
They will even be blamed for withdrawing from interactions with the verbal abuser.  

Recovery from verbal abuse is possible but first you have to learn to recognize it. 

Recognizing verbal abuse means that you can set firm boundaries in place and end interactions that are verbally abusive either by stating that a boundary has been crossed, learning comebacks that express that you caught the attempt and won’t tolerate it; or if the verbal  abuser refuses to accept the boundary, by ending that social engagement .

I am still a work in progress. 

I am learning to listen to my gut feelings and my emotional instincts which itself is a huge step forward.  I am learning what verbal abuse “feels like” by the creepy, crawly emotions that I feel and I respond by honouring those feelings with justified anger at being treated badly. And justified anger allows me to take the steps necessary to stand up for myself.  I am learning that I do not have to tolerate being treated with verbal abuse.  I can take actions to protect myself and remove myself for the source of abuse

I am under no illusion that the verbal abusers in my life will change their ways.  They have no reason to change because; see #6, they are always right.  I however do not have to tolerate their ways as I can end the conversation or walk away to take other measures to give myself the emotional safety that I deserve.

More importantly I am starting to learn what relationships feel like with people who don’t feel the need to use verbal abuse!  I am learning to recognize how wonderful I feel when I am not being attacked.  I am learning what non-violent communication feels like!

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 – 09 – 11  


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Post Estrangement: How Do I Transform My Anger?

I have spent a lot of time with anger, what it is / should be and what it should not be but often is.

Anger should be a "warning bell" that clangs "something is wrong here, look for what is wrong".

Instead too often we see anger as a tool to cause a retaliation action, as in you hurt me so now I am going to hurt you back!

I had a horrible relationship with anger.  It stemmed from the false core belief that I was taught that anger is bad, you must suppress it, and you must hide it, because only bad people get angry.  I turned that anger inside on myself, telling myself over and over again that I was not good enough because when people hurt me I got angry ….so therefore there must be something bad / wrong with me. 

It has taken me a long hard journey to come to realize that anger itself is not bad.  It is what we do with that anger that can very often be very bad / harmful / cruel and mean.

I have come to believe that most of the mean actions of the world are caused by anger being used to lash out rather than investigate.

When we feel anger it is simply a knock on the door of our consciousness that something is not right.  Usually we are fearful, or hurt, or dismissed or feel pushed away and that makes us feel anger.  Our first response is to want to retaliate, to lash out, to strike back, to make the other person hurt in response to the hurt we received.

But anger all by itself, when you don’t go into retaliation mode, serves only to inform us that something has gone wrong.  Something we hoped for did not happen, or something we did not want to happen did happen.  When I set the anger aside, I can look at the deeper emotion.  For me most often that deeper emotion is hurt.  And then bewilderment, why did that person think it was okay to hurt me.  And finally only recently I have been able to look at their hurting of me was their angry retaliation of their hurting.  They were unable to see their anger as a warning sign that they were hurt or afraid and so they went right to retaliation mode. 

The most insecure people I have come to realize are the fastest to retaliate from a place of anger, because they do not want to do the work of looking deep inside to what caused the anger.  Sure sometime they name it, but mostly it is named in a statement of blame.  “They did this to me, it is their fault”.  

The more secure I become in my inner awareness that I deserve to be treated kindly, the more I can step back from people who try to harm me from their own place of anger.  I recognize that when I explore or expose a truth they do not wish to hear, their response will be anger.  If I call out bad behaviour, the doers of mean things don’t want to be called out on their choice of bad behaviour, so they respond with anger.  They are quite adept at deflecting their anger outward because to look inward requires looking at the inner darkness, the inner negativity, and the false core beliefs around of what good behaviour actually is. 

As I look at what causes me to be angry and compare that with what causes others to be angry I start to realize that I have a different relationship toward anger than many others.

