Question:

How do I deal with in-laws that treat our family horribly but still need and expect our help with money. Their behavior is horrible towards us. My mother-in-law is verbally abusive to my husband, but he feels a need to continue to help his mother financially. I am often asked to choose between helping them and seeing my own family. When this is asked of me, I get very emotional. I hate how my husband and our kids are treated by them.

How do I help in-laws, who are mean to all of us, but still expect our help, without resenting them?

Answer:

There are two parts to this answer for you. First, I want to explain why you feel resentful giving to people/relatives who are ungrateful, unkind or take you for granted, and it might surprise you that it’s more complicated than you think. But when you understand it this way, you will also know how to choose a different perspective and feel a bit better. Then, I will give you some hints for dealing with rude, difficult people in general.

First, we at Claritypoint Coaching have some ideas about human nature and what drives our behavior. We believe all bad behavior is driven by fear of failure or loss. We believe everyone who is mean or unkind to you is hurting at some level because they are battling some big fears about themselves and their life. They are usually either afraid of failure and feel inadequate, or they fear loss and feel life has been unfair to them, or sometimes they are suffering from both.

Your in-laws sound like they might be in a loss state and feel mistreated (by life, God or the universe) for giving them so many challenges and trials. They may be functioning in a victim state and they could also have some shame around their situation and their lack of funds to take care of themselves, so failure may be in play, too. People who live in this state (experiencing fear of failure and loss) can often be selfish, resentful and mostly focused on themselves. They don’t want to be selfish, but fear by nature affects us subconsciously and keeps us focused on our pain points.

We want you to understand this because these same fears are in play for you and are causing your pain and resentment. (This usually happens when we deal with people who are in fear because their bad behavior triggers our fears and we then end up behaving in a less than loving way too.)

It sounds like you feel mistreated by them and are then asked to help them, too, which makes you feel even more taken from. These relatives are triggering your fear of loss and it is creating the resentment and fear about your own quality of life, and it probably feels bad because you are not functioning in love, which is your real nature. You also know that resentment is self-inflicted misery and totally unproductive. So what do you do instead?

Look at your options and find the most love motivated one.

1. You could refuse to help anymore or at least until their behavior changes and they treat you all with respect.
2. You could accept the fact that you are probably not going to feel good about not helping because you would feel too guilty. But could you set a healthy boundary about how much you are going to give? Figure out what you feel is reasonable and choose an amount you can give as a gift of love, freely given, expecting nothing in return (even kindness or gratitude). This amount would be different for different people, so you have to figure out what your love limit is. You will know you have found it when you can see that anything above that would trigger fear of loss and its accompanying resentment.
3. You could keep giving what you have been giving and just choose a different attitude about it. You always get to choose how you are going to feel about any situation, and believe it or not, you can feel different (less resentful and more peaceful) even with the situation as it is — if you want to. The trick will be deciding not to be offended by their abuse or bad behavior anymore and giving from love, totally in trust that God and the universe will make sure you always have what you need.

Option No. 3 requires a high level of maturity and strength, but you can do it. First, you must get clear about your value as a person and become bulletproof to the insults, unkindness or bad behavior of others. You must decide not to let anyone diminish you in any way because you have chosen to see your value (and all human beings value) as infinite, absolute and the same as everyone else’s. This will require some practice to change your foundational belief about human value, but the more you work on it, the easier it is.

You will also have to remind yourself that only hurt people, hurt people and their abusive, unkind, rude behavior is a reflection and projection of their own inner pain. They are mean because they are miserable and scared. When you see bad behavior accurately for what it is, it becomes easier to let it bounce off. People can throw insults at you, but you decide if you are going to pick them up and carry them. Don’t do it. Let the insults bounce back to the sender because they are more about them than you.

If you have difficult relatives, co-workers or friends who are this unkind to you, you always have the right to protect yourself and just stay away from them. But if they are people you cannot avoid, you must become bulletproof and not allow them to hurt you. It is not selfish or mean to have healthy boundaries and insist that others respect you and treat you kindly. It is also not selfish and mean to have a limit to what you give to others. It’s healthy and wise.

You must officially give yourself permission to take care of you and have boundaries. You must love yourself and other people, not one or the other. Don’t have any fear around hurting their feelings by enforcing boundaries that are healthy for you. If they are offended and hate you, that is none of your business. Keep being the strong, loving, wise person you are and trust that the universe is in charge of them.

You can do this. 

Kimberly Giles is the president of claritypointcoaching.com. She is the author of the book "Choosing Clarity: The Path to Fearlessness" and a popular life coach, speaker and people skills expert.

