How to Take Your Power Back From Emotional and Verbal Abuse
Standing up for yourself can feel very scary, but the payoff of doing so is extremely empowering!
When you get beaten down emotionally and verbally, it can take one heck of a toll on your self-esteem and sense of self-worth. I’m sure there are many of you in here who’ve experienced awful psychological abuse over the years in childhood and most likely in your adult romantic relationships.
It’s so critical for you to understand that how someone has treated you says a LOT more about them and how they feel about their own worth and value as an individual than it does about yours. That’s because hurt people, hurt people.
It’s also important to understand that it’s not okay to continue allowing this hurt person to let out all of their pain trauma onto you. You can’t let that be the excuse you stay having a friendship or relationship with them. As you already may be aware, the longer you make excuses for this individual and tolerate their behavior, the more you’re enabling and letting them know that it’s okay to be their punching bag. And by you staying in the relationship taking their abuse, they’re likely never to change because there aren’t any consequences. You’re still there with them tolerating and allowing.
It’s not your responsibility to fix and heal other people. What is your responsibility however is to work on healing and fixing your own pain and problems. When you do so, you’re indirectly teaching and inspiring others to do the same for themselves. And you’re also sending the message that you love and respect yourself and if they wish to be part of your life, they’ll have to level up and do the same.
You have to save and love yourself if you want to have an impact in saving others. It’s like the saying, “children don’t do what you tell them, they do what they see you doing.” That’s how all of us ultimately learn and live our lives. It’s the example being shown, not the words being said.
The best way to cultivate healthy relationships is to first and foremost cultivate a healthy one with yourself. If you didn’t have loving and compassionate parents growing up. You’ll need to learn how to become that loving and compassionate mother to yourself, to your inner child. If you didn’t feel safe and protected growing up. You’ll want to learn and practice becoming that safe and protecting father to yourself that you didn’t have.
The better we become at reparenting ourselves, the healthier our relationships will be with others in adulthood. Doing this deep inner healing work is worth the effort and process. It’s not overnight rapid transformation, but it is daily consistent day by day growth and transformation. A lot of change can be had in a few short months, and definitely within a year.
If you’re someone who lacks setting boundaries, expressing your true feelings, and standing up for yourself a healthy way, and simply just feeling confident and safe in your skin. You have some inner work to do. And here’s the thing, everyone has some inner-work to do. I mean come on, just take a look around, an overwhelming amount of people are treating others like punching bags and that’s really because they’re hurting and scared themselves.
I’m always thinking to myself and sharing with others, how did we miss teaching self-love and self-confidence in school. This curriculum should be a pre-requisite before entering junior high and especially parenthood.
An author and researcher that I love most teaching and talking about this stuff is Brene Brown. You can learn more about her work through her books and podcast. Just go to google or amazon and type in ‘Brene Brown’ and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Wrapping up this post now, please be willing to do more of your deep inner healing work for the sake of your mental and emotional health and if you have any, your children. All of us can live happier, safer, confident, more fulfilling lives, but we have to take personal responsibility with learning today what we didn’t in the past. My hope is that you choose to do so.