• I get angry when I see injustice, whereas many get angry when they don’t get their way. 
• I get angry when I see harm being done to others whereas many get angry when they don’t get away with doing harmful things to others. 
• My anger stems from a desire for a loving and caring relationship.  Many others get angry when they are prevented from having control over others.

And then I realize that having power over others, getting what they want from others, having their own way is about insecurity.  If you feel really threatened and insecure then you have to “fight” to keep your position of power over others to create a sense of security.

If you are secure in yourself, you don’t need to control others, which more often than not means you don’t feel the need to retaliate.  You can see, the anger as a response, and then make a choice to engage, or to walk away whichever suits the situation best.  When anger leads to choice then you own your anger on a different level, your anger does not explode out of you from a place of volatility but rather is can be transformed in a choice of action.  If that choice of action can lead to a de-escalation of heightened emotions then you really are in control of your anger rather than the other way around.

I don’t think I am anywhere near finished with the concept of anger.  I will continue to struggle with how anger emerges in me in response to the actions and words of others.  I will continue to struggle with the idea that I am bad when I feel anger, and struggle to transform that feeling into “no it is okay to feel anger as long as I don’t stop there”.  I know I have to work with the anger and uncover what it has to teach me, about myself as well as about the other. 

However the one good thing I have accomplished in my study of anger is to realize that I no longer need to suppress my anger.  Anger actually is now my friend, a friend who is telling me “this is not okay”.  I need to listen to my friend and dig deep and inquire with humility and honesty, “what is my friend trying to teach me?”  

Yes it was easier when I could just yell "you make me so angry with the way you treat me" when I could say "it is all your fault".  This convoluted path I have been traveling as I heal has taught me otherwise.  It has been most humbling but I am a better person for having done this work and for being aware that I have more work yet to do, my personal journey to being a better listener. 

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 – 07 – 23 

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Post Estrangement: Confronting the Dysfunction of Neglect

One of the traits in our family history is we don’t communicate about feelings.  We use words to judge, to criticize, to attack, to demand.  This creates a kind of neglect that is mostly invisible.  

Our emotions are a core essence of who we are, and when others fail to recognize this we actually feel ignored as that aspect of us in neglected. Similarly when we ignore how another person feels and judge them only on their actions, we also ignore an essential part of who they are. 

In dysfunction, there seems to be no time taken to entertain the concept that when we ignore how our words make another person feel we are neglecting an essential part of them, and at the same time when we don't acknowledge our own feelings we neglect an essential part of ourselves. 

We learn from an early age that we are not wanted for who we are but only for what we can do for others. We learn from the messages they send, that what is going on in other people’s lives is more important to them than what is going on in our emotional lives.  We learn that what we feel is unimportant and that we are not really wanted, we are an inconvenience. 

This message starts with the first “not right now I am busy”…which implies that what I am busy with is more important than you!!  If the parent thinks very highly of themselves, thinks that their needs come first, then the child by default learns the message I am less important, I am not lovable.  That is emotional neglect.  It is not intentional, it does not come from a conscious part of the brain…it is a learned family dysfunction and in our family it goes back all the generations that I know our family history!  

Each generation is then left to figure out; how do I get what I need in the away of attention? How do I get to feel less neglected / more loved?  

Those of us, who take the people pleaser route, figure that if we can do enough for others we will be included; we won’t be left out / neglected.  We figure if we can pay a high enough cost in doing for others, taking on emotional labour etc. we will be able to buy what we need.  Others decide that the way to get the attention they need is through telling / commanding others how they must comply.  They will demand and control others to get what they need.  

Neither is healthy.  Neither is a real solution. 

The real solution is a total change from the foundation up as to what inclusive, non-neglectful communication looks like.  

What does it look like to acknowledge another person’s needs and at the same time express the challenges or the barriers in that moment from meeting those needs?  

How much effort does it take to say “I see you need to talk and I want to talk to you, but I have to finish this first”.  

Or what challenge does it cause within us to put the “this” aside and sit with the present moment of need?  

Aren’t relationships more important that the “task at hand”? 

What about if the task at hand is a self-indulgent one?  What if the message the child gets is don’t bother me now “I am reading”, “I am watching a TV show”, “I am playing a game”, “I am talking to a friend on the phone?”  What message does the child get?  “I am less important than a book, a movie, a game, another person”.

What about subliminal messages that are sent out that you are of less value in comparison to something or someone else?  Those messages that say "I get my needs met by doing this and it does not matter that how it makes you feel."  How does that destroy the integrity of connection or relationship; of feeling valued or cherished?  How does that destroy love? 

If all those other things are important and I am not; therefore I must be not enough.  How sad to grow up with and to live with that inner seed of inadequacy!  And yet that is exactly what the children in our family have been growing up with for generations.   

When people use a “me” centered focus, then they are sending a very clear message, my task, my enjoyment, my other commitments are more important than your emotions, your needs!  

The clear, (maybe unintentional) message you receive into your psyche when you hear a “not now” is; “your need is less important than MY needs”.  Or, love is scarce, I don't have enough love to love myself and love you too.

The foundation of change lies in the perception of what is important.  The perception that emotions come before tasks. That needs for love, for connection, for understanding, for being heard are more important than “getting this done first”.  But how does one learn this if one has never experienced this?  How does one teach the next generation that which one has never experienced? 

That is the huge question and I believe that this is the question that is at the root of most family dysfunction.  How does one change when one does not even know that change is a necessary option?  How does one change when it is so much easier to point the finger and say “they are the problem” not taking a moment to look at oneself in the mirror and say “how am I contributing to this problem?” 

Fundamental questions we mostly fail to ask are:

•  “What false core belief do I carry about relationships that cause me to lash out in anger at another for expressing their feelings or their needs?”

• “Why do I attack people when they point out that I have hurt them?  Why is my instinctive response to push them away?”

•  “Why do I play the victim and make it all about “ME” when I don’t like how I feel in response to a statement that makes me feel guilty or neglectful?"

•  “Why do I judge people without first ascertaining what they are feeling or what emotional needs they have?” And why do I judge them based on “my” feelings rather than asking for their feelings or asking for more facts or details?

• “Why don’t I ask the important questions like “what are you feeling?” or “why did my saying that hurt your feelings?” or “how can we work on this together to resolve it?”

•  “Why is it easier to make assumptions that the other person did or said something mean on purpose instead of asking them what emotional place they are in that precipitated the action or words?”

• “Why is it easier to base judgments on other people’s opinions than asking for details about the emotional state of those we say we care about?”

These responses all stem from the same source, the feeling of neglect, that emptiness inside that screams “I need filling at all costs and it does not matter who gets hurt in the process as long as I don’t feel the pain of being neglected. 

However, to answer all those questions we need to step outside the painful feelings of neglect, we need to be able to see with self-compassion that inner hurt child that is screaming for attention.  We need to show that inner child the care they did not receive and bring a new way of relating compassionately with self-first; and then from that safe place, we can bring compassion to our relationships with others.

Until we can, with compassion, face our neglected inner child, we can’t fix relationships that are skewed because of the residual effect of the trauma of childhood neglect.  Until we fix this relationship with ourselves we can’t with compassion ask ourselves to face the difficult questions of why we behave the way we do, even when we know (on some level) that our actions hurt others.  It is then that we can understand that the problems are not solved by telling the other person how to change but in bringing a changed self to the relationship.

Of course it requires one further step, one more very difficult accepting step; that even when we change, and we bring a new awareness and a different perspective to our relationships, we are only one part of the equation.  Even in family dysfunction you can’t change other members of the family! You can only change you!  Every other member of a dysfunctional family has to heal and come to their own conclusions in their own time.  And for some that time may be never!  That itself is a hard reality to accept.  Sometimes we just have to accept that they will always be thoughtless when it comes to handing out neglect. 

