The Way Other People Treat You Gives You Information

When you feel mistreated by another person, it is easy to become very reactive, to feel victimized, angry, and justified in your reactions. But that doesn’t have to happen. The way another person acts towards you gives you information about them and what is going on inside of them. The way you react to them tells you and them what is going on inside of you.

Take aways:

#1: What another person does and says gives you information about them.

#2: What you say or do to the other person gives you information about you.

Challenge:

Identify a person you are not getting along with. Write down all the thoughts you have about this person. Take a look at those thoughts. They are creating the feelings you are having about them. Is this the way you want to feel?

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Full Transcript

You’re listening to Episode 64 The Way Other People Treat You Gives You Information.

Welcome to the coaching your family relationships Podcast. I’m Tina Gosney, a certified Family Relationship Coach, I know that the quality of your family relationships will determine the quality and happiness of your life. The family relationships can be so tricky. This podcast is to help you begin to figure out how to navigate the hard parts of those relationships.

Hey, welcome to the end of September, is it beginning to look like fall where you live? It sure is where I do. In fact, it’s just the leaves are starting to turn is starting to get that brisk cold in the air in the mornings in the evenings. I kind of love it, I have to admit, I do love summer, summer. There’s so many fun things about summer. But I think fall is beautiful. And I just love it.

I taught a breathing class last week, thanks to all of you who attended great attendance on that. And I want you to know that I’m offering the same breathing class several times in October, you can check the show notes to find the exact dates, but I will be offering it several times. So if you missed it, no worries, you still have plenty of opportunities to get in on that class. Check the show notes to find the dates and times for that.

Now this type of breathing that I teach, it is a workout for your nervous system. I want you to think of your nervous system as that reactive part of you the part that that either goes into fight or flight and gets angry and reactive, or is the part of you that can relax and really let yourself calm down at the end of the day. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to control when you go back and forth between those two different nervous systems?

Wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to go back and forth between the fight or flight the GO GO GO and the rest and digest on purpose. That’s the kind of breathing that I teach you, you know, you’re not going to be so reactive to the people and things that happen in your life, you’re going to feel more capable of handling hard things in your life, you feel better, you sleep better, you have more confidence in yourself, you have more patience with others.

When you have a daily breathing practice, like I teach you in this breathing class, that is what’s possible for you. And that’s what I coach on. So many times if we just had more toned, more in shape, nervous systems, it would just fix so many of our problems that we have. So I want you to go to the show notes or go to my website to sign up. Totally free. Come to my breathing class. And I gladly welcome you in there.

I have a client who I was talking to the other day, and he was telling me about a problem that he’s having with his neighbor. But the problem is compounded because his neighbor is also a member of his extended family. And it’s they’ve been neighbors for years, they’ve also had conflict for years. Sometimes things are good. Sometimes they’re okay. But usually they tend to go towards the other side of not being okay and not being good. He’s had many years of conflict, many years of feeling like he’s in a one down less than position in this relationship with his family.

And he told me a lot of things I get when I get into situations of coaching someone in this type of situation, I usually have a lot of things that they tell me. There’s many different situations that they can show me exactly what’s happening. And what usually happens is they want me to validate Yes, this person is awful there, you are completely right and feeling the way that you are feeling and in acting the way that you are acting. If I did that, that would be not beneficial to my clients. Because if I did that, it would keep them being a victim. feeling terrible.

Holding on to anger and resentment. And guess what happens when that is you? You are the one that feels terrible. The other person might feel terrible. We don’t know. We don’t know unless we talk to them. But we know for sure that you are feeling terrible, because you’re holding on to thoughts that are hurtful, that are causing feelings inside of you that are hurting. And then your brain is latching on to those. And it’s going around, and it’s finding more evidence of this person, and the terrible things that they’re doing, and how they shouldn’t be acting that way.

You know what, it just puts you at a stalemate, you can’t feel better unless the other person apologizes, or unless they decide suddenly to be different. And that very rarely happens. You also don’t have any control over this other person. So it really leaves you in a very powerless position. And this is what I told my client, like, I can’t leave you here. I don’t want to leave you here. This isn’t doing any service for you, for me to agree with this person is being unreasonable. And rude. And mean, it’s just not helpful for me to agree to that with you.

And you know, who wants to feel like a victim? A victim is someone who has zero power in their own lives. Right? You can’t do affect any change, you can’t make any changes. If you’re a victim, and every victim needs a villain. Chances are, you’re probably a villain in someone else’s life. And you might not even know about it. So easy for us to put people in that position. And for us to identify as a victim, to just put all the responsibility on the other person. You are feeling this way you’re feeling victimized and anger and resentment, because of the way that your brain is interpreting the situation.

Our brains are masters at telling us all sorts of thoughts. In fact, we have researchers say like 60,000 Some thoughts a day. And so we have many, many thoughts, so many, that we’re not even aware of many that just kind of play in the background, but are constantly running like a ticker tape. You know, like those 24 hour news channels, where they have the headlines going across the screen, our brain is constantly doing that in the background of our lives.

