Thrive Counseling - FL, NJ & GA

At our core, we all desire to be loved. It is one of the common threads that unites humanity. Relationships are fundamental to our human existence. It is the most significant form of engagement we will ever experience. Which makes it no surprise that we invest so much time, energy, and commitment into our relationships. Strong, supportive relationships serve to feed our confidence and enhance our lives.  But what if one or more of your relationships are toxic?  What if someone is consistently unkind to you or repetitively disrespectful?  

At Thrive Counseling, we believe that you have the power to change the nature of your unhealthy relationships. You have the power to teach others how to treat you by what you tolerate and how you treat yourself. 

When discussing relationships with clients, I like to highlight the basic fundamentals (please note that the use of the word relationship in this article does not solely denote one of romantic involvement, but of any connection and interaction between two people). You do not have the ability to control or change the other person in the relationship, you only have the power to control and change yourself. That power is not limited in scope, however, as by changing yourself you have the power to influence and alter the dynamics of the relationship itself.  

Let’s look at this another way.  

If you don’t stand up for yourself, and instead bend and break to please everyone, then you are teaching people that it is acceptable to walk all over you. If you talk poorly about yourself and don’t care for yourself well, then you are teaching people that you don’t deserve to be respected and cared for. So people will disrespect you and they’ll treat you poorly, because that is exactly what you have taught them to do. In these situations, you have negatively influenced the dynamics of the relationship.

In other words, by changing your boundaries you can effectively influence other people to respect you and treat you well.

By setting relational boundaries and accepting only respectful engagements, you have the power to influence the dynamics of the relationship and encourage the other person to treat you the way you wish to be treated. 

The other way to influence relational dynamics is by treating yourself the way you expect to be treated by others. The Golden Rule is powerful, even when used on yourself. When you respect yourself, you are demonstrating to others the appropriate way to treat you. We all learn a lot through observation; people will pay attention to how you treat yourself, and they will mimic what you model to them.

But you have to believe in yourself. Only you have the power to affect how people see you and how they interact with you. So take the first step. Say yes to yourself.