Emotional Intelligence for Critical Thinkers
What if the person you’re with is toxic, but you have a belief that they are the best you can get?
What if you’re stuck in a relationship you don’t like, but stick around anyway because you think you’ll never find anything better, so what’s the point?
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You made it. The conditions were rough yet you still accomplished what seemed like an impossible climb out of your own dysfunction in your relationship.
You went through all the healing, growing, learning, and evolving you could, and may have even given your partner the ultimatum to shape up or ship out so that your relationship had no choice but to shift into something new or fall apart completely.
You’ll never go back to the way it was. Is the relationship now “saved”?
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Highly defensive people are very sensitive to certain subjects causing them to go into a sort of fight or flight response. After all, why jump into a defensive posture unless you think there’s a threat?
The threat is typically not realistic, but that’s only an outsider’s perspective because to the person with the defensive behavior, the threat could be very real to them. But what exactly are they threatened by?
I received a letter from a listener that was dealing with a defensive person at work. Her coworker would get very defensive whenever anyone would talk about “controversial subjects” around her. The letter writer didn’t tell me exactly which controversial subjects were being discussed, but I could only assume that they were the typical ones that most people have a very staunch opinion on.
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Has dysfunction become the new normal for you? Are you in a relationship where your tolerance for bad behavior is so high that you don’t even recognize what’s bad for you anymore? That sounds like a topic for discussion if you ask me!
Also, I read a letter from someone who wants to know how to deal with defensive people. There is a path to working with those types, and becoming aggressive or offensive back is not typically the best way to handle their behavior. You may have to become a bit of a sleuth. I talk about that and more in today’s episode.
The number of manipulative people in the world is probably a lot higher than you might imagine. Of course, maybe I have that perception because the majority of my clients are in manipulative relationships, and I just don’t see too many other types.
Back around 2010, I realized I was a manipulative person for most of my life. I used masterful communication skills to get my selfish needs met by those closest to me.
In every relationship I’ve ever been in, I found ways to manipulate my partner. It took several breakups and finally a divorce for me to realize that my behavior was the reason for all of the heartaches that kept appearing in my life.
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