As an actress, I have had the opportunity to meet and work closely with people from all walks of life. And every time I meet new people, I recognize a string of familiar habits, regardless of the different environments I find myself in.
No matter where I go, I always run into people who are mad. They are mad at the world, mad at people in their past and mad at the folks they frequently encounter. These particular people are never happy with anything or anyone.
I watch them spend every waking moment of their lives in conflict with someone. Willingly choosing a new target for their aggression with every new encounter, they fight people they know nothing about. They bring a dark cloud of negativity with them that manifests itself in how they treat and speak to others.
There’s a saying that goes, don’t bleed on the people who never cut you. Meaning, you have to understand how important it is to let go of past hurt via the power of forgiveness so that you don’t make other people pay for stuff you have yet to move past. In an effort to not become these people mentioned, you must acknowledge the fact that YOU are not perfect, you have also hurt people during your journey to self-discovery. Thus, you must extend the same grace and mercy unto others as you would have freely awarded unto you when you fall short of perfection.
True story — there is a young woman I know who does not get along with other women. She is either in some form of combat with another woman or she targets men who demonstrate feminine characteristics. She hasn’t forgiven the people in her past that never told her “I’m sorry.” She keeps herself grounded in the negative attitudes and perceptions of other women. She is constantly in competition and being harshly judgmental of other women as a result of her own low esteem, and in my honest opinion, fear. A fear that they will repeat the behaviors that she has become accustomed to experiencing in every new connection.
An observation I made about this young woman prior to parting ways was that I started to see the characteristics of the people she claimed hurt her manifest themselves in her actions towards me. And this taught me some valuable lessons:
- Be leery of what people tell you about how other people treated them: Some folks are skillful at playing the victim while projecting their personality traits and behaviors unto others a means of deflecting attention from their own childish behavior.
- Recognize the people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions: If you find that they are always right and everyone else is wrong, leave them alone. The only difference between you and the people they are talking about is the time it will take for them to make you their next enemy. Trust and believe me when I say, they are thinking of a master plan to make you their next topic of conversation.
Here are some key takeaways when dealing with what I call bleeding people, or the people who have never healed from their past.
Some people relish in victimhood: These are the people who always have a negative story to tell about what someone did to them. The bitter-taste of hurt constantly fills their cup of life (abundantly overflowing). They do everything in their power to make sure they don’t “get got,” or end up hurt again, by anyone new they meet. While in the process, they are constantly ruining new relationships with folks who have no clue about their past. This is their defense mechanism for dealing with pain. Meaning, they will “get you” before you get them as a means of protecting themselves from the potential of hurt and disappointment. They have already made up their minds that you are no different than the rest of the people they have encountered. So, they are looking for the little signs you demonstrate that will give them a sub-conscious heads-up that you are about to pull a fast one on them. You personally don’t even know what the signs they believe they are seeing demonstrated by you are, because they are judging you based upon the actions of others. Their reaction to you is a result of the memory reflux they have developed over time. And you can’t do anything to help people who choose to be the victim in every connection they make.
But, you can choose to walk away and not play their game.
Repeat after me: “Not my monkeys, not my circus“. You are not responsible for the narrative that someone plays over and over in their head. Don’t you dare expend time nor energy trying to reconfigure their programming.
If you really and truthfully reflect upon your past dealings with some of the people you are no longer in communications with, you’ll realize the following:
- You really had more good times with them than bad: It wasn’t all doom and gloom with the people you once shared a relationship with. If it was, you wouldn’t have hung around them as long as you did. Take the bitter with the sweat. Focus upon the good times and pleasant experiences you had with those individuals (count them all as joyful) and use the bad experiences as nothing more than teaching moments, which brings me to:
- Go back to the “train wreck”: Emotionally, mentally, spiritually and psychologically — revisit the moment when everything fell apart between you and that person (or those people) and assess the situation from a different perspective. Hindsight is always 20/20; you can see it more clear now because you are no longer in the thick of it. Now, process those emotions so that you don’t carry them into the next human connection you share. Ask your spirit guides to take you through the incidents as they transpired. Let God and the Universe show you from a different perspective what really happened outside of how you perceive it. FACE IT! Like a head-on collision and live in it for a moment, but don’t stay there. Conduct a complete 360-degree assessment of the situation (seeing things from every vantage point), to include taking into consideration what you were going through at the time it happened in your life. Bringing into focus the emotional and mental state you were in and how it may have possibly affected your response to the situation. Pay close attention to the small details (and escalating incidents) that lead up to the wreck, which will help you address your feelings about everything as you rewind the footage of your past. Most importantly,
- Admit the part you played: Say this with me — not everyone is out to get me! There are times when you do stuff to people that cause a negative reaction. And you know what they are because you know “you” better than anyone else does. You know the keywords and phrases you use to piss people off. You know when you push people’s buttons and you know how messy you can be. Don’t act as if you’re innocent.
As my grandmother used to say, “you can’t create a storm and then cry when it starts to rain.” There are times when WE are the major contributors to the dysfunctional relationships we find ourselves in. because we are the only common denominators in ALL of our failed relationships. Sometimes you are the problem! There are times when you will do things to people out of spite as a result of unresolved issues in the emotional baggage that you still chose to carry.
But it’s time to drop them.
We are spiritual beings having human experiences. Learning how to harvest the power of forgiveness is transformative. Your life completely changes when you accept the “I’m sorry” that you may never sincerely receive. Forgiveness heals you on every molecular level of your being and allows you to manifest your future from a space of peace, clarity, calmness
Forgiveness is the spiritual manifestation of absolute freedom!
