These are my personal opinions.
Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.
Welcome to the show.
Glad you are here.
I want to ask you a question.
My question is, what is your level of toleration?
What will you tolerate and how long will you tolerate it for until you finally have had enough?
I think it's healthy to have a limit to your toleration.
We're taught to be resilient.
We're taught to be tolerant.
And I've learned that the more tolerant you are of bad behavior, the more bad behavior comes your way.
The more tolerant you are of people dishonoring you or violating your personal boundaries, then the more they do it.
Or maybe not more, but it never ends.
If you're around somebody or with somebody that continually tries violate your boundaries, they will continue doing it until there's accountability.
And I like to think of accountability as the only way someone will stop doing what you want them to stop doing.
And so if somebody were mistreating me and I gave them a dirty look and they didn't find that as any type of punishment or accountability for their behavior, or if they believe that the worst thing that could happen is If they mistreat me as I give them a dirty look, then they'll probably continue, assuming they don't feel bad when I give them the dirty look.
Or worse, they expect the dirty look and just wait for it to happen so that they can feel satisfied.
So if I'm around someone or with someone who mistreats me and I don't want to be mistreated, and a dirty look or silence or saying something like that wasn't very nice if those don't solve the problem, then i should never, ever repeat that response and this is something i teach over in love and abuse and i know this is common sense, but it is important because some people get into relationships and some people have friends or family that will cross the line and not stop crossing it, and then they start to grow resentment because that person won't stop crossing the line.
And so this resentment builds and the relationship becomes very tense and there's a lot of emotional pressure that builds up.
That's the resentment typically, and sometimes anger, which is all part of resentment.
And the person in resentment mode wants the other person to stop, but they don't actually say stop.
Or if they do say stop, there's no accountability if they don't stop.
So this always brings me back to my childhood, when I was like 10 years old and the neighborhood kid up the street.
He was a bully.
He didn't like push me around, but I had no boundaries around him.
So he felt very bullying to me.
He was intimidating to me.
I didn't know how to honor myself.
And I remember when we were wrestling and we were just playing around in my house and he kept like poking me or or hitting me in the face, like lightly telling me that he wants to continue wrestling.
And I was sitting at the table and I, I didn't want to wrestle anymore.
I said, no, I don't want to slap, slap, slap.
Come on, let's wrestle.
Let's wrestle.
He would slap my face or something again, lightly, but annoyingly.
And he kept doing that.
I said, no, I don't want to wrestle.
Please stop.
I don't want to wrestle.
And he kept doing it.
And so my responses were ineffective.
They were so ineffective that they didn't phase him at all.
My no meant nothing.
My N-O meant nothing.
And because it meant nothing, he continued doing that behavior.
And because I didn't want to wrestle anymore, I said no and I thought that would be enough, but it wasn't.
So what I had to do, at least in my 10-year-old brain back then and maybe in my 55-year-old brain today
I might do the same thing depending on who it is and what the situation was.
I decided that I'd had enough.
I had reached my threshold and I walloped him one.
I punched him in the face.
I had never punched anyone or anything at all.
I'd never thrown a punch at all.
And so I was, it surprised me that I did this.
It totally surprised me because I, I didn't know what I was doing.
I mean, I did, but I didn't.
I just went unconscious.
It was like a fight or flight response where your logic shuts off and your body takes over.
And so that's what happened to me.
I remember sitting there.
I said no, and he wouldn't stop.
And I just got out of my chair, threw a right punch, and he went down.
He was holding his mouth.
And it was weird.
I sat back down.
And I felt calm.
I felt peace inside myself.
I mean, he could have gotten back up and started fighting me.
I didn't know what was going to happen.
But at that moment, the most important thing in that moment was my well-being, my integrity.
It was like something else took over.
And it was a full self-protection mode.
So my survival... mechanism kicked in, protected me.
And then I sat down in peace and it felt like the right thing.
It felt like I did the right thing.
I don't recall exactly what he said when he finally got up, but I remember him leaving.
And then I remember the next day he I don't know if he called me or walked up to my house or something
He said, my mom has invited you to go to Chinese food with us.
I thought this is really strange.
I just... punched him in the face.
He went down and the very first thing he says is my mom has invited you or invited us to go to Chinese food.
I said, okay.
And then we went and we never talked about that moment.
And I don't think anything like that ever happened again between us.
It was the bad behavior stopper.
I'm not condoning or endorsing violence here, but it was interesting how I learned in that moment that two things
One was, if I really needed to, I could stop someone from violating my boundaries or pushing me beyond my limits.
