How to deal with someone who is mistreating you

Welcome to my Brave Up Tuesday Facebook Live. I am incredibly apologetic that it is now 12:17, and I had promised everybody that I would go live at noon. I won't even bore you with what went on, why I couldn't be here on time. One of the reasons is my home is completely lit with windows. And while I thought I had set it up perfectly, when I turned on the live button. Whoo. I looked like I was surrounded by a halo of light, which I'd love to think is true, but you couldn't see me. So I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to find the right spot. And I know this is a little grainy, but best I could do, and I didn't want to miss my half hour with you, so excuse me. A few things I want to mention. This will be my last Facebook Live Brave Up Tuesday for the month of December, because it's getting to be crazy with the holidays and with all sorts of other stuff going on in travel. So this will be it for December, but I'm gonna come back in January, and I'm gonna make a request, please, as I send these out. You know, there's a lot of people that don't join live, but they watch it later and, you know, they comment and they write me privately. What I'd love to ask you to do is under, on my page, Elia Communications. Tell me what you would love me to cover. I'm a coach. I'm a trained therapist. I've worked in energy healing. I've worked with every. I think I've truly worked with the vast majority of human conditions and human emotions. I think, you know, as a therapist, I dealt with rape, incest, pedophilia, suicidality. Very tough stuff, depression, anxiety. So I'm not afraid of deep emotion. As many of you know, I started a Facebook group thriving after narcissism because I see that narcissism is literally an epidemic. The latest projections are that 6.2% of the population are narcissistic. That number is way too low because clinical narcissists go to therapy and don't get diagnosed. But even if that number were true, 6% of the population. Think of the millions of children of narcissists, adult children, young children, and the people working for narcissists, it's millions. So if narcissism is something that you think you're dealing with in your family members and your work life, pop on over to my Facebook group, Thriving after Narcissism, my friend and amazing Therapeutic colleague Jeanetta Bolander and I are running a six part free webinar series. And tomorrow night we're talking about working for a narcissist. And what do you do? And this series will not be free forever. So jump on. And it's only for the Facebook group members, so jump in there and get the help you need. Okay, so. So back to you asking the questions that matter to you. Let me know what do you want me to talk about? What questions do you have? And don't be shy. The question that you have. I learned this when I was doing market research years ago. In the corporate world, there'd be 10 people in a focus group and when one person would be brave enough to ask a question or say something, it would literally represent thousands of people. And that's how it is for you when you ask a question, when you say this is what you're struggling with. You are representing thousands, if not millions. So you're really helping the world when you ask your question. So I hope you'll do that. Today we are talking about how to deal with someone who's mistreating you. Why did I choose this? You know, I tend to choose topics and I write about. You know, I have four blogs, Forbes, Huffington Post, LinkedIn and my own@kathycaprino.com what do I write about? I write about things that I see coming towards me in my life. I write about things that agitate me, that piss me off, that get me passionate. Which reminds me, on this page I shared a brief Maya Angelou video. She's an angel now. She is an angel. But watch that, that video. You know, I get choked up because her spirit is so clear. Her loving, wise, beautiful spirit. Spirit is so clear and it rings out like a bell. And we need that in our world today. So watch that. But I bring that up because I write about things that inspire or agitate me or make me want to say something. And so this one, how to deal with someone who's mistreating you is something I'm seeing with people in my life, my beloved family members and friends, colleagues. And the thing is, we are not taught any of this. We are not taught how do I respond and react to someone who's mistreating me. We don't understand how to do any of this. And in many families we are actually crippled in what we're taught. Don't say anything. Don't speak up. Don't, don't resist that. How dare you talk back. None of it is helpful. You've heard me say this, there's a lot of bad parenting out there. We're all trying to do our best, but there's a lot of bad parenting. Good parenting is teaching a child how to speak up and defend themselves, how to create boundaries that help them understand who they are and what they stand for and what they believe and not have other people violate that. Right. That's good parenting. So think about that. Right? Let me, let me jump in here and I'm going to be on for a half hour because I was so late coming. Now, when we're talking about someone mistreating us, I see that every time I move my hand the screen gets dark and it's hard for me not to move my hand. So bear with me. There's a wide range of mistreatment so I want to narrow it down a little. Again, if you're dealing with a personality