We’re so often not aware of it. But when we get into situations like this, the thoughts that we’re having are not helpful, because our brain is trying to protect us. It’s giving us interpretations of the facts that we see. So we have a handful of facts. Really, we don’t ever know the entire story, the whole story, we have a handful of facts. And there’s gaps between those facts that don’t make sense to us. And so our brain goes into those gaps. And it fills in those gaps with a story.

And it thinks that that story, it tells us that story is true. We actually don’t know that that story isn’t true, because we believe the things that our brain tells us. But the problem with the way, the way that our brain fills in the facts of these stories is that it fills in, according to our greatest insecurities. And that’s what I saw going on with his client. He had a lot of facts. And then his brain had gone and interpreted them and filled in the gaps in between those facts with his greatest insecurities, that his family, his extended family doesn’t think very much of him that he isn’t respected, that he isn’t loved.

We know your brain might make up different stories, according to your insecurities, but those insecurities that he was having, if the way that his brain filled in the gaps. So that story was pretty common to a lot of people that I talked to. Now, it’s it doesn’t mean that that is true, what your brain is telling you how it’s creating the story and framing it. Because our brains want to make meaning of the things that we interpret in our lives. It’s just it’s not true.

We just think that it is and it seems very, very real. And very, very true to us. But be aware that your brain is telling you stories all the time. So what do you do? You don’t know what’s real. You don’t know what’s fact and you don’t want story. You don’t know what your brain has just filled in the gaps with makes it hard to know what’s true, and what to do about it. The first thing that we should always do is to stop and to Notice, I’m feeling victimized right now. I am feeling really resentful, I feeling really angry.

And I know because I’m feeling my body is feeling really closed off and tight. And maybe my heart is beating kind of hard right now, My chest feels really tight, we have got some anger and some heat going on. Feeling really triggered, right? You notice that and then you drop into your body, you put your focus on what is going on inside of your body, name, the emotion, I’m feeling really angry, or I’m feeling really resentful. Allow that emotion to be there.

So often, what we do here is we just react. And then we want to return anger for anger, resentment, we want to cause something that we want to do something that causes them resentment, you’re going to drop into your body, namely emotion, allow it to be there while you breathe. And the breathing techniques that I teach in my breathing class are so helpful right here in this step, you breathe deeply until it passes. And when you stay out of your head, when you allow yourself to stop, drop into your body and breathe through it. It lasts 60 to 90 seconds.

I taught this same process in my last podcast episode 63 on processing emotions. So for more information, I’m going to refer you over there on how to do this even even a more descriptive process of this. But I want you to realize that it only lasts when you do it this way. It only lasts 60 to 90 seconds. Isn’t that kind of mind blowing to realize that to realize that we hold on to these thoughts that create the victimization, and the anger and the resentment and we live up in our heads recreating the thoughts over and over and over.

And that’s why they last much longer. These emotions, we can make them last much longer than 60 to 90 seconds. When we realize what’s happening for us, we can deal with it in a way that our body was meant to deal with it. And then after it’s passed, we can say to ourselves something like I’m feeling this way because of the way that I’m thinking about this person or about this situation. And you can also say to yourself, the way this person is behaving right now is giving me information about them. This person is showing me what is going on inside of them.

And when I was coaching my client with this the other day, I was telling him about how when we feel good about ourselves. We treat ourselves kindly. We treat ourselves in a loving way. We show ourselves grace and compassion and patience. And when we feel that way about ourselves, we treat other people the same way. When we allow ourselves to not be perfect. And to show up perfectly all the time. We also don’t require other people to be perfect, and show up perfectly all the time. Because we are not perfect. None of us are, we are human.

And we’re never going to always show up perfectly. Even with these tools that I teach you, we will still not be perfect. But when we realize this, we can and we make a mistake. We know that we can go back and we can apologize and we can make amends. And we can say I am so sorry, I was not my best self. Can we start again. And we learned from it. And we know at that point that we don’t fail, we either succeed or we learn. So when we don’t show up perfectly when we don’t do things perfectly.

We never have to take it as a failure. We always can learn from it. The way you are reacting to the other person also shows them what is going on inside of you. So I told my client, whatever your family member does, says the way that he treats you is something that you get to take in and make meaning of and you get to decide how to react or respond to that. You don’t have any control over it. What he does says how he treats you, that’s going to tell you how he is thinking and feeling about himself. If he’s treating you unkindly, he’s probably got some contention going on inside of himself.

And he might be blaming that contention on you, because that’s another thing that we tend to do, quite often as humans. But people who are hurt inside who are carrying contention around inside of themselves, will go out into the world and put contention out into the world, probably the main place that they put that is with their family, people who are hurting inside go around hurting other people, people who are healing inside, spread healing to others, both the way someone is showing up in the world gives you information, how they are feeling about themselves, you get to decide what you put out in the world. And it has nothing to do with other people.

