One day a little boy was standing near an old board. There was a nail poking up out of the board and so as young male curiosity often does, he decided to press his foot against the nail to see if he could “feel it.” Good for him the nail was just long enough to feel the pressure and slight pain of the nail but not long enough to inflict any real damage.
And so he persisted–pressing a little harder each time trying to see how much pain he could create without damaging himself or drawing blood. Strange you might say? And yet that is exactly what we do when we allow ourselves to linger in relationships that are unhealthy and that inflict pain.
Sometimes we have people in our lives that are so accustomed to pain that that is the only way they can relate to the world. They think, “at some subliminal level that if they are not feeling pain then something must be wrong.” So they work out of the subconscious trying to initiate circumstances that bring them to a place of hurt where once again they are comfortable—with the discomfort of pain.
The sad reality is that in most cases there is little you can do to help people in this situation. Because to them pain is normal. In it they feel whole. So what can you do? How do you manage when you are in such relationships?
1) Give yourself an accurate measuring sticks for what is normal in relationships. Surround yourself with information and people that reinforce what healthy emotional should look and feel like.
2) Cultivate boundaries. You might be in a relationship but you do not not have to be controlled by it. When people are bent on being unhappy and living under the influence of a negative mind it is vital that you treat them almost as if they had an illness like the flu. Negativity is contagious. So guard your emotional health as you would your physical health.
3) Finally, as hard as it may be, sometimes you just have to let people be. You have no choice but to allow them to be in their own space and experience what they go through until the pain of staying the same become greater that the pain of changing. Eventually the pressure to change will become too great and they yield to the inevitable.