They don’t even see that they are handing out neglect.  They simply are too deeply enmeshed in their own need to not feel neglected that their unconscious choices don’t even register as being perceived by the other person as diminishing or neglectful.  

These are the people that say with clear and determined conviction “I did nothing wrong”, or “I have nothing I need to apologize for” or even laying blame on others with the innocuous; “you are too sensitive”.  These are all statements that exemplify that they totally believe they are in the right, because they 100% believe in their own truth. They do not see that in neglecting your feelings they are diminishing your worth.  They are simply looking out for #1 and your feelings get in the way!

So, now you know you can’t change others, you can’t force others to learn what you have learned.  How do you deal with this kind of generational dysfunction?  

Number one criterion is looking at what you have to do from a self-care perspective.  Once you recognize in yourself that you are dealing with dysfunction, it is important that you not return to old patterns of behaviour.  After all those patterns did not work in the past to create a place of mental well-being for you, so don’t fool yourself into thinking they can be made to work now!  If you do you will just continue to perpetuate the anguish that you feel inside. Only this time it will be even worse...because you will be aware that you have accepted the lie that you are indeed worth LESS. 

However, the true reward of recognizing patterns is that it allows you to set boundaries.  And boundaries allow you to start to feel safe.  Maybe for the first time ever in your life you feel the safety of being heard, even if the only person who hears you is "self"!  

This awareness gives you the authority to no longer have to freeze in discomfort, trying to hide what you are feeling in response to what you are experiencing.  You do not have to stay and resignedly accept what you now recognize as disrespect for your feelings.  Instead you learn that you have options and choices.  The first being to acknowledge the truth of your feelings.  Just that is so liberating!  

When I think this thought "I have a right to my feelings" I suddenly find that the constriction around my ribs relaxes and I can breathe! 

From this place of safety we are offered the opportunity to face the fight or flight choice. The options that were denied us when we became frozen in acceptance and inaction because we felt we did not deserve anything better because we falsely believed we were the problem. 

You can choose to fight!  You can try to get the others to see the dysfunction, or you can retaliate with more hurt.  Or you can choose to flee, distance yourself from those who perpetuate this neglectful, hurtful behaviour upon you.  

Neither choice is optimal.  

Neither leads to a happy ever after.  

What I do know is that fighting is exhausting, it is like hitting your head on a brick wall and wondering why your head hurts.  

I also know that distancing is painful.  We are creatures of belonging and connectedness.  When our connections are discovered to be the source of our discomfort it still is difficult to create enough distance to feel safe.  

Boundaries tell us that we have the right to our feelings and that we have the right to say when we are hurt.  They however do not help us deal with the pain of rejection we feel when others tell us that NO they will not respect our boundaries.  

Knowing that we have a right to boundaries does not help us deal with the pain of being told that our feelings don’t matter to them!  (another rejection, another diminishing of our needs, another neglect). 

I have come to believe that the person who starts to recognize family dysfunction, who begins to change, to take up boundary work, who starts to change what they will allow to be done to them, who starts to say "no that is not acceptable";  is like a solitary figure in a barren landscape. There are no landmarks yet to guide the way.  The only sign post are related to compassion.  

The primary sign post must be Self-compassion.  Self-compassion says; “no one is allowed to make me feel bad and to get away with thinking that it is acceptable to do so”.  So much of standing up for oneself; starting to take care of our own needs, setting boundaries etc. results in those we are standing up to for the first time feeling themselves rejected for not being allowed to continue the emotionally abusive behaviour.  They retaliate with word arrows as they attempt to get us to go back to the old dysfunctional game rules.  If you have not built up a good healthy supply of self-compassion you will be destroyed right here on the doorstep to change.

But secondarily, beyond knowing we are disturbing the illusion of "everything was just fine until you had to start messing things up"; we must awaken compassion for those who are still stuck in the false core beliefs that it is okay to hurt others if it eases their own pain.   When they hurt us for daring to expose the wrongness of emotional neglect, they can get vicious with their words and their actions!  If we are not careful we can take up the battle cry and fight back.  It is important to know that fighting back, is not an option.  The only thing we can give them it the gift of time to learn and compassion for the struggles they must face in order to change themselves. 