I could stop them.
I knew how to do it.
Even if I didn't know how to do it, it was instinct.
It was natural.
Came out of nowhere.
And number two, I learned what accountability does.
I learned that when you make someone fully accountable and there is a punishment involved, then they are more likely to stop and pull back and not do the behavior anymore.
There are drawbacks to continuing doing the behavior as opposed to the benefits that they may have felt before.
Like my friend who kept slapping me, he probably felt in control.
He probably felt in power.
He probably felt like he didn't have to stop for anyone and he was just going to continue doing what he was doing.
And I realized he was a child.
We were both children and he did not have the wherewithal, the conscientiousness, the resources, the lessons from mom and dad or whatever, to be able to honor my boundaries and respect where I was and respect my words.
And he didn't have that ability to do it.
Otherwise he would have done it or he could have been a sociopath and didn't care.
But I don't think he was that.
So That's what happened.
He was accountable for his behavior.
He learned not to do that to me.
That didn't stop him from doing other things to me that weren't bad enough to push me to that point again.
In fact, it's really strange because I remember him making me cry one day.
It was just a dumb little thing.
But he kept, I had some rocks in my pocket.
He kept saying, give me your rocks.
Give me your rocks.
And I was laughing as a defensive mechanism.
And this was at school, too.
I was, again, 10 or 11.
And he kept saying, give me your rocks.
And I was laughing.
And he kept insisting that I give him the rocks in my pocket when I started crying.
And I was laughing and crying at the same time.
It wasn't enough to push me over the edge.
And it was just a, I can't even recall why I was crying.
I think it was just because I was, again, being pushed back. beyond my limits.
It was, it was a threshold being, uh, reached and I didn't want to give in to his demands.
And because I didn't give in or at least this is one of the things I attribute to not giving in.
At that moment and other moments in my life, I became more of um a people pleaser, which I learned from my mom because she was in the abusive relationship with my stepfather.
And I just learned that um having personal boundaries wasn't something that you did, because it's dangerous.
Because if you honor yourself around someone dangerous, they might do something hurtful.
And so I didn't want that to happen.
So in my earlier life I was able to punch a kid in the face and stop him from dishonoring me from not respecting my boundaries.
But later on, I let that slide.
And again, I'm not promoting violence or endorsing it at all.
I'm just saying.
Sometimes there are people out there that will push you to your limit and unless you do something or say something or find a way to protect yourself, they may never stop.
It's like this message I got a few months back that he said that I've been with this guy for 11 years and It's caused a lot of resentment, and I haven't been intimate with him for seven years and he takes every opportunity to make me feel bad.
And if I forget to clean something or rinse something off, he gets mad, even though I'll do it later.
And I take care of him and I've been taking care of the money.
But now he gets a job and now he wants to watch every dime, since it's his money.
And it goes on and on and on.
And so all of this behavior for seven years.
He says, I don't love them anymore because I have to walk on eggshells.
And he'll say, or he goes on to say, I can't say anything or share my feelings, because he gets upset and he never misses a chance to lecture me.
I don't know what to do.
I feel like everything is on me and everything is my fault and it's my responsibility.
This is why I'm talking about this today, because I mean, there's one thing that I have repeated on this show and my other podcast, Love and Abuse, is that you have to ask yourself the question if this never, ever changes, will I be okay with it?
That is such an important question because it puts you in the present moment with reality.
It puts you on the spot with a reality that you may not have come to terms with, that you may not have accepted fully.
But when you ask yourself the question, if this never ever changes, will I be okay with it?
Suddenly you are faced with a truth that you may have to make a decision about.
Some people may say, well, it could change.
Some people may say, well, what if it does change?
The what ifs and it coulds out.
There are decision killers and they are time wasters because the You can't predict a future that could happen if what you have already experienced has happened.
I suppose you could predict it, yes.
But you can't predict what will happen when you omit what has happened.
I think that's a better way to say it.
So if the last seven years has happened and you think, well, what if he changes?
Or what if they do something different?
What if they come to their senses?
What if they are suddenly enlightened?
That's a bonus if that happens.
But you should never make a decision about a relationship of any kind based on what could be or what if it happens.
If you base it on what could be or what if it happens, guess where you are.
You are exactly where you have been stuck for, for the last X number of months or years.
So if it's been seven years in this person's case, then seven more years will pass because you haven't come to terms with the reality in the present moment.
That doesn't make it easier.
That doesn't make any decision that you might need to make or don't want to make any easier.
It just makes it real.
It just makes it tangible. which means it makes it real.