disorder, narcissism, you, you will not want to react in the same way you react to a normal functioning human being. So again, you, if you got narcissism, abuse, go go to my Facebook group and you know, we're all there to help each other. It's 700 members so far, I think and it's growing a lot of members a day. So join me there. What I want to talk about is every day occurrences of being mistreated. So that can be. You're in a volunteer group, you know who I'm talking about, my friends volunteer group or a cause. And you're offering your amazing time and you're getting abused by someone. The, the second thing is a boss or a colleague. And you know what, I've had every one of these. I know what it's like, it's hellacious, sorry, getting texts. So I'm going to talk about those two things. Alright? So when we talk about the mistreatment, I'm not going to talk about it as sexual abuse here. That's a whole other topic. What I want to talk about is emotional abuse. When you're doing your best and you're bringing your positive energy and you're trying to be doing a good job or you know, helping out this cause and you're getting reamed, you're getting your ass kicked, that's what I'm talking about. And if anybody's on here and you know what I'm talking about and any of this resonates, give me a, give me a thumbs up if you would. So what I want to talk about here, I've got notes because it's important. The veer I'm going to break it down to, into a few categories. The first thing you want to do when you're getting oh, and I do want to say this. I used to not be able to speak up for myself. Anybody who's watched my TED Talk, check that out. You can just Google it. Caprino TEDx I used to not be able to speak up for myself, and now I do. And in fact, in writing, my four blogs have 25 million views. And when you have that kind of viewership, you also get a lot of comments. I think it's probably over 100,000 comments in the five years I've been a professional writer. And not all those comments are kind of. They are mean and cruel and people have forgotten that a human being is on the other side of those comments. People are so damn nasty sometimes when they think they're anonymous. But even if they don't, on LinkedIn I get some where I can see who the person is and where they work and they can be really cruel and cutting and biting and demeaning comments. What happened? I don't understand. I mean, we need to learn how to respond to ideas we don't agree with, with respect, empathy and care and compassion. And my TEDx talk talks about that. It's called Time to Brave up. But so I'm dealing with this every day. You know, someone who rips me another one, I'm going to be rude and say that, okay, so what do we do? The very first thing is you have to be able to evaluate the worthiness of that comment or that treatment to even be considered. So some people, for instance, it's a comment at a board meeting or a comment in your singing group or whatever it is that can be so negative and so outlandish that it's not even worthy of you considering what to do. You just need to go and pop it out of your sphere and that is the end of it. Because some people are unwilling to change, unwilling to hear you, and it's not even worth you letting it in. And you have to be able to evaluate that. Now sometimes we have to let it in and we have to digest it and process it and do something about it, because it's a person we're going to be working with every day. And if you don't say something, you are letting them violate your boundaries. So, you know, take a step back when this has happened and say, how much is this about me and how much is it about this other person? I learned in therapy training 80% of what comes at you is not about you, it's about them. So the first thing is, is this worthy of me even taking a minute to look at? If you feel it is, if the person is usually very reasonable and calm and usually you have a good relationship and you're actually going to be dealing with them a lot, then you do have to deal with it. So the second thing you want to think about is your emotional regulation. What is this comment triggering for you? You know, it's amazing. I work with people and I see it in my own family. You can say the same thing to 10 different people and they will have 10 different responses. If it's negative, if it's biting, one person will be like, yeah, F off. Another person won't even take it in at all. Another person will cry and then think about it for two weeks or two months or two years. You know what I'm talking about? Some people really let in biting, abusive behavior. And there's a reason for that. So one question you want to ask yourself is why is this upsetting me so much? How old is this feeling that I have based on what they just said to me? So for instance, if someone's making you feel stupid because of how you messed up a project, I promise you, some people won't let themselves feel stupid. They don't feel stupid. They have strong self esteem, they think they're smart, and if they blew it, they think, okay, I blew it. But they don't let in that they're stupid ever. So what are you letting in? And I would like you to think about how old is that feeling? And I guarantee you, for many people it's a very old feeling and they felt it in childhood. So if someone says to you you're really, you're really stupid or why did you do that? That's so dumb. If you go to the place where I blew it and I'm stupid, it's something in you that is calling