How To Be Emotionally Strong? How To Improve Eq?

Discussion in 'General Discussions' started by wish4miracle, Jun 1, 2021.

  1. NOW

    NOW Gold IL'ite

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    That is the right way to think .. trying and keeping on trying until you get closer to that peaceful acceptance. The people or circumstances around you may or may not change . May also take awful lot of time to change but by then we might have done some irreparable damage to our health, self esteem, growth and lifestyle. Think of this as a mind game and just plan meticulously how you spend your every waking hour, every conversation, phone call , meeting the family or group to be productive for yourself first.

    You take care of yourself, family , job, home and then allocate some hour per week where you will help your extended family and that too with a detached approach. The energy other people bring to the table can be heavy, victim mentality, critical and helpless talk. You just defend yourself from that and stay close to your development plan. Take baby steps.. listen to your victimizing self talk and counter argue like the women in this thread and counsel yourself everyday that you actually have it better than many others and you are not dependent on appreciation from outside.

    When you have the strong determination to change, you will find the time, tools and support system to make that happen. Many times we think supporting friends are supposed to join our pity talk and bash the same people we are complaining about and tell their own sob stories and so forth... Every time you narrate your story you live the emotions one more time which actually may be counter productive. Once you step into positivity you may connect with new people or hobbies which will keep you engaged and energetic.
     
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  2. wish4miracle

    wish4miracle Silver IL'ite

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    "Listen to your victimizing self talk and counter argue like the women in this thread and counsel yourself everyday that you actually have it better than many others and you are not dependent on appreciation from outside"

    This is an essential life lesson for me to learn. Since last year I have improved a lot but looks like not enough.

    Ever since my moms health issue, I am again in this mess, and stuck with only option to handle it. It will be evil to leave them in this covid situation. so I am just gathering myself hard and it takes a toll on my mental health.

    I get weak when people gang up and pull me down like how u see in BB, you cannot escape the house but still have to live with it with no time frame.

    Every single day, I am in a situation to give back to people for their constant bullying. this is my own family, imagine being in my in law family(I had given up on this a long time ago, no future there). I had to deal with this kind of issues(but not with same intensity) right from my childhood but I would adjust, put on a smiley face even when I am bullied, cry and be okay even when people use abusive words on me. Nowadays I confront them to their surprise and it makes them even more furious for asking questions and for standing up for myself.

    Earlier, I started to find a way out, try to run away from hard situations or finding a person to lay my shoulder without realizing the fact that I can handle it better myself or I don't need anyone to support me.

    As they say, we came alone, we live alone and go alone. I need to take care of myself more.
    One more thing, I will let my toddler know about this lesson once she gets start to handle herself like this. So that she doesn't endure any difficulties like mine.
     
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  3. Viswamitra

    Viswamitra IL Hall of Fame

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    @wish4miracle,

    You are in self-preservation mode than in self-respect mode. The fact that you are thinking about the need for emotional support is a good sign as your mind seeks some self-respect. Frankly, you need to work on your mind to feel proud of being in a position to help all the family members even if they don't appreciate enough of your contributions. Work on auto suggestion that you do all of the chores for your own satisfaction to contribute to the family.

    It is common for anyone to look for a little acknowledgement for his/her efforts. There is nothing wrong with that. But, I feel when you think of drawing boundaries with everyone around you, it might help to gain some respect for your contributions. A boundary is a definite place where your responsibility ends and another person's begins. It stops you from doing things for others that they should do for themselves. A boundary also prevents you from rescuing someone from the consequences of their destructive behavior that they need to experience in order to grow.

    Please understand your personal boundaries protect the inner core of your identity and your right to choices. The first step in setting up boundaries is to know and understand yourself and all associated feelings and emotions. In any relationship, 5 components play a prominent role and they are a) open communication, b) trust and support, c) boundaries, d) fairness and e) freedom. There are four types of boundaries and they are a) physical, b) emotional, c) psychological and d) spiritual/intellectual. I am not going to discuss physical and spiritual/intellectual boundaries and focus more on emotional and psychological boundaries.

    For improving your emotional health, you need to classify your relationship into green, yellow and red categories based on whether the relationship is a) respectful or b) questionable or c) violative respectively. When the relationship gets into questionable state, you need to begin working on it with open communication, seeking trust and support, fairness and freedom. You should never allow emotional support to go into violative territory. Violative state is describe as one in which your emotions are deeply hurt. Psychological boundaries work a little differently. This is past the level of emotional boundaries. There also you must have three categories namely a) dignifying, b) dominant and c) fearful. When it gets into dominant level, you need to address it right away before it gets into fearful state.