And if it's real you know it's true, you have to accept it's true 100 then you make a decision based on that.
So you may have heard me talk about that if you've been listening a while, but it's important.
That's an important question to ask yourself.
If this never ever changes, what would I do then?
I mean, I asked, that's not the question.
Would I be okay with it?
Would I be okay if this never ever changes?
Now, the follow-up question can be, Something that was very close to what I just said.
If I knew for a fact that this would never ever change, what would I do then?
So the first question is, if this never ever changes, would I be okay with it?
The answer is probably going to be no, because if you have to ask yourself that question, then what you're dealing with you probably do want to change.
But if it never ever changes, would you be okay with it?
And if you answer no, then you follow it up with.
If I knew for a fact that this would never, ever change, What would I do then?
That really puts you on the spot.
That puts you in a moment of decision.
Because if I tell you I'm not asking, I'm telling you to see the present as what will always be, that puts you in a different mindset.
Your state of mind changes when you take out the what might happen or if this happens or whatever.
It could change.
If you're in that mindset of it could change, you're in a rut.
You're stagnant.
It doesn't go anywhere.
There's no action in that thinking or that type of thinking.
I, I hate being in that stagnant place.
I hate being in a non action state of mind.
At least when it comes to a decision that I probably should make.
For example, um, Let's just say, I'll just give you something benign.
Let's just say I'm using, what do I call it?
The ripper saw.
There's a saw that I use in my little, it's like a little wood shop in my basement.
Nothing fancy, believe me.
So I have this chopper saw.
It cuts wood.
It's just a saw that I pull down and it cuts wood.
I know there are people yelling at me right now saying, no, it's called this.
Well, it's a ripper of some sort.
It rips wood and it's slightly... misaligned because you can turn it up to 45 degrees.
You can angle it and it's really neat how it works.
But the measurement on it says zero to 45.
And if I tighten it down to exactly zero, I do not get a 90 degree cut.
So zero is like the straight line that it's supposed to cut.
So I can stick a two by four in there and bring the saw down and it should create a perfect 90 degree cut in the wood.
But it doesn't.
It's slightly off.
And I asked my friend, how do I fix this?
He had a saw like that as well.
And he said, the way you fix it is you put the saw at a slightly higher or lower number than zero.
I said, wait, that's how you fix it?
You purposefully offset the saw so it creates the 90 degrees anyway?
And he said, well, that's what I've always done.
And so again, this is a benign example and I haven't researched this enough to tell you how this is supposed to work.
But let's just say that that was how the saw operated from this point on.
Like there was no way to change it.
That zero will never be 90 degrees.
And when I bring the saw down, there's always going to be a slight angle.
So I will have to offset it 01 05 whatever, so that it always cuts the 90 degrees for me, which means I have to find my new zero.
I have to find where I can rotate it to get that new zero to get the 90 degrees.
So if I asked myself, this is where I'm going with this.
If I asked myself the question, if this never ever changes, will I be okay with it?
What do I get for an answer?
So that means I have to accept That this is the way it will be from this point on.
I'm sure there's a way to fix it.
I'll look it up.
But let's just say for this example, if this never ever changes, will I be okay with it?
The answer is yes.
Because for the last four or so years, I've been okay with it.
This is what I've had to do.
I've had to adjust it.
And I've been okay with it because I don't work with wood every day.
I just adjusted to what it is.
And I'm okay with it.
And I'm happy because it still works.
So if you're in any type of relationship where something annoys you or something has been annoying you, but then you ask yourself that question and you say well, I guess I could be okay with it.
Then your relationship might improve because they're not going to change.
They haven't for months or years.
So you can either reject it or accept it.
And if you accept it, maybe you can move forward and that's not a problem anymore.
But let's just say I couldn't stand it and I was obsessed with And it had to be zero no matter what.
And I asked myself that question, if this never ever changes, will I be okay with it?
And I said, no.
Then I have to do something about it.
I would have to make a decision.
I would have to finally accept that this isn't going to change.
It hasn't changed for the last few years and it won't.
So now I can either continue being upset that it is the way it is And every time I use it, look down at that zero and know that I have to move it a little bit and be angry about it.
Or I can do something about it.
That might be selling it the easy way out.
Might be looking up how do I adjust this so it's perfect.
It might be finding out that the only way to keep it at the 90 degrees I want is to constantly adjust every time I cut because it's not perfect.
And I might have to do that.
But let's just say I hate that idea.
I want zero.
What if the only answer is to buy something more expensive, to buy something more accurate, which means I might have to get rid of this which, you know, there might be some sentimental value here.
