The biggest blessing of protecting yourself from difficult people is gaining the freedom to genuinely see the seed of goodness that God planted in their hearts and their significant roles in refining and molding you to the wiser, more loving, and more joyful person that you are now…or simply the better you.
Do you feel exhausted? Are you fed up? Is someone
sucking your energy?
You have the power to protect yourself!
After spotting your vampire, it is important to protect yourselves from your personal
vampires; otherwise, they will attack your core and decay your soul or will
influence you and make you one of them.
Their national game that exhausts you is
the “Damned if you do; Damned if you Don’t” game.
Whether your vampire is your parent, boss,
spouse, or close friend, you still need to protect yourself from them so you
can love them more, or at least preserve yourself so you can give more of
yourself—you have the energy and zest to serve, care for, and love those
who deserve your energy most.
You cannot give what you don’t have! If your energy is low, you cannot help others. If you’re stressed out and irritated, it’s
hard to sincerely share joy. If your heart is full of hatred, how can you genuinely
give love? If you lack knowledge, how can you properly guide and teach the
younger ones?
Hence, we need to protect ourselves so we
have selves to give to others through service, friendships, and by simply sharing
blessings.
But in order to protect ourselves from
these difficult persons, we need first to recognize and appreciate that “understanding”
them is the key to free ourselves from their bondage and vicious cycle. Still,
we need to protect ourselves from them.
Don’t allow them to abuse you, nor allow
yourself to spoil or tolerate them. Otherwise, you will bear the consequences of
making a vampire in others.
If you love someone, you set him free and
want him to be happy and successful… same goes for yourself (Leviticus 19:18, “love
your neighbor as yourself.”)
Loving our vampire neighbors does not mean
allowing them to stress us out. Instead, loving them means not spoiling and
tolerating them and protecting ourselves from them by putting boundaries or
limitations so we can love them properly sans the decaying stress between us.
Unless you’re free from the power of
difficult people, you cannot understand and love them.
Remember, you have the power to break free
and to protect yourself! You will not be tested beyond your capacity to solve
your trials, including freeing yourself from your vampires.
We can protect ourselves from the vampires
by preparing for their “Damned if you do; Damned if you don’t” game without the
intention to hurt them.
So basic and simple like ABC 123. Here’s how…
Be
aware. We need to deliberately and properly prepare
for the difficult situations the vampires have had hurling at us time and again;
so when it happens again, we already know what to do to protect ourselves and
go about the situation to avoid further and unnecessary hurts.
Love
ourselves. Loving oneself breeds respect for oneself.
It makes us feel good about ourselves; thus loving ourselves naturally and
automatically creates sturdy wall that protects us from exhausting vampires. Properly
loving ourselves results in good health, good disposition, and doing good to
others.
Living with a vampire is tantamount to
allowing ourselves to be punished emotionally (sleepless nights and trauma), physically
(sickness due to stress), spiritually (losing purpose, dreams, vision, and direction).
Damned if you do… damned if you don’t game.
Imagine
this: You’re watching TV at home with your older brother. You’re enjoying the
show. You’re laughing, you’re learning. Then suddenly you feel hungry. You get
your favorite pasta and bread from the dining table, the last serving and the
only food left by your mom for afternoon snack. When you return to the living
room, your brother is surfing the channels and asks you to give him your food… if you will give him the food he will eat them
all as he scans the channels through the only remote; if you will not, he will throw
hurting words at you, bully you, and will still get the food from you and will
not let you hold the remote control as he is watches another show.
So what you do…
1. Retreat and find food elsewhere
Take one step
backward so you can take two steps forward.
This may mean staying
away and taking a break, pausing and catching some breath, and recuperating elsewhere
for a while.
It may also mean
not cutting relationship with the vampires. It may mean decreasing your time with the
vampires. By doing this, you strike your chances of being drained or influenced
by the vampire (Proverbs 22:24-25, “Do not make friends with a
hot-tempered person, do not associate
with one easily angered, or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared.”)
If your boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating on you or manipulating you, then walk out and find food elsewhere. If you have friends who are sucking your energy, joy, and peace, then spend lesser time with them.
2. Protect your head and eat
your food
Bask in the sun,
float on top of the wave.
This entails
creating an emotional space between you and the difficult person.
If your
vampire is your boss, spouse, or parents, you cannot just walk out immediately
and create a physical space; hence you create an emotional space. As
Eleanor Roosevelt puts it, “No one can make you feel inferior without your
consent.”
We can create emotional space by imagining, especially when the truth is
not obvious.
Imagine
your difficult person as little Hercules.
Reduce the significance and impact of your
vampire on you. Whatever he says or does becomes insignificant to you. You no
longer focus on his sweet empty words or you can take his harsh words as
unsharpened doubled-bladed sword. Now, you see your little Hercules vampire shout at
you, but you cannot understand his little voice. You see him, but you’re no
longer terrified.
Though this way, you focus on the only two important opinions, “First, what God thinks of you—full of potential, beautiful lamb, and a victor; second, your opinion of yourself—who you can be and want to be.”
Imagine
an angel coming.
Through this way, you emphasize the element
of “understanding.”
You see his brokenness not his badness.
By surrendering the difficult person to
God, you let your angel come to take the vampire from your life to bring it to God’s
repair room.
Imagine
the truth.
Through this way, you give yourself time to “retrospect,
honestly evaluate yourself, and listen to the hopes and dreams of the still
voice inside you.”
The evil is in the business of deceiving
you.
If one wants to become better in whatever aspect
of his life, the evil will always try to pull him down, trap him, or to block the
way just to keep him chained in his dark, unhappy underworld.
So, “Watch and pray so you will not fall
into temptation (Mark 14:38), and If God
is for us, who can be against us? It is God who justifies (Romans 8:31-32).”
If you want to get rid of your emotional vampires
and achieve your dreams, you need someone who believes in you and in your
dreams and who supports and cheers you on as you reach them.
There will always be people who will spice up
your life with difficulty and challenges, whether they’re conscious of it or
not. Moreover, there will always be people around you who will hold opinion about
what you believe in or do, and they may even have predictions about your life…
but hey, it’s okay!
You have a choice… to remain with the
vampire or to break free.
You have two important stronghold… what God
thinks of you and what you think of yourself.
The
biggest blessing of protecting yourself from difficult people is gaining the
freedom to genuinely see the seed of goodness that God planted in their hearts
and their significant roles in refining and molding you to the wiser, more loving,
and more joyful person that you are now…or simply the better you.
FLY!
First Love Yourself.
(Third and last installment, Unfinished Business: Transforming the Vampire will be posted soon)
If you're single dear girlfriend, don't worry. After a long relationship, I'm now happily single too! Enjoying the time of my life--the positive and productive freedom and me-time I have between a
relatively long relationship (past) and the real thing life-long partnership (future). Things are simply refreshing and enlightening in many ways I didn't imagine.
