S2 EP269 – How to Stop Taking Things Personally

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today I’m talking about the shame you might feel when you take other’s behavior personally, and how to stop taking things personally. 

What do you generally do when someone blames you for his or her feelings? Do you find yourself taking it personally and blaming yourself? This is what Melinda struggles with, and she asked me this question at one of my events:

“How do I take loving care of myself when my partner is acting out with jealousy that he is not acknowledging? I feel blamed and shamed. It somehow feels like there’s something wrong with me, or something I’m doing even though there isn’t. What do I do with the shame? How do I love myself through it? His reaction can last a few hours or even a few days.”

Melinda’s partner is blaming and shaming her from his wounded self to avoid taking responsibility for his own feelings. Do you also take others’ unloving behavior personally? If you do, the question to ask yourself is, why are you taking on the blame and shame? Why are you taking another’s behavior personally?

You might want to ask yourself what you would be feeling if you weren’t taking others’ behavior personally and buying into the false belief that there is something wrong with you. It’s likely that if you weren’t taking on another’s blame and shame, you would feel lonely around people when they are unloving to you, and you would feel heartbroken when others are treating you so badly, and you would feel helpless over their feelings and behavior.

Taking their behavior personally is a way to cover over the existential pain of others’ unloving behavior toward you. Shame is what you are using to not accept the fact of your helplessness over them.  

Melinda asked, “What do I do with the shame?” What I would say to Melinda is that shame is not what you would feel if you weren’t trying to have control over him and over your own deeper painful feelings. The shame is a result of your intent to control him and control your own painful feelings.

Just as he is not acknowledging his jealousy, you are not acknowledging your loneliness, heartbreak, and helplessness over him when he is unloving toward you.

Melinda asked, “How do I love myself through it?”

Loving yourself through it means that you first need to be willing to feel your existential painful feelings. Once you become willing to feel them, then you need to name them. Naming a feeling such as loneliness, heartbreak, or helplessness over others, helps you to understand what is really happening for you.

Next, you need to be very kind and compassionate toward yourself for these feelings. These are hard feelings to bear, and they need your kindness. Try putting your hands on your heart and inviting kindness and gentleness into your heart, bringing that kindness to wherever you feel your painful feelings. Your inner child is your feeling self, so imagine that you are bringing kindness and comfort to a child who is hurting.

Say to your inner child, “I’m here with you. You are not alone. Spirit is with us – we are not alone. His behavior has nothing to do with you, so we are not going to take it personally.” Stay with the feelings until you feel they are ready to move through you, and then consciously release them to spirit.

Next, move into an intent to learn about what these feelings are telling you about your partner. Certainly, your feelings are telling you that he is being unloving to himself and to you. Ask your higher self, “What would be loving to me in the face of his unloving behavior?”

Perhaps you need to visit with a friend or do something that is fun for you to do. What you don’t need to do is try to fix him. That is his responsibility. His shaming and blaming are his attempts to control you rather than take loving care of himself, and it’s best to leave him alone to deal with it unless he asks for your help.

Hopefully, by the time he lets go of his upset, you will be open and ready to re-connect with him. If each time he blames you, you take loving care of yourself, he might eventually get that his blaming and shaming behavior is no longer going to work for him.

Jana asked at one of my events:

“I often feel responsible or try to control how others are treating me by being nice and friendly, but some people keep shaming me. Especially at work, I either feel frustrated or resentful toward these people. How can I set a boundary for myself and stop this behavioral pattern?”

One of the false beliefs that Jana is operating from is that she can control how people treat her. She believes that by being nice and friendly, she can have this control over others, and then she is frustrated and resentful when her control strategies are not working.

