mental-health

Ten Step Strategy for Dealing with Disrespect:

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden , , , ,

Sometimes people act in disrespectful ways towards us, perhaps it is even the habitual dynamic in our relationship. What should we do?

We don’t help people by letting them disrespect us since they accumulate all sorts of negative karma in the process. But we also don’t help people by having no relationship with them, so we can’t just go around ending completely all relationships if there is the slightest disrespect. So what is the middle way here? What follows are ten steps we can try to navigate a middle way that works for us and our situation.

I would say the first thing we have to do is admit that yes, they are acting in disrespectful ways towards us. Sometimes we rationalize away other’s bad behavior or we believe their gaslighting of us. No, we need to call a spade a spade. Conventionally, we need to be exactly as normal.

Second, we should check within ourselves why we allow others to treat us that way? Perhaps there is some attachment we have to what they provide us that keeps us around and we are afraid if we say something we will lose that thing. Or perhaps we have deep-seated self-hatred and we think we deserve such behavior. Or perhaps we have a savior or martyr complex thinking if we stick around or cooperate with their behavior, we can get them to change for the better. Or perhaps we just have a misunderstanding of what it means to cherish others with wisdom. There are all sorts of possible explanations, we need to find out what is actually going on in our mind.

Third, we need to have an have an honest conversation with ourself about whether we have the capacity to stick around or whether in fact it is destroying us in the process. Self-sacrifice is not cherishing others. Usually there are many shades of gray with this one, where we do have the capacity to transform X, but not really Y; or we can handle it for a certain period of time, but after that we start to lose our cool. This step is essential for being able to establish healthy boundaries. First and foremost, we must establish boundaries that honestly accept our present capacity. If the situation pushes us beyond our capacity and we are going to start engaging in all sorts of hurtful, negative, or angry actions (or we reach a point where we can’t hold back our attachments), then we owe it to both ourselves and to the other person to disengage so we can stay in a zone where we can keep it together.

Fourth, for the things that are within our capacity to transform, we need to do the inner Dharma work of dismantling the attachments, anger, doubts, lack of self-confidence, unwise compassion, jealousy, or whatever other delusions are allowing the other person to disrespect us. Once we have worked through those, we will be in a position to have a conversation with the other person about the disrespectful behavior pattern that exists in our relationship.

Fifth, when we approach the other person, we should try use as skillful means as we possibly can. The books on non-violent communication have a ton of excellent tips for how to do this. VGL once said when it comes to skillful means, there is no fault in learning from non-Dharma sources. Dharma doesn’t teach us how to do accounting, computer coding, or building temples – but it can help us do all those things better. Same with listening well, being a coach, engaging in skillful communication, etc. VGL once taught that we can go to the other person and say something to the effect of, “when you do X, I experience it as Y; but perhaps I am misunderstanding. Can you please clarify your perspective on this.” Then try have a constructive conversation. You can – and most often should – have very clear asks of them. I ask you to please not disrespect me in this way, or going forward can you please do Z instead. Both we and they need to know what specifically is a different way forward. Just saying “don’t do X” isn’t enough if they don’t know what they should do instead.

Sixth, if despite your best efforts (both in terms of pure motivation and skillful means), the person refuses to change, then you need to ask yourself, “how big of a deal is this?” Perhaps it is something huge like abusive behavior where the person is creating terrible karma for themselves and you sticking around is like a cancer eating away at your sense of self-worth and self-respect. Or perhaps it is really not a big deal and certainly not worth blowing your relationship up over, and better to just let it slide. Request wisdom to know the difference.