Forgive them for they know not what they do, but don’t make yourself a martyr to their ignorance.  

Instead prepare for them a feast of acceptance should they ever awaken and begin to realize the significance of the journey you have taken toward healing.  Be ready to welcome them should they ever come to that place of understanding that they too have to make their own journey of transformation. 

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 – 07 – 16


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My Daily Reflection: Pondering Boundaries and Boundary Work

If you have never been exposed to the concept of personal boundaries it is hard to get an understanding of where you end and others begin.  This means that either you expect others to do too much for you or you think it is your responsibility to do too much for others.  Neither is emotionally healthy.

• If you do too much you enable the other person to do less for themselves, less growing, less healing, less personal development, less accountability for their actions.  
• If you expect others to do emotional labour for you, you inhibit your own growth because the satisfaction you get having others do for you means you never see the need for emotional independence. 

I believe most children are not taught emotional boundaries.  If they are lucky they are taught about physical boundaries; you don’t hit, you don’t take without permission, you don’t attack physically or sexually. 

But emotional boundaries are so tied up in what we feel about ourselves, our worth in relationship to others,  they are connected with our intrinsic value, our need to be loved and accepted that unless these things are explained to us we miss them.  Many of us integrate boundary-less behaviour patterns into our personality and don’t even realize we have done so. 

So what do boundaries feel like? 

• They feel like awareness of what you are responsible for and what you are not responsible for. 
• Awareness that even when people expect something from you; you are not obligated to meet their expectations, you always have choice. 
• Boundaries allow you to know the difference between a request for assistance and an expectation of compliance. 
• Boundaries allow you to ascertain the difference between being caring and being used. 
• Boundaries let you see when emotional labour is balanced or imbalanced in a one way flow

I have been working on boundaries for quite a while now and always I find a new dimension to explore, new false core beliefs to be dismantled, behaviour patterns to be investigated or dismantled. That is why healing is such a long term project.  I keep coming up against things I never questioned, things that I just did out of habit, because that is how I was trained to be, probably unconsciously, by those who needed me to complete them. 

It has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that it is not my job to complete others.  It is my job to complete myself.  When I am complete in my own right, and I allow others to be complete in their own right, then we complement each other, which is far healthier in relationship that being either the completor or the completed. 

A complementary relationship is a balance of giving and receiving.  A completing relationship is always out of balance because one person is always expected to be mostly on the giving end so that the other person can enjoy being on the receiving end.  Such relationships always end up with one person worn out and exhausted and depleted.  That is not emotionally healthy or sustainable and in the long run such relationships shatter when the giver is so depleted that they have to change for their own emotional wellbeing.

What does it take to develop boundaries, to have a healthy sense of where I end and you begin?

For me this is a work in progress.  I started with a statement of rights; things I feel strongly about how I deserve to be treated.  Yesterday I found this list that I have been pondering.  Some concepts I have already thought through.  Others I feel I was aware of but only peripherally.  It was good to sit with each one and ascertain the veracity within my life.

Concepts to be aware of during boundary work

It is okay to say no. 

Just because someone asks me for something or to do something I have a right to look at my schedule, my own needs and ascertain if I can or should take on more. I have a right to say no to requests that would deplete me either physically or mentally or emotionally or spiritually.  Giving is a gift given freely, it is a donation from the heart.   If I feel like I am being commanded or coerced into giving it is no longer a gift but a tax. 

- It is not my job to fix others. 

It is also futile.  I can’t force others to change.  I can only change myself.  The most that I can do is point out to them where they could turn for information to facilitate their own healing.  And if the only way I can “fix” the relationship with this person is by putting on my “fake persona” then I have to question is this really a healthy viable relationship?

It is okay if others get angry. 