Many of us grow up with the belief that if only we do things right – such as be nice and friendly – we can have control over how others treat us. Let’s take an example of why this isn’t true:

Let’s say that Jim, at Jana’s work, keeps shaming her. Jim is married to a very critical woman, and he doesn’t know how to take care of himself in the face of her criticism. Not only that, but when Jim was growing up, his older sister was rejecting and shaming toward him, so Jim is harboring deep resentment toward his wife, his sister, and women in general. It’s easy for Jim to take his pain out on Jana, because Jana is allowing her wounded self to take his behavior personally and to try to control him and the others who shame her. In being ‘nice and friendly’ toward people who shame her, she is letting Jim and the others know that she is an easy target.

While Jana has no control over Jim’s past, his troubled marriage, and the fact that Jim isn’t taking responsibility for his own feelings, she does have control over her own behavior. Instead of taking his behavior personally and being ‘nice and friendly’ to people who are abusive toward her, as a loving adult Jana would be kind but distant. It’s always loving to ourselves to be kind to others, no matter what they do, but it isn’t loving to keep putting ourselves in the line of fire. By being ‘nice and friendly,’ Jana is putting herself in the line of fire.

If Jana was doing her Inner Bonding work and developing her loving adult, she would let go of taking others’ behavior personally and trying to control them or taking any responsibility for them. She would accept that they are operating from their ego wounded selves and that there is nothing she can do to make them behave as loving adults.

As a result of not taking their behavior personally and letting go of trying to control them, Jana would lovingly disengage from these people, which means that she would move out of range from them as much as possible and not respond at all to their shaming behavior. She would keep her heart open and perhaps send them a prayer for their hurting inner child, and she would be very compassionate with her inner child for the heart hurt she feels when others are mean and uncaring.

Jana is asking, “How can I set a boundary for myself and stop this behavioral pattern?” Jana would be setting a boundary by disengaging when others are judging and shaming her. Her boundary is to not be around them when they are acting out. She can’t stop them from acting out, but she can disengage from them when they are acting from their wounded selves.

The more Jana takes loving care of herself by respecting herself enough to not take their behavior personally and to not be around shaming people, the less likely it is that they will continue to shame her. When they see that it isn’t getting to her, and that she is just walking away with self-respect, they will be left with their own feelings and behavior to deal with. While they might not change internally, they will likely make some behavioral changes in response to her changes.

It’s important to understand that when people blame and shame others, it’s coming from their own unhealed wounded self and fear of their own existential painful feelings. Blaming and shaming others are a controlling way of avoiding responsibility for one’s own painful feelings.

As I’ve said in previous podcasts, loneliness, grief, heartbreak, and helplessness concerning others are very hard feelings to feel. The feelings of loneliness and helplessness concerning others can unconsciously trigger infant feelings of being left alone, crying and no one coming. If no one had come when you were an infant, you would have died, so the feelings of loneliness and helplessness are often associated with the fear of death. As infants, we were totally helpless over others as well as over ourselves. If our cry didn’t bring the help or the love we needed, there was nothing else we could do. Sometimes, even if help arrived, there was no love with it, creating an overwhelmingly lonely and confusing experience for the infant. As a result, both of these feelings – loneliness and helplessness – can trigger intense anxiety.

As adults, if you open to these feelings, as well as to grief and heartbreak, with deep compassion, you can learn to acknowledge them, accept them, nurture them, and release them. But because you could not handle them as a  child, you might automatically continue to avoid them in the various ways you learned as you were growing up, including blaming and shaming others. The problem is that anything that you do to avoid them as an adult is an abandonment of yourself, and you end up not only with these deeper painful feelings of life, but also with the aloneness and emptiness of self-abandonment. 

Blaming and shaming others, as well as taking others’ blaming and shaming personally, have their root cause in the intent to avoid painful feelings.

Most people realize that addictions to food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, TV, work, spending and so on are dysfunctional addictive ways to avoid pain. What many people don’t realize is that blame and shame are also addictive ways of avoiding the pain of life.

For example, my client Abigail often finds herself in self-judgment. When she feels rejected or ignored in some way by her husband Michael, she takes his behavior personally and then tells herself that his behavior is because she’s not good enough. This brings about a feeling of shame. When she is not judging and shaming herself, she often judged and shames Michael, blaming him for her feelings with her anger or irritation.