Seventh, if it is a big deal and the other person refuses to change their behavior, then it’s time for boundaries again, but you need to give them a warning. You say something to the effect of, “If X behavior continues, then I will have to disengage from you in Y way.” Sometimes you don’t even need to say anything, you can just do it and hope they get the cue. Try make Y specifically proportional to the offending behavior. No point throwing out the entire baby with a little bit of dirty bathwater. For example, if you are not able to continue to have this conversation in person, then we will have to do it in writing. Or if you insist that I join you in X negative action when we are together, then I will no longer hang out with you in that way. There are countless different variants of this depending upon our individual circumstances, the point is “right size” your disengagement from them to the specific disrespect. We don’t want to end the relationship (we have a bodhichitta commitment to them, after all), but we do want to end their ability to continue to disrespect us in that way. Remember, healthy boundaries are not about telling other people what they can or can’t do – they are in charge of that. Rather, they are about what WE will do based upon what is happening. We are not trying to control others, but we do not have to apologize for controlling and protecting ourself.

Eighth, sometimes we will need to repeat our warning a few times before it registers, so it’s usually a good idea to “give them one last chance,” but if it continues, you need to decisively execute on your boundary. Sometimes we don’t even need to say anything, we can just leave the room, hang up, end the communication, not return their call, stop sending them money they are misusing, whatever. If they ask, we can explain that we told them this is what we were going to do, so we need to follow through with our actions, otherwise our boundaries mean nothing and they won’t credibly take our warnings in the future.

Ninth, we need to hold the line no matter the backlash. There is a very real risk that they will try every trick in their book to get us to go back to how things were. Perhaps they get flaming pissed, perhaps they get all nice (“I’ll change honey, I promise,” when we know as soon as we take them back, they will fall right back into their old patterns), perhaps they start threatening all the things we were afraid of losing, perhaps they try guilt trip us. Perhaps they try all of them in rapid succession. All these tactics have worked in the past, so why wouldn’t they try them again? But this time, we accept them all as purification, adjusting our boundaries in real time as necessary showing that we will not cooperate with these attempts at emotional blackmail either. Sometimes these cycles can escalate very quickly and it get really bad. Hold. The. Line. If you cave when the pressure gets too strong, you just guarantee that next time you try draw a line, they will escalate to that point and beyond. But if you show that they can throw everything they have at you and you do not budge, but rather you just get further and further out of the way so they cannot harm you, at some point they will give up trying. You will have broken the cycle. They will continue to try several more times in other contexts in the future, but because you saw it through once, they will know it won’t work in the future, and they will try less and less until they give up. This ninth step is often the hardest because it is where we are forced to directly confront the delusions within our mind that enabled others to disrespect us in the first place (that we identified in step two above).

Lastly, as the situation de-escalates and they realize we are serious, we make an attempt to preserve what remains of our relationship that was not unhealthy, harmful, toxic, disrespectful, or bad in some way. Sometimes this will mean relaxing some of the additional boundaries we put in place in real time during the escalation phase above. Perhaps they will accept a new equilibrium or perhaps they are incapable of doing so. If they can, great; if they can’t, then so be it. We give them the choice to continue in these healthy ways, but we will not continue in these unhealthy ways. They then decide what they want – either directly decide or their continued harmful behavior decides for them. Either way, we accept their choice.

None of this is easy, but all of it is good for our practice. Of course we should request Dorje Shugden to arrange whatever is best, we should bring Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka into our heart and ask that he work through us, we should request wisdom blessings to know what to do, we should talk to friends who give us good advice, we should try maintain pure view, and all the rest. We should use every Dharma tool we have throughout all ten of these steps.

Living beings are precious, including disrespectful ones, because they give us a chance to learn how to actually use the Dharma to dismantle the delusions in our mind – including those that cause us to let others mistreat us or to stick around when it is time to go. We will carry these realizations with us for the rest of this life and all our future lives. They are more valuable than a universe filled with wish granting jewels. In short, going through all this may suck, but it is totally worth it.

The Fires of the Deepest Hell for the Sake of Each Being:

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden , , , ,

Maybe when we first start practicing Dharma we are selfish in the sense of not caring about others, neglecting them, etc. A few years of practice and that is easy enough to leave behind. Where it gets complicated is when we absolutely want to cherish others, but sometimes the best way to cherish them is to stop enabling self-destructive behavior. Sometimes not helping them helps them more because it forces them to step up and assume responsibility for themselves and their own future.