Others get angry when I stop giving them want they want.  This is something that I have learned painfully the hard way.  But if the only reason I keep giving in, putting up with unacceptable behaviour from others is to prevent them from getting angry, then I am doing way to much emotional labour and they are doing way too little.  Note I am not talking about gross misconduct. 

If I have to regulate my behaviour to prevent them from experiencing frustration and acting out their anger then they are using me to continue doing what probably deep in their hearts on some level they know is in need of change.  They know they need to change their response to frustration but it is easier to demand that I act differently so that I stop them from having to experience any frustration.  That is exhausting work, to always anticipate what another person might find frustrating and then choke down on authenticity to preserve a relationship with someone who sees themselves as so fragile they need others to modify who they are just so that they can be not frustrated.  I am not responsible for what they do with their frustration or anger.  Every one of us faces situations that make us feel frustration.  That is life.  I do not go out of my way to create frustration for others, but I also will no longer not state what I feel so that someone else can avoid feeling frustrated.

It is not my job to take responsibility of other people’s behaviour

It is not on me to adjust my behaviour according to what they might do or feel.  For example; if I have a goal and go after my goal and I know that achieving my goal will cause another person to feel envious; it is not my responsibility to water down or turn away from my goal if that goal might create a situation where the other person might feel envious.  I am not responsible for their envy, they are. If they have a life set back that causes them upset, and their response is to turn to addictive behaviours it is not my responsibility, it is their choice. 

I don’t have to anticipate the needs of others

This one is challenging, it is natural to want to create joy for others and one of the ways we do that is anticipating what they need.  That is what makes giving gifts so pleasurable for us, we anticipate the joy we bring to those we care for. 

But this can be perverted when we find ourselves in relationship with people who need more than we are able to give.  It can be so subtle.  Example, the friend who needs you to call or text them all the time, who is always disappointed if you don’t do this often enough and then finds ways to let you know that you did not meet their need to be made to feel important.   How about the friend that needs you to agree with them at all costs.  You having your own opinion just makes them so angry.  Is it really your responsibility to anticipate their need for your compliance? 

It is always a good thing when working on boundaries to pause and consider affirmations.  Affirmation of truths about personal integrity, safe awareness of individuality. Knowing that you are you and you don’t have to change who you are simply for the comfort or convenience of others.  Here are some that I turn to:

• Nobody has to agree with me and no one has the right to tell me I have to agree with them.
• I have the right to my own feelings and opinions and no one has the right to tell me otherwise
• I do not have to sacrifice my wellbeing to elevate others and protect them from the consequences of their actions.
• It doesn’t matter what people think.  I have my values, my conscience, and I can do what I feel is right for me.
• I am enough.  I don’t have to do anything to earn “enoughness”.  My doing must come from the wellspring of already knowing that I am enough.
• I have the right to focus on my own wellbeing, my own dreams and my own happiness.  No one has the right to make me feel ashamed for taking responsibility for my self-care. 

Boundary work is so challenging.  If you have had poor or porous boundaries people are used to you completing them. When you start to work towards being complete within yourself and start seeking complementary relationships you find that those who got used to you being there to complete them are unhappy.

As you change, many of your relationships also change.  The users in your life become very apparent.  They become visible because they are very vocal about their outrage that you are no longer doing the emotional labour of completing them. 

It takes great emotional strength, (and if you are fortunate, a true friend at your side), to navigate the guilt tripping you will receive from those who do not like this stronger more independent boundaried you. 

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 - 07 - 05

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My Daily Reflections: on Father's Day

Today is father’s day and in many ways I struggle with how to remember and honour him.  My father has long moved on to whatever lies beyond life and I have grieved losing him before I got to know him better, before I got to ask him some important questions that will now probably never be answered unless we meet in the hereafter.

My father was a good man and a good provider. I think in his own wounded way he was a better parent to me than his parents were to him.  I also know that moving to a new country, starting over after a war and escaping from a country that was being taken over by Russian armies left lingering trauma upon his soul.

