Stop Taking Advantage of Me (eBook)

One day when I was a patient in the V.A. hospital in Sheridan Wyoming, another patient rudely interrupted a conversation I was having with a nurse and demanded that I stop what I was doing and take a bag of his belongings he had to another part of the hospital for him. I did not know this patient, and although I normally would have dropped everything and helped him out, for some reason I told him it would have to wait until my conversation with this nurse was over. He said that was fine, so he sat by and waited. When my hurried conversation was over, he came up to me and said, “you don’t have to take the bag over to the clothing room, I just wanted to see what your response was because if you were a real Christian you would have said you would have done it for me. So now I know you are a real Christian.”

And although this is not the real litmus test if someone is truly a Christian or not, what really bothered me though was that this was a man with seemingly nothing physically wrong but I didn’t know if he was o.k. mentally, and I had to be sensitive with my anger because I felt like he was about to use me or take advantage of my kindness or I was going to be tested for my faith, or all the above! But in any case, I felt obligated at that time in my life to say yes for two reasons. First, because I feared that if I refused to take the bag over that I wouldn’t be a good Christian because of my naivety and ignorance of scripture. Thus, I felt that I would’ve been rejected by God. And second, I didn’t know how to listen to my genuine self, deep inside, who was telling me to just give this guy the directions to the clothing room and let him do it himself; so, I rejected myself and had to give in to the idea that I had to take the bag of clothes myself.

I hope you can tell how this story deals with how the fear of rejection can cause a person to enable others at our expense. We need to show ourselves love that we may be better able to show others that same love, otherwise what we are showing others really isn’t love at all. How can we say that we love others and yet we allow others to treat us so poorly? We must come to understand that to first love others we first must love ourselves! I had to learn this the hard way. That’s partially why my marriage failed. Because I was so consumed with pleasing others and wanting their approval over my wife’s approval and over my own inner voice’ s opinion. I learned this too late: until you are happy with you- nobody will be happy with you! And that sometimes means standing up for yourself! And that’s a fact. Because there are seven billion people on the planet who are trying to figure their lives out right now, and if they don’t know how to be happy with themselves, what makes you think they have time to be happy with you? Therefore, if you aren’t happy with you, who will be?

We must begin to be the second highest opinion holder on our team, other than God being number one; and until that happens we will never be happy because we will be seeking to please the wrong crowd. Now that doesn’t mean you can go out and make your own rules and do what you want- because if God’s opinion counts you will seek to obey His laws and guidelines and be led by His Holy Spirit; and there is also a part of us that seeks to be accepted by our community (relatives, friends, neighbors, co-workers, associates). It’s only natural, and to go against this would be unnatural.

And another principle I now follow is I don’t let just anyone dump their problems on me anymore. Because I have learned the hard way that when I do, and I don’t have the opportunity to give input or advise: then I begin to feel angry inside after a while because the person in front of me becomes a “complainer” and not a solution oriented seeker of the truth so they can solve their problem, which in turn causes me to feel used and I inadvertently reject myself which causes more negative behavior. And so, if I don’t up front feel like I am going to be a part of the solution, I make a quick exit or change the subject, because I don’t have time for the fear of rejection in my life anymore. And I get angry at the fear of rejection when it pops its ugly head up in my life from time to time. Now can the “fear of rejection” moments be handled without anger and explosive outbursts? I would say yes. But it takes courage and humility. And courage in regards to this book I would describe to be not the absence of fear but rather determination mixed with fear but motivated by love for self and for fellow man as not to let oneself be denied his or her conviction to boldly express their mind, being true to their genuine self, no matter the opposition. And as long as you have your best interest and others best interest in mind when you seek to be understood, you can’t go wrong. It’s when we want to fly off the handle and tell people what we think of them or a situation and don’t care what they think, that’s when we need to double check ourselves because it’s at that moment we will later wish we didn’t say some things that we can’t take back.

So to a certain degree we are all personally responsible for how we deal with the fear of rejection. And one thing is for certain that no one told me growing up that I learned on my own is this: I make a place for the people in my life; whether special or not, family or friend, or enemy or compadre. Nobody else does, I do. And I make the place in my life for their problems as well. Or, I can choose to remove their problems and stay away from their drama if I can help it and keep the person; or remove the person all together. That simple. No reason to make my life any more complicated than it already is.

Now although you inherit your family members, it doesn’t mean you should put up with their problems or their behavior forever. There comes a point in time where we must draw a line and tell them where we stand if we are to remain a healthy person. And there is no exception just because they are family. I had to learn this the hard way. And we don’t have to get nasty or out of control to get our point across, we simply must act courageously and stand up for our right to be heard and for our genuine self so that we will remain true to ourselves.

Most of us know deep inside when something is not right, and we all know when we’ve had enough. It is when we don’t cross the line of courage to do something about it for ourselves is when we get into trouble and dysfunction sets in. Some of us are already there. I know how it feels, because from the time I was a teenager until I was in my thirties, I would let people use and abuse me and I would not put my foot down and set a boundary and let people know where the limits of their actions in my life were.

And what is a boundary? A social worker once asked a similar question to a group of us in a state hospital in Idaho back in 2002. And his reply was it is the place where I end and another person begins. I have found this thought to be both profound and helpful in my attempts to find the solution to the dilemma of boundary setting with people over the years. Because my biggest hurdle was in setting healthy boundaries in my life. I felt that if I set a boundary with others that they will not want to engage in a relationship with me. But now I find just the opposite. If I don’t set a boundary, others will not respect me and will walk all over me. But if I set a boundary with respect to the other person, the other person will have greater respect for me and sometimes will seek to honor my request to uphold my boundary and will esteem me because I have something they admire- self- respect.

But if you are afraid of the rejection by someone if you were to set up a boundary that they were not allowed to cross any more with you because it was affecting you whether emotionally or physically, then you will always be afraid and you will never allow yourself the opportunity to experience the freedom I am telling you about that I have found to be true. But, there does lie within each of us a desire to experience peace, and I have found it but it takes courage to attain it. And only you can decide if you want it bad enough or not. I have decided that I don’t want people taking advantage of me anymore. I also decided that I don’t want people dumping their problems on me if they aren’t open to advice to get out of their mess. And finally, I have decided that I want to end unnecessary drama in my life- both my own and other people’s. All this took courage, discipline, willpower, prayer, and time to make those choices. The important thing is that I made my mind up that I am valuable enough to make the choice to do something about it. And until people made in God’s Image come to the realization that we are important as well as others, we will continue down the road we are on now, making the same decisions we are making without ourselves being shown the love we deserve from ourselves, thus, continuing to be vulnerable to be taken advantage of as well as our being susceptible to the continual rejecting of our inner voice.

We must be free to be our own person in relationships. And when you and I fear rejection in relationships we are not free to be ourselves. We will always be afraid to say what we really feel and when we don’t say what we need to say when we need to say it, then we will act in hurtful ways either to ourselves or to others. All because we don’t act courageously for ourselves, our genuine selves. And I believe our fears go deeper than just being afraid of being rejected. So instead of being afraid of being rejected, we...