I have spent decades misinterpreting cherishing others to mean becoming everybody’s savior, solving all their problems for them, but to a large extent all I did was create dependency and deprive them of the opportunity to learn how to stand on their own two feet.

I think for me the key test is “are they capable of doing this thing themselves?” If the answer is no, and it needs to be done, then OK, I will step in and do it for them. But if the answer is yes, they can (even if they don’t believe they can), then I will make myself available to coach them how to do it themselves, but the burden has to fall on them to do it. And if they don’t, then the consequences of them not doing it are also theirs to bear.

When I do that, they will howl in protest and use every single emotional blackmail tool in their arsenal to get me to do it for them – guilt tripping me, getting mad at me, threatening self-harm or self-destruction in some way, provoking some sort of crisis that forces me to step in, etc., etc., etc. And why wouldn’t they? Such a strategy has worked for them countless times in the past. That’s how they have learned to cope with life’s difficulties – self-destruct in some way or get mad at me to do things for them. I have trained them to do exactly that. Breaking these patterns is really hard.

When we stop participating in these behavioral cycles, they hate you for it, they cut off communication, they emotionally implode (or explode), they trigger crises, etc. If we give in to these forms of emotional blackmail, it never stops and the cycle starts again. Sometimes natural life consequences are the best teacher.

But again, for me at least, the test is “can they realistically do it on their own?” If they can’t, and it is conventionally our responsibility in society to help them, then we need to care for them because it is normal to do so, even if they are being emotionally abusive towards us along the way. We are not helping them to avoid the emotional abuse, we are helping them because they need help and we can do so.

But even this has an exception: “Are we capable of continuing to help without it crushing us in the process?” Here we have to be really honest with ourselves about what our actual capacity is. If our helping is destroying us, destroying our capacity, preventing us from practicing Dharma, leading to burnout, etc., then we have to say, “I would want to help, but unfortunately I can’t.” Sometimes our understanding of cherishing others not only leads to savior complexes as above, but also martyr complexes where we sacrifice ourself on the altar of helping others. Of course we sacrifice our self-cherishing – we have gathered all blame into one and are willing to torch it – but we don’t sacrifice OURSELVES. We are not our self-cherishing. We can’t make destroying our self-cherishing to mean destroying ourself. There are many, many people in this world that I would want to help, but I lack the capacity to do so. I need to use the fact that I would want to help but currently lack the capacity to do so to fuel my bodhichitta – this is why I need to become a Buddha so then I can help everyone.

The other mistake I make is exaggerating the importance of a few people on the altar of others who I could also be helping. If I spend all my time and mental energy on just a few people (who I’m not really helping anyways, I’m just enabling them becoming dependent on me to solve their problems for them) and I neglect all these other people who I could be helping who do want my help and I can make a difference in their lives, then I am not cherishing ALL living beings. We need to cherish everyone, not sacrifice many for the sake of few.

This gets hard when it is our conventional responsibility to help certain people (such as our kids, aging parents, employees, close friends, etc.). So for me, if I have a conventional responsibility towards somebody, then I accept this is my responsibility and I meet it because that is the “exactly as normal” thing to do in modern life. VGL has said countless times we should not be abandoning our families, etc., to “practice Dharma,” but instead we should start with those we are karmically close to and expand outwards. But there does come a point where we have met our karmic responsibilities and conventionally they should be taking care of themselves. Then, if there are others who I could be helping more, then I should be willing to cherish them too, even if doing so means I might be helping those I have been helping a lot a little less.

Then the final hurdle is learning to accept sometimes those we love will suffer and there is nothing we can do about it in the short-term. We need to completely let go of our attachment to them being OK and not suffering. We of course care for them and wish that they don’t suffer, but we can’t be personally ATTACHED to them not suffering, where our mental peace and well-being depends upon them not suffering. Just as we have to accept the truth of suffering for ourself, so too we need to accept the truth of suffering of others. They are in samsara so their lives are also the nature of suffering. Accepting this fact then needs to channel into our bodhichitta – therefore the only solution is I need to become a Buddha so I can eventually be there for them in life after life, gradually leading them out. But I can’t liberate them like a magic wand. They have to do the work. I can’t do it for them. So I need supreme patience with them (“please be patient with us”) and acceptance that they are likely going to suffer for a very long time until they do what needs to be done to not. I can’t do it for them.

