Earlier this week, I watched a stranger criticize a young child’s bad behavior. You know, in a store wanting a bag of cookies and creating a commotion to try and change their parents mind.
And I thought to myself, Don’t criticize the child, they’re just acting out in order to get what they want in the way that they’ve been trained to do.
Fast forward to today. A 30-something client, we will call her Kate, has ended a relationship with somebody who doesn’t want to take No for an answer.
Begging, pleading, criticizing, gaslighting, sucking up, you name it.
What do these two scenarios have in common? Everything.
Two humans behaving like toddlers, because they’ve been trained,
aka, allowed, to throw tantrums in order to get what they want.
Have you ever witnessed anyone more relentless than a toddler? I haven’t. Only the grown-up version is even more astounding.
We really do teach people how to treat us. And how to respond to us.
The words we use are only a small portion of this.
The energy with which we speak dictates how the words are received.
At first, Kate pleaded with me, I have firmly told him to not contact me and yet he does, incessantly… yes, the words had been spoken, yet not heard.
What was the thing that finally flipped the switch?
Kate admitted she felt responsible for his well-being, and he could feel that.
Energy doesn’t lie and is always more powerful than words.
Once she could see that her enabling wasn’t kind to either of them, with the same words, and very different energy – confident, firm, grounded, powerful – he heard her. He respected her and he stopped calling.
When we change our energy, people change their response to us.
If we’re saying we’re done, but we let ourselves get pulled in, it’s no different than the parent with the toddler who’s tired and succumbs to giving them a bag of oreos to take to bed.
And yes, without doing their own work in between, that toddler will grow up being a bully, both in childhood and in their romantic relationships.
Send me a field report. I love to read them.
Love + Magic,
Amber