Receiving: Can Toxic Shame Stop Someone From Being Able To Receive?

While some people can give things to others and end up receiving things from them, there are others who don’t experience life in this way. What they can find is that although they go out of their own way to help the people around them, rarely does anything come back to them.
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One-Sided

One could be only too happy to do things for their friends and family, but this is generally going to be in vain. This is not to say that they will only help them because they expect something back though.

Yet even if they are this way, they are going to have their own needs that need to be fulfilled. So, if their needs are not being met, it is naturally going to cause them to suffer, and this could end up being something that will consume their life.

One Focus

Instead of being able to carry on with their life and being able to continue to give, they could end up spending a lot of time thinking about when their life will change. They could end up feeling angry, and even experience resentment towards the people in their life.

Even so, they could keep what is taking place to themselves and act as though everything is fine. The people around them will then have no reason to change their behaviour, and one’s life could end up getting even worse.

One Direction

Through being this way, it is not going to be possible for anyone to call them self-centred. What they might end up saying is that one spends too much time thinking about others and not enough time thinking about themselves.

At the same time, if one is always doing things for others and these people don’t do a lot for them, this could be something that they rarely hear. The reason for this is that these people are likely to be caught up with their own needs.

Their Purpose

These people could see them as someone who is there to meet their needs, and it will then be normal for these people to take advantage of them. This can then show that they lack boundaries, and this causes them to see people as an extension of themselves.

When someone does this, it doesn’t mean that they will see other people and say to themselves that they are extension of them. They are likely to just see another person and to treat them in this way.

The Difference

Through behaving in this way, they are not going to see others as individuals who have their own needs and feelings, for instance. They will be seen as people who are there to meet their own needs.

There is then not going to be their own self and self that other people have, there will only be their own self and everyone else’s self will be practically invisible. But even if some of the people around them were to tell them to focus on their own needs, it might not have an effect on them.

Resistance

If one was to think about getting their needs met, they may start to feel uncomfortable. This could then be a time when they will think about how they don’t deserve to have them met.

As a result of this, one will start to see why they behave as they do, and they might then realise that they have a choice. One is then going to be in a position where they can change their circumstances.

The Same Story

However, one could find that they feel as though they don’t deserve to have their needs met and this could be as far as it will go. It is then not going to be something they can change; it will be seen as something they have to put up with.

The only thing they will be able to do is to carry on with their life, and they won’t be able to stop the pain they are experiencing. It will then be necessary for them to see that they don’t deserve to experience life in this way.

From Within

And while other people will be able to tell them this, this won’t be enough for them to change their life; the only way it will change is if they come to understand this for themselves. Once they get to the point where they are no longer willing to tolerate this, they will be able to do something about it.

The part of them that is willing to put up with it won’t be as strong as the part of them that isn’t, and this will get the ball moving, so to speak. During this time, they might take a deeper look into why they feel this way.

Way Back

If this is how they have experienced life for as long as they can remember, they might end up looking into what took place during their early years. There is also the chance that they believe this was a time when they were not treated with love and care.

Perhaps this was a time when they were abused and/or neglected, and this would have meant that their needs were rarely, if ever, met. This would then have set them up to believe that their needs were something to be ashamed of and that they were not important.

A Natural Response

Due to what took place when they were younger, one might gradually come to see that it is not much of surprise that they expedience life in this way. Ultimately, they didn’t receive what they needed in order to develop in the right way.

Through being treated in this way, they probably would have ended up experiencing toxic shame. This would have caused them to feel worthless and as though there was something inherently wrong with them.

Awareness

One has needs and this is part of being human; there is no reason for them to feel ashamed and as though they don’t deserve to have them met. But as they do feel this way, it will be vital for them to do something about it.

They might need to reach out for external support, and this can be provided by a therapist. 

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk