How to ignore other people’s judgements

No one has it all figured out, especially not the people who are acting like they do and judging you because of it. Pretending to be something you aren’t because you’re trying to please a bunch of judgemental hypocrites and shitheads is not the way to be happy. Tucker Max

Do not judge and you will never be mistaken. Jean Jacques Rousseau

It can be extremely painful when other people judge us based on stories they have been told, something they have heard through the grapevine or maybe they simply believe a narcissist’s smear campaign after we finally worked up enough inner-strength and courage to walk away from a toxic relationship or a friendship that no longer serves us.

Some celebrities – such as Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus – embrace it openly, going with the “any news is good news” philosophy, but many others they talk about how daily rags and trashy magazines got their stories wrong and it impacted their reputations.

Most people would agree that they would rather not be the centre of controversial conversation that could lead to negative criticisms and judgements. Read more here.

Acceptance – are you taking it too far?

 

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations. Michael J. Fox

 

The other day I saw a quote on Facebook I want to share with you:

What do you think?

I lost it!

This was this exact thought process that encouraged a dangerous level of “acceptance” towards a narcissist I was entangled with, who was abusing me – and it made me angry that they were actively encouraging it.

I used to tell myself: “It will get better, he’s not like this all the time, he loves me most of the time, he cheated – but he came back so he obviously loves me, those flowers are gorgeous – he is really sorry, he won’t do it again…” The excuses and rationalizing were endless. At my lowest point I went to the doctors to try to get medication to toughen my skin “so I wouldn’t bruise so easily”. When I tell people that, they look at me stunned. How can you get to that point? How can you stay? Meanwhile the excuses went on as I “accepted” this ‘man’ and his treatment of me. What I was actually doing was masking the abuse: I wasn’t admitting it to anyone – least of all myself. (By the way: that medication to toughen the skin so it won’t bruise so easily? Doesn’t exist. And since I left that relationship, my “bruising problem” has resolved itself, in fact, I haven’t had one bruise. Magic.)

Now, let’s get real: what was dangerous wasn’t the above quote (though I still don’t believe it’s a healthy way of thinking) – but the risk was that I had mistaken my thought processes for acceptance, when really I had reached a state of “cognitive dissonance” in order to remain in the relationship. While I think my experience was quite extreme, it’s not unusual in domestic violence partnerships or particularly where there is narcissistic abuse for these behaviours and excuses to evolve.

This week Happiness Weekly looks at acceptance – are you taking it too far?

 

What is acceptance?
According to a quick Google search, acceptance is “the process or fact of being received as adequate, valid, or suitable”.

We decide what is acceptable and unacceptable to us at a very young age. Each of us has a little voice inside, which tells us if a situation is acceptable or not – generally we can be guided by our intuition. As adults, we have the power to override this inner voice and choose selectively what we want to accept and what we don’t. Unfortunately we can choose this to our detriment – as in my case – and it’s when we choose to accept something against the guidance of our inner voice that we generally start going down a bad path.

When we go through a toxic or abusive relationship, and perhaps even choose to stay in it, we also stop trusting ourselves. Instead of dealing with it we go into denial, we “accept” it for what is, we look for small flickers of love from the abuser and respond with great gratitude in order to hold on.

Hold on to what?!

If this sounds like you and you have in this moment made the decision to get out of what you’re in, please check out All about toxic relationships and how to let go. If your intuition is telling you to get out of your relationship, I urge you to take the steps needed to follow through.

Setting personal boundaries is essential in any relationship but particularly healthy ones. If you’re in an unhealthy relationship you’ll find your boundaries are spongy or just continually fall by the wayside, but your intuition still lets you know if something is happening that you don’t want. Part of setting boundaries is knowing what is acceptable to you and what isn’t and your boundaries are generally put in place according to this. Seems straight forward.

At any time we are able to adjust our beliefs and change what is acceptable to us and what isn’t – it is up to us if we make these adjustments in a positive or negative direction. When you continue overriding this inner voice and your personal boundaries drop off because you’re choosing to accept something deep down you know you shouldn’t, it’s extremely detrimental to your trust in yourself, and believe me when I say it makes the journey to recovery a lot longer and harder than it needs to be. No matter how experienced or inexperienced you are with life or relationships – your intuition knows best – not your partner, not your friends, not your family, not your therapist: you! You know best.

