This was first published on ksl.com

In response to my article on forgiveness last week, some readers have asked me to address forgiveness when the offender has what may be considered narcissistic behavior traits. These readers described some toxic behavior that should not be tolerated.

Having said that, you still want to forgive these people, (I will explain how), but that doesn't mean you should allow or subject yourself to their toxic behavior. Many people who have tolerated toxic behavior from family members for a long time can’t see how unacceptable the behavior is. They may start to think it’s normal because it’s normal in their family.

Here are some behaviors that may fall into this category:

• Name calling
• Emotional harassment and cruelty
• Yelling and swearing
• Destructive criticism
• Physical or seuxal abuse of any kind
• Put downs and belittling you
• Ridicule and shaming how you look or dress
• Refuse to leave your personal space or let you leave
• For spouses: Being forced or obligated sexually when you don’t want to
• Blaming all fights and arguments on you, never owning any wrongdoing
• Cheating
• Lying
• Holding grudges and always bringing up the past
• Intentionally making you feel uncomfortable
• Restricting your freedom
• Destructive jealousy
• Ignoring you, cold shoulder or refusal to talk to you for days or weeks
• Intimidating or threatening you
• Acting out violently
• Verbal intimidation

Having boundaries and refusing to participate in activities or allow relationships where these behaviors occur is healthy and wise. Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean you trust them or are willing to spend time with them. If their behavior is destructive to you in any way, them you should decline to be around them.

You should still forgive them though. This means you will harbor no hate, anger, judgment, fear or resentment about them anymore. This means you have chosen to accept where and who they are, and place their fate in a higher power's hands. You can walk away from the prison of hate and pain and free yourself from any negative emotion toward this person.

Forgiveness is about letting them be a struggling, scared student in the classroom of life, just like you. Forgiveness means giving up judgment and seeing all people as having the same intrinsic worth, no matter what they do. This person is not less than you, they are just experiencing a different classroom journey than yours. They have signed up for different lessons and you can send blessings and love their way without actually spending time with them. I call this loving them from afar.

Often, this is the loving choice you must make.

If this person is someone you are forced to spend time with this may become harder. You will need to build a force field of trust and love around you to protect yourself as you interact with them.

This force field is built of trust that nothing they say or do can diminish your value and nothing they say or do can ruin your day, week or life journey. Whatever obstacles they create for you today are the lessons that can help you grow and learn. Trusting these two things will make you bulletproof to bad behavior.

Imagine they're shooting poisoned arrows your way but your force field of trust and love protects you, and the arrows just bounce off. Make sure you leave the arrows on the ground and don't pick them up and hurt yourself with them. Sometimes we do this. We may keep thinking about and repeating the insult in our mind, ruminating on it again and again. We may hang on to these insults for days or even years. This is self-inflicted pain.

Let their toxic words and behaviors bounce off. Don’t let them have the power to destroy your peace. Choose to see everything that happens as here to serve you. Every experience can help you become stronger, wiser and more loving.

Choosing a mindset this mature, wise and loving will take commitment and practice. Your ego may resist because it prefers judging, gossip, anger, the moral high ground and holding grudges. Resist the urge to let your ego go takeover.

Being a forgiving person does not mean allowing others to mistreat us. It means we don’t let their mistreatment rob us of our peace.

You can do this. 

Coach Kim Giles is a master coach, author and corporate people skills trainer behind www.claritypointcoaching.com and www.12shapes.com. She is available for both individual coaching and corporate training.

This was first published on ksl.com

Question:

My husband sent me your article about a victim mentality to read. I do have a hard time with that. My husband had an emotional affair with a co-worker a few years ago, and I am having a hard time letting it go, even though it’s been over for a while. How do you not feel like a victim when your husband hurt you, and now he also wants to blame you for what he did and the effects it has had on your family? We have gone to counselors but it hasn’t helped. Yet, he says my behavior is having a negative effect on everyone and everything. Can you help me change how I feel about his affair and let it go?

Answer:

The way out of a victim mentality when you have been offended lies in two things: 1.) Changing your perspective and trusting in the universe that this experience is here to teach you something, and 2.) Learning how to truly forgive others for disappointing you.

I explained how to change your perspective in last week’s article, now I want to explain why you might be struggling to forgive. The fact is, you may see "rewards" in not forgiving and as long as holding onto anger is serving you, then you may not want to change it. Forgiveness can only happen when you are ready to let go of these perceived rewards and grasp onto different rewards that are even better.

Here are some common perceived rewards for not forgiving along with the costs associated with them:

• Are you casting the other person as the villain so you can feel like the good one? Is staying mad giving you a self-righteous upper hand and allowing you to feel better than them?

COST: You might feel superior to the other person, but you may never have a healthy relationship with them that truly makes you happy.

• Are you getting sympathy or validation from other people when you talk about how you were hurt? Some people hold onto a victim story for this very reason but not consciously realize it. Do you wonder who you would be without this story?

COST: People may feel sorry for you, but they may never respect you or see you as strong or wise. Is that something you're OK with?

• Do you feel being a victim excuses some of your bad behavior because you were hurt and, as a result, you can’t help acting the way you do?

COST: You might earn sympathy this way but it can also make people lose respect for you. It doesn’t really excuse bad behavior either so you may still look bad to others if you behave immaturely.

• Are you afraid if you stop casting the other person as the villain then people may forget how guilty the other person is and they may even think you were to blame? Do you feel like letting it go would be saying "it's OK" and pardon them from their guilt? Staying angry can sometimes feel like a safe place from which you can maintain your position as the good person.

COST: People may lose respect for you because this isn’t mature behavior and you won’t be free from the negative energy staying mad creates.

