Problem :People can do mean, hurtful things, and it's OK when you're on the receiving end of this to feel hurt! Hurt tells us something. It tells an abused spouse, that there is something wrong that needs addressing. We don't want to teach people not to feel! What do people do when real stuff is happening, and there is hurt?
God gave us a very good emotional system to discern quickly when someone is treating us poorly, to feel it and adjust. If we are to connect, be real, and get along, there needs to be a better way
And feel when someone is genuine, wants to engage, and go with that. Probably due to my issue of not feeling good enough, I tolerated people’s poor behavior toward me for a long time. My awareness has helped me see it now and change.
Solution :Yes our feelings do give us very important information, and feeling your pain lets you know something is wrong, and motivates you to do something about it. But how you interpret the meaning of your feelings is vitally important, as it affects what you are motivated to do about it. The framework you are in determines whether you end up making the pain worse; or are just getting relief for the moment; or are removing yourself from the pain in one form, only to find yourself in the same kind of pain in another form; or whether you are actually getting to the root of the problem in order to really solve the issue.
When people are in emotional pain, the root of the pain is a limiting decision*, such as that you are not good enough, not worthy of respect, or not worthy of being taken seriously. The only way someone can elicit these kinds of feelings in you is if you already believed them to be true in the first place. All the other person has really done is bring the painful feeling to the surface. If you believe the source of your pain is the other person, then you think defending yourself against that person will solve the problem. But since that painful feeling is a limiting decision* in you, it is a part of a pattern in your life. That means it comes up over and over again in similar kinds of circumstances with similar kinds of people. If you don’t deal with the root of it in you, it will keep coming up, and you will keep feeling at the mercy of anyone who brings it up in you.
If you have tolerated people's poor behavior toward you because of the limiting decision* that you’re not good enough, the solution is not about learning how to stand up to those people or about judging their behavior. The solution is to address your feelings of being not good enough. That is an internal process, not an external process. Other people’s behavior becomes unimportant when you are dealing with what is being triggered in you. But it is everything when you are not dealing with it. When you are not dealing with your own issues, other people are defining your reality, and you are living in reaction to them, rather than from your own center. In fact you would probably be unconsciously motivated to seek out people who treat you as if you’re not good enough, in order to get them to treat you differently, as if that would solve the problem.
If, instead, you were coming from your own center, of course you wouldn't be putting yourself in harm's way. You would automatically be making different choices in your life and would not be attracted to people who don’t treat you well. You would be relating to people differently and you would be perceiving people differently. Your world would cease to be defined by your limiting decisions*.
