Today I am pondering kindness.

Today I am pondering kindness.  

And I am not the only one.  I listened to a person on youtube talking about the “nastiness” of some people.  This struck a chord in me!  Because I am kind, I tend to not call people out on their nastiness!  

More and more I am working on overcoming this shortcoming of mine.  I want to be seen as a nice and kind person and therefore I don’t speak up when someone is nasty.  I let them get away with their nastiness!  I am coming to realize that what I am in actual fact doing is condoning their nastiness. 

As long as they think they can get away with being nasty and unkind they will continue to do so.  As long as I allow myself to be walked all over, people will continue to walk all over me.

I have been working on my concept of what it means to be a kind person for some time now.  Being kind is only one part of the equation.  The other part of the equation is holding people accountable for their unkindness even when it means they will no longer “like” me.

When I operate from a place of “fear” of being abandoned I keep silent in the face of nastiness.  When I want to be liked and seen as kind at all costs….I do pay the price of suffering in silence, their unkindness! 

Kindness is a balancing act of giving kindness but also setting a boundary that I will not tolerate being treated nastily. 

I can be a kind person and still hold a boundary against those who would harm me with their nasty words or actions.  I don’t have to allow them to “get away” with treating me badly in order to see myself as a good person!  Not everyone deserves to be in my life and keeping people in my life at all costs has kept some very hurtful / harming people in my life far longer than they deserved.

The more I learn that I deserve to treat myself with kindness, the more I learn that I do not have to tolerate other people’s nastiness.  I have a right to have boundaries!  That is what it means to have kindness in balance.  Not only do I get to treat others with kindness, I get to respect my boundaries and only allow people into my life, who also treat me with kindness in return.  I don’t have to give space to the people who believe they have the right to be nasty and treat me badly.

Happiness is…. Kindness in balance

 

Renate Dundys Marrello

2022 – 04 – 24

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My Daily Reflections: Pondering the Concept of Guilt

Pondering this quote: 

          “People use guilt to try to shut down your authentic voice.” 
 

I see clearly now.
I know who created my guilt button   
I see when and by whom my guilt button was installed.
I see clearly how over and over again that button was activated.
First, a pattern was created, teaching me what I had to do to be acceptable, to be deserving of love.
Compliance was given a reward and noncompliance received the punishment of shunning.
 
Gradually over time, I learned that being a good person was dependent on pleasing others.  Being a good person became indistinguishable from pleasing others.  
 
Over time, people-pleasing became something that was expected of me. Because it became an expectation my actions became something taken for granted.   Because it became an expectation my good action needed no recognition nor appreciation.  Over time, my good actions no longer even received a thank you. 
 
Over time, my authentic voice, my authentic being, disappeared in the language of expectation.  Doing good things for others, making the lives of others better by overlooking their transgressions, was so natural for me that I harmed myself in an effort to be acceptable to others.  I allowed myself to be treated badly to avoid confronting rejection and loneliness.
Healing has taught me that doing good things because they are expected, gradually became not doing the right thing because it might offend.
My desire to be seen as a “good person”; evolved into me NOT doing the right thing to care for myself.   I had no conception that there were good things that I could do that were about taking care of myself.  Things like pointing out when others do something to hurt me.  In my effort to be perceived as a good person, I was willing to allow verbal and emotional abuse.
In my desire to be seen as a good person I got good at turning the other cheek and became good at suffering abuse in silence, I became good at not saying anything in order to keep the peace.
I ended up in this place where guilt kept me doing things for others even when I received no recognition for what I was doing for them because I had been trained to believe that not doing for others made me a bad person.   And guilt kept me silent when others trespassed against my well-being because I had come to believe that I was guilty of being a bad person when I spoke up for myself.
 
Healing has been slowly teaching me that I am a good person. 
I don’t have to be a people pleaser to be a good person.
I don’t have to accept in silence hurtful language from those trying to guilt me into ignoring their bad actions.
I have learned that sometimes the good thing to do is to uninstall the guilt button.  To learn that what I am feeling is not guilt but rather a sense of being manipulated.  What I am is not feeling guilt; but an outside expectation to meet the demands of another.  
 
This was for me a critical observation.  I am now starting to wonder; why did I learn to equate not doing what someone else wanted me to do with something to feel guilty over? When and why did I let my authenticity be replaced by what others wanted me to feel in relation to what they wanted from me? 
 
I am learning that being a good person is quite different from people-pleasing. 
 
I am learning that being a good person actually means that some people won’t like me.  Not because I am not a good person, but because I have now become an unmanipulable person.  I am learning that those who try to convince me / guilt trip me into believing that I am not a good person, have an ulterior motive, their motive is to gain something from me.
This thought is freeing.  But the healing is not yet done. 
 
Even though I know it is happening on one level, on another, I still feel guilt when I am being manipulated into “giving” their desired response.  I feel guilt when I am shunned for not giving their desired response.  
 
I can logic talk myself out of caving to the manipulative demands,  but in isolation,  I continue to battle the feelings of guilt.
 
Yes, my guilt button was well and truly installed.
 
Renate Dundys Marrello
2022 – 04 – 03 

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