There's probably not, but I've been using it for years and it has worked for all my purposes.
But now I'm in a space where this is never going to change.
And if I don't like it, then I should do something about it or I should make a decision about it.
Because otherwise, what am I doing?
I'm holding on to the upset.
I'm building resentment.
And every time I see it, I'm going to feel upset.
I'm going to feel negative.
And I'm not going to have a good relationship with my saw.
I'm not going to have a good relationship with it.
And I'm only hurting myself.
So I come down to the basement and I go, oh, I got to cut some wood.
And I go over there and I look at the saw and I go, oh, you son of a.
I don't want to deal with this.
Do I want to have that feeling every time I look at it?
Again, that's a benign example and it might be ridiculous.
Or maybe it's very real, because you might have something in your life where you look at it and say oh, I hate this thing.
I hate dealing with this thing.
And you might have to ask yourself the question if I knew this was never going to change, what would I do then?
If I knew for a fact, that this would never ever change, what would I do then?
Let's put ourselves on the spot in the present moment, in reality, so that we can come to a conclusion, finally about this thing.
The conclusion or the answer might be, yeah, but there's nothing I can do about it.
And if that's the case, are you going to torture yourself, trying to change that which cannot be changed?
At least from your belief, you cannot change this.
I try to stay out of that negative mindset of always complaining about something that I can't change.
If I can change it, I'm going to try.
Or if I can change myself to adapt, to accommodate or to leave.
If I can do that, if I can do one of those three things, then I may take myself out of my own misery.
And this reminds me of what I call the problem escape plan how to get out of or escape the, a cyclical problem in your mind, which is the four choices that you have when it comes to a problem.
You can accept and be okay with it, or what I like to say is stay.
So you stay where you are, stay where things are.
So you have accept and stay, and then you have accept and leave, and then you have reject and stay or reject and leave.
So if I were to look at my saw and, for example, and I said okay, I'm going to accept what is that.
It will never be accurate and I'll stay where I am meaning, I'm not going to get rid of it.
I'm going to keep it.
I'm going to use it.
And if I am going to accept and stay, then I can't complain about it anymore.
I could if I wanted to.
But why would I want to be in that negative mind space or mindset or whatever?
Why would I want to be in that space every time I looked at my saw?
So I'm going to accept and choose to keep things as they are.
Accept and stay.
But if I chose to accept and leave, to me that means I'm going to get rid of that damn saw.
But I'm not in that space.
I don't feel that negativity when I look at it anymore.
In fact, I don't think I ever have.
I'm just annoyed.
But now I'm okay with it.
I know that's how it operates.
So that's accept and leave.
But if I rejected and stay, rejection means I don't want to accept anything. it as it is.
I don't want to accept things as they are.
So I'm going to be negative about it and I'm going to keep it and I'm not going to do anything about it.
So I'm going to reject what is and not do anything about it.
And that keeps me in the negative space.
That's the one option that will always keep you in a negative space.
Always.
Because you're against it And you're not going to do anything about it, or you can't do anything about it because you refuse to accept things as they are or the person as they are.
And so you're going to stay in that same space.
So you're going to accept and keep things as they are.
You're not going to leave.
You're not going to get rid of them or get rid of it or whatever.
Then the last one, reject and leave, is telling yourself, I can't accept things as they are.
I'm going to get rid of it.
Or I'm going to leave.
I'm going to remove myself.
In the case with something material like a saw, I'm going to get rid of that.
I'm going to sell it to somebody else.
Tell them the issues and say you know it works great, but there's a little bit of a varying degree of cut.
So you'll need to work on that, but I'm going to get rid of it.
I'm going to get it out of my life and maybe get another one or maybe not.
So I have chosen to reject it and I'm also getting rid of it.
In a relationship, reject and leave is I can't stand being in this relationship anymore.
I won't tolerate it.
I absolutely reject the treatment or the way I feel because of how they treat me.
So what I'm going to do is leave.
I'm going to get out of this relationship.
I could reject and stay but, as we know, if we reject, you're not accepting things as they are or people as they are.
And all we're going to do is complain and cry.
And I'm not blaming you if you do that.
I'm just saying this is where we put ourselves when we are rejecting something, rejecting what is and choosing to stay, or having no choice but to stay with what is, which is what leads us to the name of that little process.
The problem escape plan is that we want to get out of the problem mindset.
The problem is I can't accept this person for who he is or who she is.
I'm going to complain about it and cry about it and suffer inside myself because I can't accept them as they are.
