Have you ever found yourself in the game of denial, on either side of it?
Staying forever lost within someone else’s expectations is a high price to pay for false security.
We don’t want to deal with our problems, so we’re going to deflect attention off ourselves and manipulate you, so we do not have to change. Just go along with it, and we’ll pretend everything is OK.
No man is an island. We live in a world with other people. This is wonderful when everyone around us is mentally healthy, stable and productive. But these qualities are not always a goal for those around us, either for themselves or for us. Sometimes they, or we, aren’t even aware of the negative ramifications of their, or our own, words and actions. We go sailing on through life, often assuming others understand us, know us, and want the best things for us.
But we are human beings, after all. Life is not played out so perfectly. We forget another side of our human nature is selfish, greedy, lazy, and other less than admirable traits. What people around us living in denial are really looking for is either how to make their lives easier, or how to justify their own dsfunctional thoughts/words/actions, by focusing their attention on us, instead of themselves. They might even do this unconsciously. At first we might not even be aware of this situation, especially if we have grown up in a poverty mentality, or if our guardians grew up with a poverty mentality.
What is the poverty mentality?
The poverty mentality is a whole lot of poor me, woe is me, no one has it as bad as I do, I’ll never get ahead, things never work out for me, I’m no good at money/relationships/jobs/responsibility … You get the picture. The poverty mentality attacks whole families. Not knowing any better, parents indoctrinate their children by their own dysfunctional attitudes such as, people like us just can’t get ahead, that’s just for those rich folks. It’s the us versus them mentality. These parents do not know any better because this is the way they grew up, and it seems normal to them.
We can understand these otherwise loving people in our lives, without agreeing with them, or soaking what they have to say, up like a dry sponge, even if they are full of negativity. We do not have to let them have any permission to our self-esteem, or our personal power. We can even live with these people, and choose not to be influenced by them in the least bit. It’s a choice we make.
That does not mean we take the next dysfunctional step of excluding people, especially family, out of our lives altogether, choosing to make irreparable damage to family and other personal relationships. We sometimes make this mistake as a selfish quick solution as opposed to growing in character development, which from that point forward, leaves a eroneous stamp of self-justification on every other relationship we have, permanently crimping our tolerance of other points of view. We can jump to the false conclusion that neither they, nor we, will ever change. However, the mature response is to communicate, not hide from the emotional work necessary to bloom where you are planted.
We also do not have to make sure others agree with us, in our positive perspective. Practice having no judgement here. We don’t have to judge them, nor accept their misguided judgements on us. If someone is happy being miserable, let them go for it. Nothing we say can change that anyway. We can only change ourselves, and only they can change themselves. We need to decide what kind of energies we will allow into us. Once we decide not to let someone else’s mood, judgements or opinions affect us, their thoughts, words, opinions and actions slide off our aura like teflon. Imagine all that negativity sliding back down to the earth for transmutation.
Deflection and manipulation are the behavior traits that give people living in denial away. They tell on themselves by using these tactics. These tactics work quite well for them, at least for a while, until the person being manipulated becomes aware of what is going on. Depending on how much we have been mentally and verbally been beaten into submission, put down, insulted, demeaned, told how foolish we are, ridiculed, or worse, had guilt heaped on us by others, or guilt by others interpretation of religious expectations (usually man-made), we may or may not be able to stand up to them. This is true of all groups of people, families, socially in communities, religious organizations, politically in countries, and even in the workforce.
We only get one life in the present moment. Perpahs our life lesson in this lieftime is to learn how to take better care of our God-given life. Once we become aware of what our role has been so far, we can step out of that role of denial. We do not know what we do not know. But once we become aware, we have a personal responsibility not to go back to denial.
By the way, when we stop being their puppets, for those of us in relationships with people living in denial, when we step out of the ordinary way we usually interact with manipulating people, they are not going to like it. Become the observer. Do not react. Observe the temper tantrums they have, crying, yelling or anything else. Sometimes these people can be so funny, so dramatic. We have just put a hole in their rubber raft of denial. This helps them tremendously on the road to recovery, and helps us re-gain our personal power, our self-esteem, and our mental health.
Namaste