The reason Abigail does this is that it is easier for her to feel anger or shame than to feel the loneliness she feels when Michael is angry or distant, and to feel her helplessness over his feelings and behavior. As uncomfortable as anger and shame feel, they actually feel better than loneliness and helplessness, due to the extreme anxiety still attached to these feelings, which originated in infancy.

The anxiety around the feelings of loneliness and helplessness will not go away until Abigail learns to embrace these feelings as a loving adult, rather than abandon herself by taking his behavior personally and then judging herself and him. Once Abigail learns to welcome and embrace loneliness and helplessness with deep compassion, she will learn that they are no longer about death, because she is no longer helpless over herself as she was as an infant. They are just painful feelings that as an adult, can now be managed.

One of the biggest issues that many people struggle with is this issue I’m speaking about regarding taking other people’s behavior personally. 

Lila asked me at one of my events:

“I would like to hear you speak about the potential reasons one would take other people’s behavior personally and react as if another person’s behavior is all their own fault. I started studying Inner Bonding in January and realize this is a major theme for me. I logically know other people’s behavior has little to nothing to do with me, but my wounded self criticizes me as if I ‘said or did the wrong thing,’ making me the cause of the other person’s behavior. I notice my wounded self tells me if I could somehow find the perfect thing to say or do, this would not happen, and the thing I value would still be there.”

Taking things personally has everything to do with the desire of our wounded self to have control over others.

As I’ve said, helplessness over others is one of the hardest feelings we have. Many people would rather feel almost anything else, including shame, rather than feel helpless over others.

When you take things personally and tell yourself that the other person’s behavior is your fault, this gives you the illusion of control. If it’s your fault, then you can do something about it. If only you say or do the right thing, then the person won’t be mean to you, or won’t reject you, or won’t try to control you. The false belief is that saying or doing the perfect thing takes away the feeling of helplessness, which is the goal of the wounded self. Even if intellectually you know that you can’t control the other person, what you are doing by taking their behavior personally is avoiding your own feeling of helplessness over them.

So, taking things personally is a form of control, not only over the other person, but over your own painful feelings. It’s a way to avoid your pain, even though it brings a different pain.

In order to stop taking things personally, there are three things need to change:

First, you need to fully accept that you can’t control others. You need to accept that others may be mean, rejecting, and controlling, no matter how wonderful or perfect you are. 

Then, you need to learn to lovingly accept and manage the painful feeling of helplessness over others. You need to learn to move toward the feeling rather than away from it. You need to bring the love, compassion, and comfort of spirit to this very difficult feeling, staying present with it until it is ready to move through you. 

Finally, you need to learn to define your own worth through your connection with your spiritual guidance so that when others are hurtful, you no longer believe that their behavior has anything to do with you, no matter how much they may blame you for it.

As you practice Inner Bonding and learn to define your intrinsic worth, you no longer make others’ approval responsible for your sense of worth and safety. As you learn to lovingly manage your own painful feelings, you no longer need to control others in an effort to get them to change as a way to avoid your pain. Everything changes for you when you learn to deeply value yourself. When you value yourself, it doesn’t occur to you to take others’ behavior personally.

While others’ unloving behavior hurts our heart, when we learn to lovingly manage our loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others, we stop taking others’ behavior personally, and we can manage the hurt without trying to control others by trying to be perfect or saying the right thing.

Are there times when we do need to take others’ behavior personally? Actually, there are.

We hear so often, “Don’t take it personally.” What does this really mean? The answer is NOT simple!

Let’s say that you are in a great mood, feeling loving and expansive, and someone – either someone close to you or a stranger like a clerk in a store – is withdrawn or attacking.

This is when it is important to not take it personally. Their behavior is coming from whatever is going on for them – they are tired, not feeling well, feeling inadequate, angry from a previous interaction, judging themselves, coming from their own fears of rejection or engulfment, and so on. 

