How Many Licks Does it Take to Get to the Center?

How many times do we have to take licks from the very difficult person in our lives before we learn what they are here to teach us? Before we get to the heart of the lesson? Before we are able to find our own center? How many verbal assaults and other forms of attack do we have to endure before we are able to get relief?

I've got news. The licks will keep on comin' if we're waiting for the very difficult person to change. Very difficult people rarely change because they, most often, are incapable of seeing how very difficult they are. In fact, they usually think they are fabulous and everyone else is messed up! And often they are charismatic enough on the front end to be able to convince others of the same... for a short while... After all, how else did they end up in your life? You were hooked by their charm in the beginning quite possibly, right? Or somebody you love was and you're in it by default.

This kind of very difficult person might be categorized by diagnostic clinicians as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  Sometimes they have a sprinkle of Borderline Personality traits and a dash of Histrionic Personality Traits. Heck, sometimes there are even some Antisocial Personality Traits.  The point of this blog is not to go around diagnosing people. Bad idea. Rather, the point of this blog is to understand what we're dealing with and make the necessary shifts and changes in ourselves and the way we are moving through the crap they hit us with and move around these very difficult people in order to heal from past pains and move onward and upward.

So, back to the licks.  Very difficult people often like to hook us in and then beat us up. It helps feed their belief that everyone else is wrong and they are ALL right.  So what to do?

1. Don't take anything they say to heart. Very difficult people are really skilled at taking one tiny thread of truth and weaving a quilt of a story that is absolutely baseless and try to smother you with it.
2. Don't defend. Defense is often a form of attack. You don't want to take anything they say personally and you don't want to get down in their mud with  retaliatory attacks. Trust me on this. It only feeds them further.
3. Ignore 'em.  Really.  Act like you don't even see them and hear them when they act out.
4. Don't react. Okay, so you're going to have an internal reaction when they are saying outrageously false things, accusing you of heinous acts that are baseless or insulting your mother. The trick is to note the internal reaction and do what you need to do to work through that emotion in  a way that is healthy (like pounding out some miles and hills on the treadmill, taking a brisk walk, deep breaths, kickboxing) and then try some meditation or yoga... really, a regular practice really helps you find center.
5. Set and maintain firm boundaries the Mr. Spock way. When you need to address their outrageous behavior and set some boundaries around what you will and won't tolerate, do so in a matter-of-fact manner. Never respond or address their behavior from a place of emotion. Get your cool, calm, clear head on first.
6. Avoid the hooks.   They love to hook you. They thrive on it. Look out. Keep conversations short. Be prepared to politely hang up when they start throwing out those hooks or walk away.

Here's the irony. These very difficult people are giving us opportunity to get to the center of who we are. To work through some junk internally (we all have junk). To hone self restraint, patience, self discipline. To look at our own actions and reactions with greater mindfulness. These very difficult people are here to teach us something about ourselves and to help us become better people. I'm convinced.

Birth of a Blog: Dealing and Healing

I was having trouble going to sleep one night. I went to my meditation cushion, I did some gentle yoga, I drank some sleepy tea but sleep was not accessible. So, I sat down at the computer and thought I would take care of a few administrative tasks on line and a new message showed up in the inbox. I made the mistake of opening it here in the midst of my insomnia. It was from a very difficult person I've been dealing with for years. She's someone I can't completely distance myself from for reasons I won't go into in order to protect the identity of all those concerned. It was a fairly typical message from her of the nasty variety, full of snide remarks, personal attacks and unproductive rhetoric.

I sat back in my chair, sighed a big sigh, perplexed as to how I might ever get out of this ongoing onslaught of darts and flame balls this person seems to thrive upon throwing. I wondered if I went fishing in the great ocean of the internet if I might find some answers to what else I can possibly do to deal with this difficult person.

In the search box of one very popular search engine I typed in some words that describe this difficult person and her role in my life and up came a blog article. I clicked on the link and it took me to a woman's blog created and used to vent to the world about her troubles with a very difficult person in her life who eerily resembled the very difficult person in my life. Fancy that.

What was more fascinating were all the comments posted by readers. People from all over the world were posting that they were up at night searching on the internet for help with dealing with their very difficult people and came across this blog too. Instant camaraderie. None of us were alone!

After reading the litany of comments I began feeling a bit ill. The cursing, complaining and criticizing of the readers of this blog just felt like more of the same stuff my difficult person was always dishing up. I don't want to get down in that mud.

I finally felt sleepiness come over me and turned off the computer and went back to bed that night. Finally asleep, my brain didn't let go. My contemplation on this subject formed a dream that has stayed with me.

In the dream, I was in high school, racing down the hall to get to class with a big, heavy book bag. As I ran down the hall the bag got heavier and heavier and my anxiety about being late was starting to morph into panic. I cursed the teacher who had required me to cart around all those heavy books and notebooks full of assignments. I finally limped into the classroom dragging the back pack behind me and there, in the front of the room at the teacher's desk was my difficult person. Familiar face, snarling at me, giving me the evil eye.  My difficult person was my teacher. The same teacher who burdened me with this heavy back pack. I woke up breathing heavily and sweating.

It's like that isn't it? Difficult people are those teachers we didn't ask for. Sometimes you can get your class schedule changed so you don't have to interact with that teacher anymore. Most of the time you gotta deal. And you can deal by gnashing and thrashing, kicking and screaming, resisting to the nth degree. Or... maybe we just accept this is the teacher who has something from whom we can learn.

What can be learned from someone who is such a pain to deal with?

That's what this blog is about... dealing and healing...

"The teacher is always with us. The teacher is always showing us precisely where we're at—encouraging us not to speak and act in the same old neurotic ways, encouraging us also not to repress or dissociate, encouraging us not to sow the seeds of suffering. So with this person who is scaring us or insulting us, do we retaliate as we have one hundred thousand times before, or do we start to get smart and finally hold our seat?" ~ Pema Chodron

Let's hold our seat and learn what we're here to learn. This is the only way old wounds can heal and we can move forward.

More to come...

Lynn Louise Wonders