I also wanted to share this – there seems to be a cycle for everything these days (a control cycle, an abuse cycle etc) there is also an acceptance cycle, which is very similar to the stages of grief. Every time we accept something, this is what we go through (and in looking at this we can also see how easy it is to fall into the trap of cognitive dissonance):

 

What is cognitive dissonance?
According to Victims and Survivors of Psychopaths “cognitive dissonance is a powerful self-preservation mechanism which can completely distort and override the truth, with the victim developing a tolerance for the abuse and ‘normalizing’ the abusers behaviour, despite evidence to the contrary”. Some people break it down to doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or vice versa. In my experience I continued to tell myself that if I just ignored the bad and focused on the good, everything would be alright – right? And he was abusing me, so as long as I stayed I could possibly change him back to being the person I had known at the start (common in narcissistic abuse), then I was the better person – right? NO! WRONG! NOT ALRIGHT!

How did I get confused?

Acceptance seems to be the answer to all our questions, everywhere we look. The message we’re given is if we just accept things and people exactly as they are, we will be happier and magically live a stress-free life. The fact is, extreme amounts of acceptance lowers our expectations, and in the process makes us forget what is acceptable to us and what is not – this can then lead us directly into cognitive dissonance.

 

Why can’t you just leave an abusive relationship?
The reason it’s hard to leave an abusive relationship once we reach this state of cognitive dissonance is the way it closely links to trauma bonding. According to Victims and Survivors of Psychopaths “traumatic bonding is strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other. (Dutton & Painter, 1981)”. Generally there is a power imbalance, the abuse is sporadic, and the victim engages in denial for emotional self-protection and one form of this is dissociation – where the victim distances themselves from the abuse as though it’s not happening to them.

“Since the victim feels powerless to change the situation, they rely on emotional strategies to try to make it less dissonant, to try to somehow make it fit. To cope with the contradicting behaviors of the abuser, and to survive the abuse, the person literally has to change how they perceive reality,” Victims and Survivors of Psychopaths said.

Many people will accept abuse by rationalising it away to themselves, staying in denial, or simply because they feel like the better person for staying. It sounds silly – but the thought process is often because the victim is not the one abusing, it makes them feel better about themselves and their situation. This leads into another example of where begins cognitive dissonance in an abusive or toxic relationship.

“Trauma bonding makes it easier for a victim to survive within the relationship, but it severely undermines the victims self-structures, undermining their ability to accurately evaluate danger, and impairs their ability to perceive of alternatives to the situation,” Victims and Survivors of Psychopaths said.

“Once a trauma bond is established it becomes extremely difficult for the victim to break free of the relationship.  The way humans respond to trauma is thought to have a biological basis… Many victims feel the compulsion to tell and retell the events of the trauma in an attempt to come to terms with what happened to them and to try to integrate it, reaching out to others for contact, safety, and stability.  Other victims react in an opposite manner, withdrawing into a shell of self-imposed isolation.  The trauma bond can persist even after the victim leaves the relationship, with it sometimes taking months, or even years, for them to completely break the bond,” the site said.

For more information about cognitive dissonance click here or check out Victims and Survivors of Psychopaths page.

 

Deciding when things are unacceptable
There comes a point when someone is hurting us that we need to WAKE UP and see the situation for what it is. Accepting a scenario that doesn’t align with us, as it plays out over and over again, is really unhealthy and there needs to be a point where we stop accepting a situation as it is and start taking action for our own self-preservation.

Often people in domestic violence situations are under a lot of control and feel their options are limited, it’s not that they don’t want to get out – it’s that they don’t know what steps to take in order to do it safely. If you feel trapped in this sort of situation, please call 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) if you’re in Australia (it’s 24 hours), or contact White Ribbon for assistance (they’re very active and helpful on their Facebook), or refer to How to escape a controlling person in a domestic violence situation.

 

The turning point: how to stop accepting the wrong things
Over the years I have become guilty of being a serial-accepter as I found it easier to accept and say “yes” than to reject: “no”. The more I found myself going along with things, despite my intuition and better judgement, the more I lost sight of what I felt was acceptable and unacceptable. What we need to realise is there does come a time when it’s ok to get angry, take a stand and walk away – as long as you keep going.

It was only recently that I realised we spend so much of our lives being told to show gratitude for every little thing and to accept things for what they are, that we stop expecting the big things to happen. The consequence is our expectations drop dramatically and the wrong people appear in our lives. To find out how you can make yourself happy and avoid this trap you can refer to last week’s blog How to make yourself happy.

In the process of losing our expectations, we forget what behaviour towards us is acceptable – the little signs of kindness feel so much more important than what they actually are, and we clutch to them through adversity, making it easier to draw attachment to another person. This is where we often open the door to the wrong people.