On the other hand, let’s say that you are in your ego wounded self, and you are shut down, harsh, attacking, blaming, or people-pleasing. When this is the case, if others are also shut down or attacking, their behavior might be personal to a certain extent. They might be taking your behavior personally and reacting to it from their own ego wounded self. While you are not causing them to react with withdrawal or attack – it is the fact that they are taking your behavior personally that is causing them to react – you are also not innocent in the interaction. So it is always important to notice your own open or closed energy to see whether their behavior is not at all about you, or whether they are being reactive with you.

If you are the withdrawn or harsh one coming from your wounded self, and a person close to you is not taking your behavior personally and are feeling their own deeper painful feelings caused by your unloving behavior, they may choose not to be with you. They might not want to be with you when you are withdrawn or attacking. In this case, it is important that you DO take their behavior personally and explore what you are doing that is resulting in exactly what you likely don’t want – their moving away from you.
 
The bottom line is that if you are being open and loving, then it is important to never take another’s behavior personally. If you are operating from your wounded self and are withdrawn or attacking, then you might want to explore your own behavior when others are also withdrawn, attacking, or when they disengage from you because they don’t want to be around you. Your open and loving behavior is NEVER the cause of another’s unloving behavior. Your closed, withdrawn or harsh behavior is also not the cause of their closed, withdrawn or harsh behavior, but can be the cause of them not wanting to be with you, and it is important to open to learning about your own withdrawn or harsh behavior.

April, one of the members of Inner Bonding Village, wrote about her experience of learning to not take things personally. 

(Quote)Margaret recently helped me move through taking things personally in a relationship with someone I love, and I would like to share the process. Not taking others’ behavior personally – behavior which can be regarded as disrespectful and hurtful – may appear to be as impossible to others as it once did to me. 

The behavior is – being stood up. The first time this occurred, I said I expected to be notified if he wanted to alter an arrangement, and he said he would do so in future. The second time it occurred I felt angry, hurt and concerned about the future of our relationship and conveyed this to my partner, who said he hadn’t intended to stand me up but had got distracted and forgot but would do better in future. The third, fourth, and fifth times it happened I felt hurt and disrespected and unloved and the more so with each stand up as his repeating a behavior he knew I found hurtful and disrespectful was equally, if not more distressing, than being stood up. I started rationally arguing with him about his excuses of having forgotten, getting distracted, losing track of time, not owning a watch, etc., by saying use post-it notes as reminders or go buy a watch. He continued to intermittently stand me up and eventually I was reduced to just plain sobbing. I felt so distressed and that after he stood me up 8 or so times and he declared that he hadn’t contacted me when he said he would because it didn’t matter to him when he contacted me (OUCH!), I ended the romance as I saw no future with someone who didn’t keep agreements and didn’t care about what mattered to me. 

It was at this time that I found Margaret’s work on the web and was very struck by her comments that we need to heal the issues that arise for us in relationships as unless we do, we will confront them in future relationships. By the time I had ended the relationship I had become aware – to my no small horror! – how like my mother I was behaving in seeking to control him with argument and tears (and despite I hadn’t seen these as control tactics at the time) and also how much of my mother’s martyrish relationship dynamics I had internalized and worse!, that ALL my relationships had been driven by a dysfunctional belief which could be described as: “I MUST make my partner (symbolic parent) love me regardless if the relationship doesn’t satisfy my needs as my life is at risk if I don’t”. I am in fact lucky my partner continued to stand me up as had my control tactics worked I would have not become conscious of what I was doing, as it was triggering my early feelings that brought the belief: “If I am unloved I will die” into consciousness and the repetition of the hurt that caused me to decide: “It very much DOES matter if this relationship doesn’t satisfy my needs” which brought my internalized relationship pattern into consciousness. I had for the first time decided to embrace my needs and to love myself in preference to denying me in aid of extracting love from someone else and instantly as I did this the energy of these patterns just lifted up and out of me – I actually felt taller the next day! (And intriguingly, I also no longer felt annoyed by my real life mother’s controlling behaviors.) 