Having said all of that I am still faced with the struggle of healing my childhood wounds that were unintentionally caused by his unresolved woundedness. 

Yes for sure; I fully understand that he did the absolute best he could with the skills that he had.  I am not in any way detracting from the amazingness of what he was able to accomplish.  Starting from zero as an immigrant and building a business and buying a home he made sure that I always had the security of a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in and food to eat.  I was allowed to go to school and get an education (still considered somewhat a privilege in those days for a girl), heck I was even exposed to music and music lessons because of his love of the accordion.

But after all the good things are accounted for there are also all the things that did not happen, the omissions;  that are actually what causes the lingering wounds that I continue to struggle to heal.

I came across this poem today called: How do we forgive our fathers?

How do we forgive our fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us often or
forever when we were little.

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.

Do we forgive our fathers for marrying or not marrying
our mothers?
For divorcing or not divorcing our mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of
warmth or coldness?

Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?

Do we forgive our fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?
If we forgive our fathers what is left?

~poem from smoke signals~

The fact that someone put words to paper lets me know that I am not the only one with lingering questions that remain unanswered.  I am not the only one working through issues of feeling abandoned, unheard, discouraged, frightened even.  Things that a child feels but can’t express in words only internalized in feelings and emotions; that remain buried in the subconscious as values that don’t quite reflect the reality.  The experiences of a child are shaped by the feelings they have in response to their environment, and when that environment feels unsafe, the child internalizes (not knowing any better) that it must be their fault, that they are not good enough, not lovable enough to receive what they need.  And that child grows into a wounded adult with a false core belief that they are somehow broken, for if they had not been so unlovable they would have been nurtured in the way that they needed.

The adult in me can see that my father was a man of integrity.  He worked hard every day of his life.  He strove to be kind and loving and caring.  I think in many ways he cared more deeply even than he let others know, maybe because he was taught that men are supposed to be tough.  I saw him smile and laugh and sing, and I saw him fall asleep in exhaustion during even the most festive of family celebrations.  He was talented and creative and built amazing furniture with even the most primitive of tools, much of what he made was before the advent of power tools!  He loved nature and cared for birds and bees, planting single handed fields of clover. These are just a few of the characteristics he demonstrated and a few of the things he accomplished.

But his working such long hard hours meant I rarely saw him and I so wanted to be with him.  His caring seemed to directed almost exclusively to my mother, and he smiled most often when with his friends.  And I was not welcome in his workshop, possibly for fear I might get hurt, but I felt it was because I was a girl and not a son.  I felt I was not what he wanted; I had failed in in some inexplicable way by being born female.

And so I struggle every father’s day, how do I honour this man, who fathered me, but was so rarely around to be a father.  This man who was the proverbial threat when I misbehaved “just wait till your father hears about this!”  This man; who taught me to love reading because he loved books, but never sat at my bedside to read me a bed time story.  He taught me to love history and to be curious because he demonstrated those attributes, but I learned by watching him (hoping that if I became more like him then he would pay some attention to me and show me that he loved me) not because he shared these passions with me.  There is so much that I admire about this person I never really got to know, the intimate stranger in my life. 

I cried so long and hard when he died.  But now I wonder if my greatest grief was not that I had lost a father, but rather that I never really had the opportunity to know who my father really was, and that when he left this earthly plane, I lost the opportunity to ever gain the acceptance and love that my inner child still craves to this day.

“I love you Dad” seems a pale imitation of what I really feel, a sense of personal loss.  That what I actually love is a fantasy of what might have been, what could have been if life had not placed so many obstacles and challenges in his path.   

“I miss you Dad” not because you have gone on to the afterlife; I miss what we never had the opportunity to cultivate, to create; a relationship where I knew who you really were, what you dreamed of, what dreams you had to give up, and where you were interested in my dreams and sorrowed with me that I too had to give up on so many of my dreams.

“I honour you Dad”, not because we had a successful relationship but for doing the best you could. 