Instead, what we should be doing during times of adversity, trauma and grief is re-learning to depend on ourselves, focusing on how we can make ourselves feel special and empowered – and how we can move ourselves forward. This lifts our expectations, and the higher our expectations are, the more you’ll find the right people are drawn in because they need to work harder to be with us. So, despite what we’ve been taught in recent times, happiness doesn’t come from acceptance and gratitude, it comes from within. Self-belief. Self-love. Self-nurturing. Seeing the pattern here? The turning point all starts and ends with self!

 

Acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude in their place
Many of us would agree with the Michael J Fox quote I selected to accompany today’s blog post.

However, when we choose to accept everything in an attempt to be happy, the irony is that the things we have accepted against our better judgement and intuition, won’t actually make us happy at all. In the short-term we get to go “Yay! I got this!” and maybe we have something to show for it, but longer-term it won’t impact our happiness and if anything, it will more likely make us unhappy because of the way we have acquired it. Anything acquired in a negative way will often be toxic to us. Also, despite cognitive dissonance as a real condition, long-term we can’t fool ourselves into believing something makes us happy when it doesn’t. We can’t lie to ourselves. We can’t hide from what we believe is right or wrong. This is why it’s important to always be authentic when choosing to be accepting, forgiving or put energy into showing gratitude.

Don’t get me wrong: acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude certainly assist us with living a fulfilling life, but as with everything, they have their place. We shouldn’t depend on these for our happiness or use them as a way of gaining short-term happiness. What do I mean? Acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude can often be used as tools for our short-term happiness because it’s more comfortable or easier for us to choose those rather than really soul-searching and knowing what authentically aligns with us: our values, boundaries and generally what we find acceptable.

 

A lesson for the abused
“When a simpleton abused him, Lord Buddha listened to him in silence, but when the man had finished, the Buddha asked him, ‘Son, if a man declined to accept a present offered to him, to whom would it belong?’ The man answered ‘To him who offered it.’ ‘My son’, Buddha said, ‘I decline to accept your abuse. Keep it for yourself.’” The Buddha (as told by Will Durant).

 

Challenge: Find your authentic self
This week I challenge you not be accepting, forgiving or spend energy showing gratitude unless it’s absolutely genuine. The theory is in doing this we will stop inviting lower-expectations into our lives and suffer the consequences.

So dig deep and find your authentic self. Have you been accepting people and behaviours simply because it’s easier for you? Be honest.

This week be selective about what you accept, who you forgive and when you show your gratitude to people because there are people out there who will take advantage of it.

Note how you feel as a result.

 

Moving forward by relying on yourself
The way forward from being overly accepting of things or surrendering yourself to cognitive dissonance is looking to yourself for validation. Instead of looking to others for signs of love and kindness, know what makes you feel special and validated. This varies for everyone, but start with dating yourself – inspiration provided by Ashley here, learning what you like and dislike and offer yourself ongoing unconditional self-love.

If you are going through something traumatic caused by another person (particularly a partner, spouse or lover), you may go in search of someone else because instead of dealing with something uncomfortable and traumatic, we try attach ourselves to someone as a way of coping. It can almost be instinctive because we’re looking for a knight in shining armor to save us and make us feel better during this horrible time. I urge you to resist this temptation because looking outward for happiness during troubled times in our relationships is simply a way of trying to comfort yourself and it is also how love addiction can start which will see you jumping from partner to partner. Also, your new relationship won’t last, and remember what I said about acquiring something negatively, it may also never make you happy.

Challenge yourself to stand on your own two feet. Wait until your emotions subside and you resolve the situation before you decide to take any steps with the person you’re feeling drawn to because sometimes you’re in such bad condition from the troubled relationship you have that what you’re accepting in your life is also less than you deserve. Stay true to yourself and always remember what is meant to be will be. Have faith that what you want exists and it will come to you in perfect time.

Meanwhile, if you feel that you are taking acceptance too far or even suffering from cognitive dissonance in an attempt to comprehend and/or remain in an abusive relationship, please seek professional help with a psychologist, counsellor or life coach (such as Melanie Tonia Evans) to help you through your healing journey.

How to make yourself happy

Happiness depends upon ourselves. Aristotle

Knowing how to make yourself happy is one of the most empowering things we can do. Life is constantly changing and everything is unpredictable, which means the only person we can fully depend on is ourselves. If we’re going to spend a lot of time by ourselves, it’s a good idea to know how to make ourselves happy!

