I would rather adjust my life to your absence than adjust my boundaries to accommodate your disrespect.
Do you struggle to listen to your heart and willfully ignore your gut feelings that reveal someone’s true behaviors? Do you stay in friendships or relationships with people who have disrespected you by lying, cheating, or using you? Has someone betrayed you acting in their own self-interest, while hurting you in the process? Did you choose to stay anyway? Do you put on an act for the outside world as to what is really going on? Do you tolerate broken promises?
It is important to know that the disrespect you have experienced is not about you. Emotionally healthy, well-balanced people do not go around disrespecting other people. They may accidently say or do the wrong thing, but it is out of character.
People who disrespect people regularly and purposefully are desperately trying to make up for their own shortcomings and fill a void in the only way they know how.
Being disrespected is not a measure of your worth, your value, or a reflection on you. It is a sign of their character. Try your best to not take it personally. There is something missing in them that hasn’t been fulfilled. They set out to feed their internal cravings to feel better in some way.
Ask yourself, “I wonder what happened to this person that they engage in these behaviors or think it’s ok to treat people this way?”
People’s comments and behaviors put our feeling of self-worth to the test all the time. Even for the strongest of us. However, the stronger your self-esteem, the less like you are to feel disrespected and tolerate the unacceptable.
You have always, and will always, be so much more than enough. Read this again, and again, if you must.
Rooting for you,
Carrie