Be honest with yourself, are any of these the reason why you might be holding onto an offense? Can you see the benefits you may be getting from staying angry and the costs you may pay for it? It is your ego that wants to hold onto the offense and stay angry? Sometimes your ego thinks it has to protect you from getting further hurt.

Instead of being the person your ego wants you to be, choose a different mindset around this situation so you can show up strong and loving. You have two options:

1. Stay mad

Play the victim. Don’t forgive. Let your fears create bad behavior that may push people away and make them lose respect for you.

This victim, fear-driven mindset may also keep you in a place of judgment toward others and yourself, which could mean you may want to put others down to feel better. In the end, you may not feel good about who you are. This judgmental mindset might be why you're being blamed for the effects his emotional cheating has had on your family. You might be creating negative effects with your reactive behavior. Sometimes, our reaction to the offense can cause more damage than the offense itself and we alone are responsible for that behavior.

2. Let it go

Choose to feel whole and safe. Forgive him for being a struggling student in the classroom of life and let this mindset create behavior others will respect.

Choose to see all humans as having the same value no matter what they do. You might not have made that mistake, but chances are you've made others. If you honestly feel that you can’t trust a person anymore, then you might need to make a decision about whether you stay in a relationship with them, but you should still do that from a place of forgiveness. In your case, it sounds like your husband deserves another chance to earn your trust back.

You can do this. 

Coach Kim Giles is a sought after executive coach, author and corporate trainer. There are many more worksheets to help with forgiveness available on my website https://www.claritypointcoaching.com/worksheetsdownloads

This was first published on ksl.com

A victim mentality (as I define it) is a tendency toward functioning in a loss state, meaning that you generally feel mistreated, hurt, taken from or that you aren't getting the life, situation, treatment or help that you wanted or think you deserve. People who function in this loss state may have a tendency to see mistreatment, offenses, or wrongdoing in almost every situation — whether it's really there or not. These people may subconsciously be wearing "mistreatment glasses" that filter their perspective to see themselves in a victim state most of the time.

After 16 years working in personal development, it's been my observation that we are all either slightly fear of failure dominant or we are fear of loss dominant. Fear of loss dominant people may be more prone to having a victim mentality, although this is something we should all watch out for. The behaviors a victim mentality can create can be damaging to relationships and the respect others have for you.

Identifying a victim mentality in yourself may be difficult because, from your perspective, it may appear accurate that you are the victim in the situation. The problem is your perspective may be skewed from the mistreatment glasses. You may have to take a step back and ask yourself if there's another way to look at the situation that may help you see things differently.

To determine if you might have a victim mentality, answer the following questions:

• Do you often feel you carry a larger burden in life than others?
• Do you feel powerless to change the things in your life that you wish were different?
• Do you often feel resentful that others don’t do more to help you or that they don’t see how unfair things are for you?
• Do you tend to see the fault in troubled relationships as always due to others rather than yourself? Or do you tend to always see the fault as yours? (Neither is accurate. Relationship problems take two people.)
• Do you often feel that others don’t consider your feelings or that their actions are inconsiderate? Perhaps sometimes they are, but if you feel this way often, then you might be seeing offenses inaccurately.
• Do you generally see your life as difficult and usually unfair?
• Do you think others underestimate how hard you have it and do you sometimes resent them for their happiness and positivity?

One of the problems with this mindset is that it can become part of your identity to the extent that you might not know who you are without it. Some may also start needing the payoffs that come with the victim mindset. Victims might find payoff in the sympathy they receive when they complain to others. Take a minute and ask yourself if you might see benefits in these types of payoffs in your life.

While some seek those payoffs, there are also costs to a victim mentality:

• Others get weary of your complaining and start to tune it out. They may not want to feel bad for you all the time so they might also pull away from you.
• People may not appreciate the things you do for them if all you do is complain about the burden it is for you to do them. This may frustrate you but you can’t have both appreciation and a victim story. Decide which you want more.
• People may lose respect for you. You can be smart, strong, capable and respected or you can be a victim all the time, but you can’t have both.
• People might start to resent your self-pity. They might start setting boundaries to protect themselves from you.
• The negativity and being easily offended could wear on people too. They might avoid interacting with you if the chances of you being offended are always high. This could damage connection and trust in your relationships.

If you realize you might sometimes function from a victim space or a fear of loss state, know that you can fix this. Here are a few perspective suggestions for shifting your mindset to one that is more positive and powerful:

• Choose to trust that the universe is actually on your side and constantly working to serve, bless and educate you. This means every situation that presents itself is there for you for a positive reason. Trust that even the hard experiences are actually blessings in disguise working to make you a stronger, wiser and more loving person. When you choose to see the universe as for you, not against you, life may suddenly feel fair and perceived mistreatment may be a lesson to help you grow. You can’t dwell in self-pity about your situation if it's there to help you.
• Choose to trust that life will always deliver the perfect classroom journey for you. This means no one can ruin, short-change, or take from you. This perspective option pulls you out of the victim space and helps you show up strong and wise. It gives you the power to handle whatever life throws your way, which will earn the respect of others.
• Whenever you feel mistreated, ask yourself “Would I rather be a victim and show up weak, whiny and full of self-pity, or would I like to show up with maturity and strength, and earn the respect of others?" Choose to trust you have everything you need to rise in every situation and make it through or the universe wouldn’t be giving you this challenge. This perspective option makes you someone to look up to and not someone to feel sorry for.

Achieving this mindset might take some work and practice but that is exactly what we are here for: personal growth. Don’t expect perfection. You will see progress as you work on it. I promise it gets easier over time and is worth the effort.

You can do this. 

Coach Kimberly Giles is a master life coach who provides one on one coaching, corporate people skills training and coach certification at www.claritypointcoaching.com