to be changed and healed because you're not stupid. You know, I remember years ago when I was in spiritual psychotherapy, I had a conversation with my therapist that was so interesting. He said, this is how I remember it. Anyway, he said, if I walked out of the room for five minutes and I excused myself and said I had to go do something and you were in the room alone and if I came back, he said, and I looked around and I accused you of stealing a statue or something in my office, what would you think? And I said, I think you're insane. I don't steal. I've never stolen. I think you're crazy. And he said, yeah, of course you would. But if I came back in and said something punitive about your personality, you know, hey, Kathy, we've been talking a long time and I'm seeing that you're, you know, blah, blah, blah, and it's a negative about my personality, then what would I do? And I said, I'd probably take that in. You're my therapist, you know my personality. I'd probably let in that negative comment. And he said, there's a real learning in that when you know unequivocally that what someone is saying is false and you don't let it in. You just realize that that person's crazy or misguided or mistaken. But if it's something that you think could be remotely true, you let it in and you ruminate about it. I think that's so very true. So you need to think about what is this treatment bringing up. For me, the next thing is boundaries. You know, I'm going to talk about it again. To me, it was literally one of the most life changing concepts I learned in therapy training. And I wrote about it in my book Breakdown, Breakthrough under. There's a chapter in my book on breaking cycles of mistreatment. So if you're being mistreated, read, read my book, get it on Amazon. Breakdown Breakthrough. Boundaries, they are the invisible barrier between you and your outside systems that regulate the flow and input of information, input and output of information from your outside systems. Outside systems are your family, your church, your school. Right. Systems and systems are kind of a grouping of human beings in this case. So when you look at boundaries, what's unbelievable is you can actually visibly see them as well by people's behavior. And I'll explain it the way I understand it or conceive of it is they're on a spectrum. The healthiness of your boundaries, so. Or the characteristic of your boundaries. So if we look at one to ten, one is you are, your boundaries are completely diffuse. You let everything in and you do not know where you end and other people begin. So any criticism just goes right in. Right? You don't have a boundary. You don't know where you end and other people begin. 10. The opposite side of the spectrum is absolutely rigid. Nothing gets in and nothing gets out. And you know, I see this where I live, you know, there are many men and women who, for instance, have very high power jobs, leave at six in the morning, come home at nine at night and they're completely disengaged from their family, from the emotional content of their children, they're rigidly disengaged. Nothing's coming out, nothing's coming in. Well, neither of those spec ends are healthy. What you want to be is in the middle that you, you do know where you end and other people begin and you do let in the appropriate content, but you aren't devastated by everything you know. You know what balls to catch and what balls to let drop, right? That's boundaries. And you can see it. You can see it. Boundaries. Take a look at your boundaries in your family of origin. Really diffuse boundaries mean enmeshment. So you can be very enmeshed with your parents and that can look very loving, but it's crippling. If your parents won't let you be an individual, if you can't speak up, if you can't say, you know, mom, I don't agree. If you can't say that your boundaries are enmeshed, if when you get upset, your parent gets so upset that you stop communicating with them or sharing because they are more upset than you are, because bad boundaries, poor boundaries. So what you want to do to be healthy and happy is build your boundaries, know what your non negotiables are, know what you will tolerate, know what you will not, know what your standards of integrity are and enforce them. So the thing is, it's not enough to know them, you have to speak about them and enforce them. You have to set the expectations. So I'm going to give you specifics about that. Okay, In a minute. Yeah. And the third thing about that is when you've been insulted or you're getting mistreated, often you lose the ability to think clearly. You're flooded, you're crying, you're devastated. Well, in those situations you don't act. You wait and you process your emotions and then you choose how to act. Greater awareness equals greater choice. If you're not aware of your feelings or if you're getting reactivated from an old pain, you're not clear, clear thinking. So that's why firing off an email, you know, in the heat of the moment while you're crying or furious is a terrible idea. You will most, most always regret that. All right, now let's talk about if it is some form of emotional abuse. How do I characterize emotional abuse? When the content is cruel and it's meant to demean you and hurt you. It's not an open, calm, kind sharing. And again, I believe you can share your ideas even if you violently, vehemently disagree with someone. You, you can share that with empathy and Compassion and care. If people are demeaning