Instead of choosing to accept them as they are and choosing to stay or leave from that point on.
I'm not saying you have to do any of these things.
I'm saying, if you are in a cycle of problematic thinking inside your mind, that circular thinking, that where the problem continues to come back like oh, there they are again.
Oh, I can't stand it.
I hope they change.
I hope they change.
I hope they change.
If you're in that cycle, in that circular thinking, then what takes you out of it is making one of those choices accept, reject and stay.
Let me come back to this person who wrote, they said, I don't know what to do.
I feel like everything is me or on me or about me.
And you're probably right.
Everything is about you.
You need to conform.
You need to be under their control.
You need to feel disempowered while you're with them.
And you won't feel anything else while you're with them, because what you need to do is ask yourself if nothing ever changes, will I be okay with it?
Your answer is no.
I'm going to just read your mind, but it's pretty obvious.
Your answer is no, I won't be okay with this.
So the follow-up is, if I knew for a fact that nothing would ever change, what would I do then?
And this is the key where you have to tell yourself that is the truth.
You might want to say, but, but, but, but if you do that, you become stagnant.
You get into that rut.
You get into that circular thinking.
And to get out of that circular thinking or the problem that continues to cycle inside your brain, you have to remind yourself that this is the truth.
Meaning the truth is, nothing will ever change unless And you have to make a decision based on that fact, that logic.
And what decision will you make then?
Because I know if I were in your shoes.
Seven years is enough time to push me to that toleration point where I say I've had enough.
I don't want to deal with this anymore.
You've got problems.
I don't want to deal with your problems.
You go fix yourself and I'm going to go heal myself.
Because whatever's going on with you, you keep pushing on to me.
I don't want what you haven't dealt with yet.
I want to heal myself so that I don't have to deal with what you haven't healed in yourself.
And that would make me feel better and it would actually make you feel better too.
So go heal yourself and I'll go heal myself.
And maybe when we're both in a different place, I might consider reconnecting with you and seeing where you are and you can see where I am and see if we've both improved and see if we've both healed.
But for now, This is where I need to be and what I need to do for myself.
That's what I would do.
I can't say that you need to do that.
I'm just saying that, and this is the whole episode based on this.
If you knew for a fact that nothing would ever change, what would you do then?
Because your truth is right there on the tip of your tongue, at the forefront of your brain.
The truth is there when you answer that question.
If I knew for a fact that nothing would ever change, ever change.
Never, ever.
If I knew for a fact that nothing would ever change, what would I do?
What would I do then?
Because now I'm putting you in the very present moment of reality.
Hey, this is happening.
It will never change.
What are you going to do now?
You may say, I don't know what I'm going to do.
Yeah, but you have no choice now.
You have no choice.
You have to do something right now, because you've already said that you will not be okay with the way things are, and the way things are aren't going to change.
And if I'm wrong, you can write to me and say, hey, Paul, you were wrong.
They did change.
I'll say, great.
I'm glad I'm wrong.
But there's no forward momentum.
There's no forward progress when you believe something will change that hasn't changed for the last seven years.
I know this isn't the magic pill that you wanted to hear, the solution to everything that you're dealing with.
But if you put yourself in that space that you know nothing will change, suddenly the answers come.
They may not be easy.
In fact, answers like this usually are the hardest to come by and come to, because you would have thought of them already.
You would have taken action, taken steps toward them, the decisions that you've made already, which is why these answers aren't easy.
They're not easy to come by, because you might have to admit something, and that thing that you admit might be Something that's very difficult to swallow, something difficult to digest and something not easy to do.
Difficult to do.
And if it's difficult to do, we usually don't want that answer.
That is the toughest thing is when we have something that we believe we need to do or know we need to do.
It's a very difficult place to come to, to actually tell ourselves, well, nothing's going to change.
I have to do something.
And putting yourself in that space is very courageous and very scary.
And sometimes that's where you need to be to get the right answer, to get the direction you need to go.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for listening to another episode of The Overwhelmed Brain.
I want to thank Maria, Heather, Cheyenne, Christy, Anna, and Sandra.
Thank you for your patronage, your support every month.
They are patrons that I call out when I see their names.
So I'm so grateful that you are giving.
Thank you for your support.
And if you value this show and you want to show your support as well, head over to moretobcom and there are options to do that over there.
And for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and Abuse over at loveandabusecom.
And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship, join the program that is helping a lot of people heal over at healedbeingcom.
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions.
And be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve.
You are powerful beyond measure.
And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you, you are amazing.