“I do forgive you Dad” not because you did anything overt that requires forgiveness, but because you are human and we humans make such a mess of relationships simply because our past leaves us so ill equipped to do a better job.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 – 06 – 17 



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My daily reflections: Push and Pull we Experience in Relationships

I had this thought today about how there is a push and pull effect we experience with relationships that are less than wholesome. 

First off there is this feeling of being used / manipulated controlled where a certain person usually someone we care for deeply and whom we wish cared for us. They know us well enough that they can easily “push our buttons” to arouse certain feelings in us. Maybe they are the ones who installed those buttons, those precipitators of  “not good enough” in the first place through comparisons and judgment and statements of insufficiency or lack. 

Or maybe they are people who watched our buttons being pushed by others and learned to emulate those pushing actions. Sadly those buttons are most often used to push and trigger our feelings of inadequacy.  And anytime we feel inadequate there is that subconscious play that unfolds as a result that always leads us to the same conclusion that we are somehow defective. 

And then when our emotions are heightened, when we are struggling when we are trying to understand, to work through, to find answers these same people have a fear response. They fear we will see the truth of their actions, that something will be revealed that is unflattering to them so they try to pull us away from our own healing. 

A common way of doing this is by implying that we are “too sensitive."  But a more harmful one is implying that "all you need is therapy, you are broken and therapy will fix you!" 

I have found that such people use the “you need therapy” line to deflect away from the fact that they are the cause of us needing therapy!  They don’t want us to realize that the way they treated us, judged us, complained about us, belittled us, condemned us has  anything to do with the way we feel.  They want us to jump to the conclusion that we feel the way we feel because we are intrinsically defective rather than explore that we are hurting because of what we have experienced / what has been done to us or said against us.

Another example is when you start to heal, start to create boundaries, start to say “NO”, start to care for yourself and show yourself self-compassion, start to go after your dreams, they try to pull you away from healing by calling you names like selfish or narcissistic.  They want to imply that the way you are healing toward knowledge and awareness is bad because knowledge and awareness exposes disturbed character patterns, reveals and exposes the truth about the  evil and or ugliness with which you have been treated 

So first they push us through their words and their actions into feeling insufficient, ineffective, not good enough, and then when we start to do authentic healing, they attempt pull us away from really exploring our innermost workings by implying that superficial talk therapy will expose our shortcomings, and that we need help exploring what is wrong with US rather than what is wrong with our relationship with them.

I sometimes get the feeling that those people in my life; who want me to put a bandage on my hurt emotions, who want me to stuff my feelings away in a dark corner, do so because they don’t want me to truly learn and expose that the problem I have is that I have for so long accepted their version of our reality.  Now that I am exposing my own reality, and see how they have tried to control my perception of my reality, they are afraid. They attempt to pull me away from healing, and too often they do so by trying to imply that my better, healthier more self-compassionate me is actually not healthy.  Of course if I comply they can then once again push my “buttons” of inadequacy! 

And so they attempt to push and pull again.

They push me away by calling me names or ignoring me, or excluding me.  And then as I distance myself in response to their pushing, they then resort to trying to pull me back in by implying that if I don’t forgive them and accept them the way they are (so they don’t have to change) that I am not being a loving caring person.   They try to pull me back in by implying I am defective if I don’t.  They imply that I am the problem for wanting to distance myself from their hurtful words and actions.

And so the circle could continue, if I let it. 

In stepping out of that circle, in creating a new path through my own discoveries, in learning that I don’t need to simply “talk about WHAT happened to me” but what I need to do is change the core beliefs programmed by what was DONE TO me;  I have become a threat.  I have become a threat to those who don’t want to see what I have exposed.  My discoveries lead me to the power of knowledge and they fear that my knowledge power will override their power of manipulative control. 

I have decided to take charge of the push pull in my life. I push myself to heal and I pull away from all situations that try to undermine my healing.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 – 06 – 05

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