I caught up with a colleague the other day and we spoke about the little things people had been doing lately that made us feel special. We could literally narrow it down to: receiving an email first thing in the morning, tapping on the glass to say hello as someone walked by, a guy calling me “mate” when he said hello and getting a thumbs-up signal.

We stopped and looked at each other in horrified realisation:

“How in the hell did such small things come to make us feel so special?”

There are various reasons for this and I’ll touch on it more in my blog next week about acceptance but this week, the goal is to get ourselves to the point where we truly know ourselves, trust ourselves and are full of so much self-respect that no one can shake us from our path. Get set to get completely independent – and in the process learn two things: what makes us feel special and what makes us happy. This week Happiness Weekly looks at how you can make yourself happy.

So let’s get this mission started!

Everyone is going to be different in finding their path to a happier and more fulfilling life because everyone’s journey is different. We all have different values and beliefs. Thought Catalog has some great ideas about little things you can do to make yourself happier instantly – but here are some ideas for how to make yourself happier longer-term and live your best life in a more fulfilling way:

 

1. Date yourself

Yes – that is exactly as it sounds. Take yourself to the movies. Go to that new coffee shop you want to check out. Walk along the beach alone. Go to a concert. Visit the zoo. Head to a festival. Literally learn how to be on your own and comfortable with yourself in public situations. Once you’ve learned how to date yourself, set up a date with yourself one weekend each month to catch up with yourself regularly and help stay on top of everything. This will ensure you remember what you like and don’t like and that you are leading a fulfilling life.

 

2. Appreciate nature

Be conscious of the natural things surrounding you that make you happy. Things that have nothing to do with any other being. Some hints: watching the waves at the beach, the sunrise each morning, the sunset each evening, the rolling hills in the distance, admiring the flowers in a garden on the way to work, the smell after rain falls, the way the shadows fall as the sun passes by each day etc.

 

3. Choose friends wisely

Select your friends wisely. Surround yourself with positive, successful people and leave the losers for someone else. It sounds harsh, but that’s how it needs to be. Only spend your time with people who are on your level or who can lift you up – if they can’t, really question why you want that person in your life and if you need them there. Make sure your expectations of yourself are realistic – you don’t want to think you’re so good, no one is good enough and at the same time you don’t want to think so little of yourself that the losers get to stay. Your friends should share your belief system.

 

4. Trust yourself

Learning to trust yourself is essential in finding your happiness long-term. If you can’t trust yourself, you’re never going to stay on the path you want to be on and others will more easily be able to knock you off balance. Once you trust yourself you can start trusting each and every decision you make to lead you to where you want to go. Part of learning to trust yourself could stem from being fair to yourself and to demonstrate what I mean here, I want to refer you to Paul Hudson from Elite Daily’s article: 20 Things you need to stop doing to yourself.

 

5. Ditch anything toxic

Anything that makes you doubt or question yourself, anything that makes you feel less than what you are, anything that hurts you is toxic – let it go. Be as cold as you need to be when breaking away from everything toxic in your life. Nothing toxic will ever serve you – unless it hurts you enough to teach you a massive lesson.

 

6. Believe you’re good enough

Self-belief is essential in making yourself happy long term. If you don’t believe in yourself, how is anyone else meant to? Concentrate on tapping into what you think of yourself and if it’s not a positive image, challenge it – why aren’t you as good if not better than anyone else? You may need to work with a psychologist if you find you’re having difficulty with your self-perception.

 

7. Learn your values

Stop looking externally for approval, look to yourself – ask yourself what you think, ask yourself for advice, find out what your values are. Write down what your values are and the things that you value above everything else. Then say why you value it. If you’re not on the list, ask yourself why not – add yourself to the list and consider why it’s important you should be there.

 

8. Make plans for the future

Stop waiting for other people to make plans, make your own plans for the future and get started – but make sure you select things you can do all on your own. If you want to go overseas, book that holiday. If you want to start a course, there’s no better time. If you want to learn a musical instrument or take up a sport – go for it! Challenge yourself and start today – nothing is too big or too small when it comes to planning your future.

 

9. Try to accomplish something you think is impossible

We may feel like a tiny spec in the grand scheme of things but you never know when your idea or your action can make a difference not just to one or two lives but a greater impact on many lives. Don’t be afraid to follow your dreams. Attempt to achieve the impossible – you might surprise yourself and if you don’t make it, you may start a whole new revolution or learn a whole lot of new and exciting things along the way!

If you still feel alone in this quest for making yourself happy, I recommend two books that helped me in changing and shaping my journey: God on a Harley by Joan Brady and Marry Yourself First by Ken Donaldson and The End – a blog post written by Coco J Ginger.