It’s so hard. I often try remember the line from Offering to the Spiritual Guide, “even if I must remain in the fires of the deepest hell for many aeons for the sake of each being.” The bodhisattva’s path is not for the faint of heart. In the end, I put my faith in Dorje Shugden. I bring VGL into my heart requesting his wisdom blessings to know what to do. And then I try be as much like Heruka as I can be. I make mistakes, I try correct for them; I get knocked down, I get back up again. With persistence, we will get there in the end. We will eventually attain enlightenment and guide them to the same state.

Embracing the Ruins of Our Life

Kadampa Ryan 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden , , , ,

Sometimes we find our life in ruins. Everything we have been working for and building has been wiped out or lay in ruins, with little hope of ever going back to how things were. Sometimes, even, we realize how our own past choices and mistakes led to such a state. It is easy at such times to fall into extremes of shame, guilt, hopelessness, and despair.

What to do?

Sometimes learning things the hard way leaves a deeper impression on our mind and so protects us from even worse in the future because we once and for all start avoiding repeating those same mistakes. Each time we confront the consequences of our past choices, we can take it as a reminder of these lessons.

But the key, I think, is to make sure we are 100% avoiding guilt and beating ourselves up about it. That just gets in the way, and in fact is its own form of self-anger, so still a delusion and negative action (self-harm).

We need to accept where we are at, both externally in terms of our situation and internally in terms of the nexus of delusions and negative karma that led us to our present circumstances and that still remain within our mind.

To accept where we are at means to be at peace with it. OK, this is where I find myself. I know how I got here and I am at peace with that too, free from any guilt or discouragement. Now, I rebuild from here. We need to accept the rubble of our past wars before we can start cleaning it up and building something new, something better.

When we confront the reality of our situation, such as ruined relationships, those we love falling into the abyss, financial difficulties, health problems, addictions, anxiety, depression, discouragement, bitterness or despair, we need to learn to accept that too.

These outer and inner circumstances give us an opportunity to let go of our attachments to these things. These attachments have led us to countless problems in the past. Our present circumstances give us the chance to finally let them go. This doesn’t mean we abandon, for example, our efforts to have healthy, meaningful relationships nor does it mean we don’t try improve our financial situation if we can, but it does mean we let go of our attachments thinking these things matter for our happiness. They don’t.

Our happiness depends upon whether our mind is at peace with both our external and our internal circumstance. Going forward, it depends on whether we deepen that peace through lamrim, lojong, and mahamudra. This is our task now, if we choose to accept it as the main purpose of what time we have left.

I, of course, realize as I write this that in truth I’m writing to myself. These are exactly the things I need to realize towards my own situation. As somebody close to me often says, “it is what it is.” OK, no problem, we build something new from here – both externally and internally. We try do so on the foundation of the lessons learned seeing the ruins of our present life and that of those we love. We can’t control whether others learn their lessons, but we can learn the lessons from their life for them with a bodhichitta motivation. We collect these realizations now so we can share it with them in the future when they are ready, or at the very least we set a good example they may or may not appreciate.

So yeah, sometimes it is a total wipeout. Sometimes we lose everything. Sometimes even we realize our own role in the situation we find ourself in. Great. We now learn our lessons, let go of any guilt, and get to work on building something new, both externally and internally. Something better, something healthier, something more stable, something more peaceful. The choice is ours. Our future is too. What our future looks like depends upon what we do now. Accept the ruins, yes; lament them, no.

Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka, Dorje Shugden, Heruka, please fill my mind with your blessings to accept the ruins of my life, clean up its mess, learn its lessons, and build something better from here, for my own sake, for the sake of all those I love, and for the sake of all others who might find themselves in similar situations.