Hello sweetheart!
I want you to think about your personal domain. Dr. Betty Martin explained this during an online conference I attended and it really resonated with me.
Your domain includes the following. Think of a box around it, like a fence.
Feelings/emotions
Body
Thoughts
Dreams
Desires
Goals
Choices
Health
You are responsible for your own domain and you have the right to it.
Now think of anyone else you know and their domain. You can’t put what’s in your domain into someone else’s.
We need to be honest about what’s in our own domain. Our needs/feelings. If we avoid ours, we’ll often try to get someone else to be responsible for it. This is how blame shows up. This is where we expect others to ‘read our minds.’ We aren’t responsible for another's domain either.
When someone tries to reach into your domain (and tell you how to feel, think or do) it’s probably going to make you mad. Anger is a good signal this may have happened. This would be a good thing to look at. Maybe you’ve allowed them for a while to get away with this? Why do you let them do this?
Once you get the skills to say no, now the dynamic has to change and that can be scary and hard to sort out. Asking for someone to change their behaviour is very different than trying to control their behaviour. Asking allows you to take responsibility and allows the other to say no and keeps them responsible for their domain also.
We affect each other and this is good. The key here is you/they can request a preference, but we need to be able to gracefully accept a no. We are not entitled to tell people what to do.
I liked looking at it this way. Hopefully it helps you also when trying to understand yourself and others.
All my love,
K 💛