    The boundaries with people are classified into a) self, b) family, c) friendship, d) aquaintance, e) community, and f) strangers. Obviously, we set up different boundaries for different levels. Why are boundaries needed? Every life comes with its own agenda and in order to pursue the goal, space is needed. Developing and maintaining healthy boundaries is vital to psychological growth and spiritual liberation. Migration from independent to interdependent stage is easier with drawn boundaries. Lack of boundaries are visible when a) we fail to speak up when mistreated, b) we give away too much of our time, c) we agree when we actuall feel like disagreeing, d) we feel guilty for dedicating time for ourselves, e) we feel taken for granted by others, f) we have toxic relationships, g) we have chronic fear about what others think of us, h) We over-share details about our life with others, i) we feel constantly like the victim and j) we attract people who try to control and dominate us.

    I hope you find this useful and I wish you best of luck for a wonderful emotional health.

    Viswa
     
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  4. wish4miracle

    wish4miracle Silver IL'ite

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    Thank u so much for ur write up sir, it's going to be of great help to me.

    Getting appreciation for my contribution has become a non existent thing to me, I was just worried why I dont get the love and support when my sibling gets everything when she does the least of all. Why am I not enough. Like every child have towards their parent. Anyway for this question, I got the answer here. I dont need anyone to appreciate me. All I have to do is appreciate myself, do things for my self and do things for others to best of my ability. So that's what I am going to implement now sir.

    Regarding boundary, how thick and strong I draw, there is no respect for it. My people think I am just wasting away time sitting here and pass this comment in a horrible words while i sit down to eat. We share our expenses completely, we do purchase things from outside, sanitise things every week. I cook 3 meals a day, somedays we use the sambar or kuruma for 2 meals of the day. Cooking includes food for my toddler who dont eat spicy items but my mom demands only spicy items. So I cook same dish one with less spice and another by adding it. In our house we go by what my toddler prefers. I am also a working mother who joined a company recently, doing work from home and caring for my 3 year old toddler.

    Before coming here, I said I will mostly cook less spicy item and they agreed. Once after coming here, they demand specific things, not letting us buy snacks from outside saying they need only home made snacks.
    They dont consider my boundaries, not considering my efforts and not realising I am person.

    If we leave to our house, they are threatening indirectly that I cannot take care of my toddler girl alone without their help. Even now they will not do any work related to my toddler which is totally fine with me, its just their presence when we are in meetings is their contribution towards us. Me and my H do all her chores ourselves right from her birth and we are fine with it. But when we have to go somewhere urgently like to hospital visit or work related stuff, my mother doesnt want me to leave her in their house, also not letting my father to be with her as well in our house. Like for few hours.

    Sorry for my personal incident references here, I thought it would be easy to make u understand if I am not clear enough to explain in general terms.

    So what I am trying to say here is, i tick all points that you have listed for lack of boundaries. What to do when a person, loved one who doesnt respect ur boundary but needs u to bend your back to do things everyday and threaten emotionally when u couldnt do so. I think my relationship is already in volatile state. I am trying to explain them, so that we all can work it out to make the relationship atleast yellow, but they get furious to listen when I talk about the situation and repeat violating the boundary when i come forward.
    It's like they know they I'll treated us very badly in the past, but when I tried to talk it out so that we understand and trust them that it will not happen, but they get furious to even talk about it by not acknowledging what they had done. They are not ready to repair this relationship. Their control over us is the relationship that they see. If I oblige to everything we have a relationship else no relationship.
    I am not able to conclude on this.

    All the things u have said, me and H had followed since marriage. Our relationships have lot of downfalls in the start due to our individual personalities and due to family clashes, but we understand our positives, negatives, boundaries. We talk our minds when we fight. So it never went to red. It is green most of the time and yellow for few hours or a day.
    I want the same with my family too but it never works out.
     
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  5. Viswamitra

    Viswamitra IL Hall of Fame

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    @wish4miracle,

    I am so happy to hear that your relationship with your husband is working out so well. Discussing the past is never a best way to fix the problem going forward especially in a parental relationship. Your child (3 year old toddler) is going to grow and you may need more help until the child knows how to take care without anyone's help. Sometimes, it is hard for older people to manage a child in the absence of the parents and they may not like to ruin their relationship with the child by being strict as grandparents. In your mind, give the benefit of doubt to them. Thank God, you work from home so that you can keep an eye constantly to take care of your toddler.

    There are some ways you can enforce your boundaries. Identify the extent of a boundary you wish to establish in your mind first without consideration what others can afford to do. Then, communicate it to them whether they have listened to you in the past or not. Always state your points in a concise way so that you don't have to overexplain nor you need to give any excuses for your boundary. The boundaries mostly don't work only when there are no consequences faced by others. When you enforce consequences, people will begin to respect your boundaries.

