Setting boundaries includes placing limits on what we’re willing to do for others.
Sometimes, we make the same mistake a bazillion times before finally waking up. It’s exasperating! One of my clients knows this experience all too well. His mistake was believing he had to rescue other people—mainly women. If they weren’t happy, he felt guilty and responsible. It left his spirit heavy almost all the time.
At some point, he realized that sacrificing himself senselessly was self-destructive so he chose to rescue himself, instead. I knew he had reached that step when he wowed me with something he had learned while growing up on the farm:
“You can’t get a pig out of the mud if it doesn’t want out. More often than not, you end up in the mud yourself–you get muddy. Pigs like to soak in the mud. Why try to get that other person out of the mud when they want to be there?”
(c) Salee Reese 2016
Ick!!! I don’t like to get dirty. I’ll choose to stay out of the mud!
Well … there’s no question where you stand on that issue 🙂
The beauty of this post for me is that it reminded me that I have choice, and that by not exercising that choice I’m stuck in my own mud.
Whew!! So right on!
Like that thought, Don!
My big realization the last 10 years: The dopamine receptors are in charge. They will make you do literally ANYTHING if you’re not aware who is running the show. The only hope you have for rewiring a behavior is to first recognize where the problem is occuring. This is why people keep replaying negative patterns, often established in childhood. Abusive relationships, risk taking, drugs, daddy issues, it all has the same root cause. Violence. Win or lose you still get a dopamine hit. Rageaholism. Almost any behavior problem that does not have another chemical cause (EG catecholamines and PTSD), this is the source.
Important information for everybody! Thank you–immensely–Benjamin.