It has everything to do with what is going on inside of you. You always have a choice, what you will put out in the world. Now, when I talk about this, people always want to say, well, what if the person is doing this? And what if they’re doing that? And what if this happens, and this is what I tell them, I say, sometimes your choice for healing, is to establish a boundary is to say, I will not allow myself to be treated this way. I value myself too much to allow myself to be treated and talk to you this way. And sometimes we leave.

Sometimes we leave the relationship, if it’s not a healthy one for us, and it continues to cause us wounds, internal wounds. Sometimes anger is an appropriate response. But I want you to find out where the anger is coming from. And what do you do with anger, that is totally up to you reacting from anger. And acting out anger is rarely an appropriate response in any situation. Sometimes it is. But that’s those situations are very, very rare. So want you to think you are getting information about the other person, the way that they are talking to you or treating you, or the situation they may have created for you. That gives you so much information about them.

But also you get information about yourself, by the way that you are thinking about, and treating others and talking to others, and the situations that you are creating for them in their lives. So what kind of information are you getting about yourself these days? If you’re struggling to get along with others, when you look inside of you, you are struggling to get along with yourself. Even if you don’t realize it. It’s like remember that ticker tape those thoughts that are going on behind the scenes that you’re not always aware of? It’s like those headlines going across the screen, the screen of your brain?

And what are those thoughts saying? What is happening back there? If you’re not aware of them, and you’re causing a lot of contention, filling contention within yourself and throwing that out into the world, you want to become aware of those thoughts. That’s important for you. There’s things about this that are hard every time I talk about this. Somebody says Well, that’s really hard to do, to not react to people. Yeah, that’s really hard. And I totally agree. 100% human nature, how’s you reacting, reacting badly, and returning hurt for hurt.

This is the natural man. This is the natural man that we read about in the scriptures. You’re going to want to feel justified, you’re going to want to feel angry, and you’re going to want to feel all of those types of emotions. When somebody treats you badly says something to you, that is unkind, creates a situation that’s hard. You’re going to want to justify the way that you react to them. That is the natural man. You will want to retaliate.

You will want to do something you’ll want to shut this person out of your life or you’ll want to do something to upset their life or say something that’s unkind back to them or many many other things. This is the natural man. But putting off the natural man means returning love For hate, it takes a very toned and in shape nervous system to be able to do this. If you’re not working on your nervous system, it’s probably the equivalent of a fat man sitting on a couch watching TV eating Cheetos, you’re just totally out of shape.

If you’re not giving yourself time and space to exercise that nervous system by processing emotions, and allowing yourself to move through them, without reacting to them. And this is exactly what I teach in my breathing class. It’s a workout for your nervous system. It’s a practical way, breathing is actually a very practical way for you to start doing these workouts. And to start exercising yourself, your nervous system, exercising patience, and delaying your reactions to the things that happen to you.

So if this sounds like something that you need to help with, and I’m gonna guess that probably 99% of you that are listening to this podcast right now need help with it, because that’s just the way that the world is, wants you to sign up for my breathing class in October, I have plenty of days that I’m teaching it, it’s on there always on a Tuesday and a Thursday.

And if you can’t attend, it will always be recorded and sent to you in an email. But you have to be signed up for it to get that recording. Now, here are your two takeaways for today.

Takeaway #1

The way that other people treat you, tells you what is going on inside of them, it gives you information about them.

Takeaway #2

Number two, the way you treat other people reflects what is going on inside of you. Your reactions to others gives you information about you.

Challenge

This is your challenge, I want you to think, who is hard to get along with right now. Who is that person, when you think about them, you’re just like, oh, my gosh, they’re just so difficult. I don’t want to be around them. Or there’s some hurt there when you think about them. Identify one person. And then write down the thoughts in your brain. When you think about this person, dump it all out onto a piece of paper. And just take a look at it. Look at those thoughts that you’re having about this person.

When you think them? How How do you feel? What kind of feelings do you have inside of you, when you think those thoughts about the other person? I want you to notice that you are the one now who gets to feel those feelings. The other person does not feel them. They don’t have the power to feel them when you are thinking them. You can’t cause those feelings to jump out of your body and into the other person. Is that how you want to be feeling? Is that kind to yourself to feel that way?

Take this challenge. Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you. Welcome to email me, [email protected]. I want to hear how this goes for you. Now I know this is not easy. It is not supposed to be easy. You’re on this earth to do hard things. You’re not here to do easy things you wouldn’t grow if you were just doing easy things.

One of the hardest things on the earth is having relationships with other people and finding out how to make them work. And when you wait for someone else to change, you’re not changing.

And the truth is, it was never about them anyway, it was always about you. I want you to sign up for my breathing class.

Go to the show notes. Find a time that works for you.

And I want you to remember if you didn’t learn these tools that I’m teaching you until now, it’s totally okay. Because now is always the right time to start becoming the person that you want to be no matter what anyone or everyone else in your family is doing.

Have a great week and I’ll see you next time.