It seems I’ve fallen off blogging regularly this week but I’m super focused on a multitude of personal things including my son’s wedding. I’m also putting a lot of time and attention into my Enneagram sessions. The same item that seems to come up is toxic relationships and/or relationship changes.
It’s not surprising to learn that it’s a hot topic. We are more concerned about our relationships with our friends and family than any other piece of our lives. My most shared posts on social media has to do with toxic relationships and abandoned relationships.
There are a few reasons that relationships change. BOUNDARIES – if we hold our boundary which must be verbally said or it’s not a boundary and our boundary is not received, respected, and honored then the other person does not love us as we need to be loved. We have permission to let them go.
TOXIC – the friend or family member is toxic. They gaslight us, give us silent treatment as a form of punishment, emotionally abuse us, or physically abuse us, we have permission to let them go. We are not here to fix others but to fix ourselves and part of fixing ourselves is removing ourselves from toxic relationships and environments.
And this one is the hardest. What if they are respecting our boundaries and what if they are not toxic but we outgrow the relationship? And what I’m about to say is not to be interpreted as a hard cut but as a suggestion to move on. We can still have a relationship but maybe not as tightly woven.
OUTGROW – If we are working on ourselves as a daily practice and our friends and family are not then it’s no different than working on ourselves physically. If one goes out every day to train for a marathon and the other is satisfied to do a daily walk then it’s inevitable that the runner is always going to be ahead of the walker.
Outgrowing relationships is going to happen if others are not working on themselves. And even if they are sometimes it’s necessary not to have all the winners together. At the end of every Super Bowl and World Series game, the winners are disbursed to other teams so they can teach others to be winners. Hard to digest if we think why would we want to break up such a perfect group. Because our responsibilities are to help others and shine our light on the world therefore the winners must move on.
I don’t want to be the “smartest” one in the room. If I’m the one that has all the answers because I’ve done the work or I’m the fastest runner because I’ve been training then who do I look to within my relationships to grow myself? Note to self…never be the smartest one in the room. Find the people who will guide you to be better, to do better for yourself and others.
Dealing to Healing 