Margaret, though, had advised that the time to leave a relationship was when we could feel happy regardless of how our partner is behaving (except if there is abuse) and while the above was extremely healing for me, I did not feel happy regardless of how my partner behaved. We had continued to have contact on a less frequent and friendship only basis and when he was unreliable, I no longer felt highly distressed as if my life itself was under threat and nor did I feel like crying, but I did still feel hurt and disrespected and wrote to Margaret who advised I needed to not take his behavior personally. 

Frankly I had HUGE doubt that we can feel happy regardless of how our partners are behaving. How could I possibly not feel disrespected when treated disrespectfully? How could hurtful behavior not feel hurtful? If anyone else had told me to not take his behavior personally I probably would have said: “Yeah right”, but Margaret’s words ring so true to me I decided to take a leap of faith and see what emerged. 

First thing I did was to separate my reaction from him, that is, to ignore what I thought and felt about being stood up and look only at him as him, and that in and of itself was illuminating as for the first time I recognized that I hadn’t been seeing him at all during those events – all I had been seeing was my reaction. When I looked just at him what I saw was someone who was out of control of himself and feeling badly about himself and regardless if he felt badly due to having stood me up, fearing my reaction, or lacking the courage to tell me he didn’t want to see me, I felt compassion for him as these events made him feel awful also. Seeing this made me deeply regret my self-absorbed blindness as responding with compassion – or simply responding to HIM at all! – would have been ever so much more constructive for both of us than my arguing or sobbing and regardless if this resulted in his no longer standing me up or not. I actually felt very ashamed of myself for being so ego-centric and seeing only me and my reaction. 

Simply seeing him as acting for and from him instead of viewing him as acting against me reduced my feelings of being hurt and disrespected, but when I focused back in on me some yet remained. So what am I up to I wondered? And I came to realize that while I was no longer giving myself the message: “You must be loved or you might die”, I was still telling myself: “Your happiness depends on how he treats you”. 

Well Self I said, Margaret says I can be happy regardless of how he treats me. Grumble grumble utter tripe never been true in the past, seems hopelessly idealistic and unrealistic to me. Yes, but you know you agree with everything else she says. True, but this one applies only to people who are way closer to enlightenment, not to me. How about we just try it and see? Ok. So I did, I told myself I was giving him power over how I felt instead of accepting 100% responsibility for how I felt and that I could in fact be happy in the face of his standing me up, and when I reclaimed my power to make myself happy the feelings of hurt and disrespect evaporated! Woohoo! Wouldn’t have believed it possible, I sincerely wouldn’t have had I not experienced it myself. 

There are two delightful postscripts to this story. Firstly, Margaret wrote and said: That abandoned infant needs to know you will never stand her up! This brought a huge smile to my face as I had thought mere mention of the phrase “stand up” would for the rest of my life evoke a flood of miserable memories and now I saw it as a loving reminder to look after myself and accept the joyful (when you compare it to the alternative it truly is) responsibility of being 100% responsible for how I feel. And secondly, my ISP worked in a Mysterious Way by delaying the arrival of an email which created the appearance I had been stood up. I had held my breath as the minutes ticked by fearing I would encounter the same old feelings. Nope! and Hurray! And when I next downloaded my email many hours later there was one changing the arrangement that had been sent prior to the meet time so thanks to my ISP working in a Mysterious Way I got to acid test the results of my learning without being stood up! Nice all around, and in particular THANK YOU MARGARET!!!! No way I could have taken this important step in my healing without you:). (Uquote)

Not only did April do a great job of learning to not take her partner’s behavior personally, she did most of it on her own with just a little help from me. This is the power of the self-healing process of Inner Bonding!

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

And, I invite you to join me for my 30-Day home study Course that teaches Inner Bonding: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.