you, tearing you down, insulting you, that's abuse. That's abuse. So what do you do? You need to decide if you're going to let it go or you're going to address it. Right. Why would you let it go again? If the person is totally incapable of change and if you are able to separate yourself from the situation and never have it again, if, however, you're going to be in a repeated situation with this person, you can't let it go. You got to stand up for yourself. All right? Narcissism, we've talked about that. If you're in a narcissistic situation, head over to my Facebook group. Alright? So here's another thing I learned in therapy training that was so brilliant that I never understood before. You can look at life and what happens in two ways, the content of it and the process of it. So the content would be what the person is saying to you. You know, why did you do that? Why didn't you realize that that would be a blah, blah, blah, or how dare you make that move without telling me? Right? So the content is the words. The process is the way in which the individual is in interacting with you. So in this case, we're looking at the process. So let's say you made a big mistake in a project and your boss berates you in public and tears you down. So the content is you made a mistake. The process is demeaning, humiliating and perhaps even bad for your reputation. So when you address it, what you want to do is make clear both the content and the process. So let's say you've made a mistake in your volunteer work. You were running a project, fundraising project, and you thought you were doing the best you could, but you made some mistakes and the person higher level than you is furious. So there's what the person is saying, you made these mistakes, but then it's the process. Do they keep going on and on about it? Are they haranguing you? Are they using terminology that's hurtful? So it's time to stand up. After you've processed your emotions, you've gone home and said, wow, how old is this feeling? Why am I crying? Why do I feel so devastated? Why is this wreaking havoc with my confidence? That's not about what that person said to you, that's about what's being triggered in you. And you got to deal with it, you've got to heal it. And I want to tell you, most of us, as Einstein said, cannot solve a problem on the level of consciousness that created it. You'll need help. You'll need therapeutic help, coaching help, energy healing help. You'll need something to help you heal from how you are getting triggered. Okay? But once you've done the work and you want to make sure that this person never treats you like that again, there's a lot of ways you can do it. You can send an email so that you can think about it and they can think about it. And then you say, I would love to speak with you. I've done that in partnerships. I just recently did it. I sent a long email that was very calm, and it outlined the bullet points that were objectionable and that I needed to make clear. Because in writing, I'm a writer. I can do that really clearly. But then I said, when can you talk? I would really like to talk this through. And in those situations, it really. When there's a complex set of points you want to make, writing can be great because the person can also sit calmly and read those and formulate his or her thoughts and opinions without getting emotionally reactive or processing through emotional reaction. So that can be a great way. Another way is you pick up the phone and you call them and you say, you know what? What went down yesterday was really upsetting for me. Would you be able to meet in person to talk about that? Because in person, you can't be as hurtful as via email or online or Twitter. I mean, look at what goes on on Twitter. People tear each other's lives apart because they think it's anonymous. They think they can. It's so cruel. I hate it. You know what I'd like to share with everybody is don't say one word in writing that you wouldn't want to appear on the front page of the New York Times. I'm gonna say that again. Don't write anything that you wouldn't be okay with appearing in the front page of the New York Times. When you do that, you're going to not let yourself fall into the habit of tearing someone's life apart through your words. Your words are weapons that way. Okay, so now let's say you're meeting with the person and let's say they ripped you another one over something that you did, and you've thought about it and you feel that that was really unfair. Then, in fact, you did the job fine. And they're micromanaging. How about that? How many people have micromanagers? I wrote a post. Why are there so many terrible managers? You can find that on Forbes. It's amazing. So what you can do is say, let me talk about what happened yesterday, and I'd like to share my take on that, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it. So you're saying it with empathy, you're saying it with care, you're saying it with compassion. Who knows what this person's going through? Maybe they just had a diagnosis of cancer. Maybe their child just got into drugs. You don't know what this person is going through, who's making him or her act that way. If it's an aberrant behavior, if it's chronic, that's something else. So you'll say to them, I would like to share that. Okay, what happened yesterday, let me tell you how I feel about it. Clearly, I could have done better with this project. There were a few things that I did, you know, that in