    I will give you a simple example. I am 67 years old now but when my wife and I got married, my mother was abusing my wife verbally a lot and my wife was reluctant to share with me for nearly 6 months. When she opened up with me, I asked her to set clear boundaries. Besides, I also made it clear to my mother that any conversation with me that is disrespectful about my wife is not acceptable. When my mom violated my boundaries first time, I gave a warning. When she violated the second time, I stopped my conversation with my mom. She complained to my dad about my not talking to her and my dad asked me about it. I told him about my boundaries. When she violated the boundaries for the third time, I refused to eat food served by my mom and insisted that I would only eat if food is served by my wife or I will eat myself. The third consequence resulted in my mom crying for a while but eventually she understood talking to me about my wife in an abusive fashion will not be acceptable to me.
     
  6. Needtobestrong

    Needtobestrong Platinum IL'ite

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    Sir your wife is lucky to get a progressive and supportive spouse like you...
    Most husbands would listen to the abuses of their wife silently, or else get irritated and contribute by abusing her further and mentally harassing her..
     
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  7. Needtobestrong

    Needtobestrong Platinum IL'ite

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    I think that’s an issue faced by many ladies...
    We women are expected to multi task and be superwomen and attend to everyone’s without the smallest signs of weakness or vulnerability or tiredness or sickness..
    We should stop expecting others to show sympathy and sensitivity..
    A better solution is to make boundaries, of what we can do and what we cannot do..
    Say yes if comfortable, else...Learn to say no, and say it often..
    And do not feel guilty to say no..
    If others do not like this and complain it’s their problem...
    We need to take good care of our health and our career, finances etc..and not make unnecessary compromises..
    I know it’s easier said than done...
    Some days I may have had a bad day, I may not be well, or I maybe in pain, or would have some disappointment that I would want to share...my husband would give an “im not interested “ or “I don’t care, you deal yourself” kind of expression and ignore me..else get irritated and glare at me...
    Or else misunderstand me and ask me what is my agenda behind sharing this with him...as if I have some ulterior motive...
    I feel hurt...
    So I’ve stopped expecting any emotional support from my husband...if he behaves normally that’s enough for me..just I hope not there won’t be a fight.
    I’m praying to God everyday and putting my burdens on Him..so things get better with time.
    Most of the time I’m too busy to brood and have my own interests and stopped expecting anyone to pamper me..I somehow feel like ive grown older and lost my innocence with realities of the world.
     
  8. wish4miracle

    wish4miracle Silver IL'ite

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    Thank u so much sir, this is such a great wisdom for me.

    I will try to correct my mistakes in my approach here sir.
    One is not taking to references to my past.
    Setting boundaries with consequences. Show up the consequences until the boundary is set.
    Will not expecting any emotional support from anyone but looking within myself.
    Before all, practise saying no if I couldnt make things that others need me to do.

    What may come, I will try to follow these things in my life to have myself grow up to sane woman.
    It's quite difficult to leave the child with just face value friends or relatives sir especially in this era, not that all are questionable, the value of my childs safety is like that when I read about things in news. That's the reason, I try to take this minimal help, given that my parents are here.
    But with Gods grace I have always come up with some alternate arrangements on emergency situations and I am grateful that I work from home now, get to spend time with my toddler and try to do something favourable to my parents despite the issues.
    I am much better after reading all the responses here and especially yours. Feeling light and sane. Thank u so much.
    I will show this post to my H, as he did the same in our life except he is still not talking to his mom. He conveyed that he wont talk to her if she abuses me. She wants to talk to him and get in touch with him but reluctant to agree or realise our boundary. Time has to tell on this.
     
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  9. SuiDhaaga

    SuiDhaaga IL Hall of Fame

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    I dunno how to help you.

    But similar situation happened to a lady.

    Then circumstances (by God-Almighty) happened.

    Now people are appreciative of the lady, thinking if she don't do the chores, then who will. So they talk nicely to her, and are patient and respectful to her.
     
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  10. lavani

    lavani Platinum IL'ite

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    you are not doing any mistake . please do not label yourself that. you sound like a empathic person and when such people are taken advantage of , it is expected emotion of confusion and anger.

    at first i was not sure , i was thinking it is your spouse who has unrealistic expecations and things are not going well. it was good you gave details. you have won most of the battle, it is your spouse which matters most. your mom , his mom have lived theirs lives . you cannot live their life for them again.

    try to think in all angles in how to be independent and safe for your child. when we think in those angles automatic solutions will come.

    like i said expectations are part of being human. if someone is kind to you, it matters then you should be kind to them 10 times more. but if someone keeps using you, you have draw a line and stop . i understand there will be consequences but that is adult part of you that you must fix. emotional abuse is harder to handle than actual physical work .
     
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