hindsight, weren't the best. However, you did hand the project to me and say, run with it. So I did. Now, the way you screamed at me in and in front of others, I will not accept that. I'm doing my best. And there's one thing that I require, especially in any volunteer work that I'm doing, or if it's with your boss, you can say, in any professional or personal situation, I require one thing, and that's respect. So what you did was humiliating and disrespectful. And, you know, I. I just. I don't tolerate that. So your boss may say, or this president or this, you know, the person who was supposed to oversee your project may get very defensive. If they're really evolved, they'll say, you're right, I'm sorry, I lost my temper and I should not have said those things. If they're not evolved, they'll go to the defensive place. They'll say, well, you got me very upset. What you did was, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're going to try to make it about you that you plug them in. I remember I had a client who beat his daughter. And when in therapy, I was a therapist, and I, you know, I had to find a place in my heart where I could even work with this man. And if you judge and you hate, you can't help someone. So I had to work through my judgment and my hatred of that behavior. And I did. And so I said, why? Why? Why did you hit her? And he said, because she was disrespectful to me, and I won't tolerate it. So in his mind, she deserved it because she was not being respectful to Him. And what we had to work through was, I understand that she was disrespectful. What we have to work on is, is violence the way that you want to teach her to respect you because, number one, you will never get it that way. And number two, every human being has the inalienable right to remain safe. And so you're breaking kind of two cardinal rules. But I couldn't, I couldn't lecture him. I had to, I had to join him in understanding how he felt disrespected. So back to your issue with your boss. Your boss may say, well, you blew it and you got me mad because you didn't follow protocol. And again, you're not going to let someone get away with disrespecting you because they're angry at you. They're two very different things. So that's my wish for you, that you begin to speak up. And again, watch my TEDX talk. Time to brave up. It gives you specific language. So I think I talked about this in a prior video, but let me say it. You can say something forceful and have it get through in many ways, but particularly if you put a framing statement that is grounded in one of your values in front of what you're going to say. So you could say, in this case, one of my values, one of my deep core values is respect and integrity. And given that, what I need to share with you is how you spoke to me and behaved to me yesterday in public, to me, violated my respect, you know, myself, my, my respect and my standards of integrity. There you go. So, you know, there's some overarching themes. When someone says something horrible to you, think about why you're having the reaction you are. And if there's anything from the past that you want to heal so that you don't take it in and feel stupid and feel worthless, then you need to do please, some healing work. So that, number one, that kind of comment doesn't trigger you to have a traumatic response. Number two, I'm going to tell you this. When your boundaries get strong, you stop attracting this behavior. And I'm not saying you deserve it, you don't deserve it. But we attract and hook into mistreatment when we've been mistreated because our boundaries aren't strong enough. Other people who've never had this wouldn't tolerate that for a minute. So think about your boundaries. Think about how old this feeling is. Start the healing work. You know, reach out to a therapist, to a coach, to a friend who can help you again, because we can't solve this on the level of consciousness and pain that created it. And then when you speak up, say it assertively and authoritatively but calmly, grounded in values. You know, I believe in respect and care and compassion. And what you did was not respectful, compassionate, or caring. And I don't work with. I don't allow that. And then stop. Stop talking and see what happens. I hope this is helpful, you know, especially around the holidays. We. I talked about that last week. People drink too much. There's excess in a lot of ways, you know. Do you know that depression and suicidality increases around the holidays? It's hard. It's hard for people, especially when their family members are cruel and disrespectful. It's up to you. Set your boundaries. State it unemotionally, not reactively. And state what you will, state your expectations and state what you will accept and what you won't. I promise you, the more you do that, the more you'll have people treating you the way you deserve. All right, my friends, I hope that's helpful. Please watch, share, add your comments to the bottom of this. I'd love to hear and join me next, next year, My goodness, in January. And please write under this video what you would like me to talk about. What you want? What are your issues? What are your challenges? How can I help you? I'm here to help. And I'm wishing you an amazing holiday season for those who celebrate holidays, celebrate events this, this month and a brilliant, beautiful, shining new year full of respect, love, care and compassion. Okay, everybody, thanks so much. I'll see you soon. Bye.