This was first published on KSL.com

Question:
I have been married for over 20 years. During this time, I have tried unsuccessfully to make my wife happy. I have initiated counseling sessions several times only to come out worse for going. I recently had a friend say they think I'm a victim of emotional abuse from my wife. I have tried to see her side of things and understand where my wife is coming from and to even work on myself. But am I using this as an excuse? Do many men get emotionally abused? When do you work on yourself and when do you insist a wife's behavior isn’t ok? 
Answer:
If you want a healthy relationship, you must constantly work on yourself AND you must insist your partner do the same.  If your partner is abusive (which we will determine below) and they are unwilling admit their behavior is wrong, change the attitudes that drive the behavior and get professional help, there may be cause for you to leave.
We say this, because you teach people how to treat you by what you allow. If you are willing to keep living with someone who is emotionally abusive, why should they change?
If they know you are too scared to leave or are a pushover, they have no motivation to change anything, and it takes a great deal of motivation for an abuser to change their ways and give up the power they get from the abuse. 
We also want to reassure you that abuse by women against men is not uncommon at all. Both genders are actually almost equally abused. One report showed that “40% of victims of severe physical violence are men, who are victimized by their intimate partners, and men are also more often the victim of psychological aggression.”  You can read more about this on www.batteredmen.org. 
Also, remember we are in the classroom of life to learn about love. So, allowing someone to mistreat you is denying them an important lesson they have coming. It is not ok to disrespect, insult or be cruel to any human being.  Someone has to teach that to your spouse and the universe has selected you.
We want to clarify what behaviors constitute abuse though, because some of you are so used to abusive behavior, you actually think it’s normal and therefore ok. Everyone has disagreements with their spouse, but some kinds of fighting behaviors are not acceptable, ever. We believe there are three types of bad behavior that show up in relationships and we want you to recognize them so you know what is okay and what is not.
Here are the three categories of bad relationship behavior:

1. Garden variety bad behavior caused by fear and stress.  When people are stressed, hungry, tired, or overwhelmed, they get grouchy and selfish. If on occasion, your spouse has one of these bad behavior moments (and it doesn’t happen often) you should just forgive them, understand it wasn’t really about you (it’s their fears about themselves) and let it roll off. No one is perfect and everyone will snap, lose their temper or say something selfish  on occasion. When your partner offends you with this kind of behavior, forgive them and let it go, because you want your small “mess-ups” to be forgiven, too. If you have a lot of this in your home though, some fear-focused Life Coaching would make a huge difference. 
   
   
2. Offensive behavior that should be brought up, worked on and not ignored.  This kind of treatment includes: unintentionally being inconsiderate or unkind, criticizing you on a rare occasion, talking down to you, or doing something that is selfish or thoughtless. If these behaviors show up often (every week) you should definitely have some conversations about it and ask for different behavior in the future. You would also benefit from some professional help or coaching and you should ask your partner to participate in it too. (If your partner won’t work on these behaviors, you don’t see any noticeable improvements, and/or your partner refuses professional help, you may move the behavior to category three.)
   
   
3. Abusive behavior that is not acceptable. (This includes inappropriate behavior from category two that isn’t changing, has become too frequent, or has escalated to any of the things mentioned below.) Also keep in mind that these behaviors toward a child are also unacceptable. If your spouse treats your children this way, you must do something to protect them and get professional help involved.

These types of behavior are unacceptable:

• Calling you insulting names or labels
• Yelling and screaming
• Repeatedly putting you down
• Comparing you with others to show how inadequate you are
• Intentionally hurting your feelings
• Socially isolating you
• Belittling you on a regular basis
• Ignoring you
• Disapproving and contemptuous looks
• Blaming you for their problems
• Controlling you or punishing you for small offenses (not getting dishes washed or something cleaned well enough)
• Threatening to leave and take your children away
• Threatening to kill themselves
• Falsely obtaining a restraining order against you
• Lying to you
• Intimidating or threatening you
• Breaking things
• Correcting everything you say
• Always taking the opposite view from yours
• Cutting you off from your family and friends
• The silent treatment for hours or days
• Forcing you to own responsibility for every problem
• Checking up on you and being overly suspicious
• Nitpicking and lengthy interrogations or lectures
• Refusing to honor your requests for time and space
• Withholding affection
• Demanding sex
• Temper tantrums to get what they want
• Discounting your perceptions and feelings
• Constantly denying anything is wrong
• Verbal abuse that attacks your nature and abilities, so you begin to believe there is something wrong with you.
• Out of control or irrational behavior and physical violence of any kind whatsoever — these should not be tolerated.

If you are experiencing this kind of behavior regularly, please don’t accept it as normal and let it continue. You can also take an Emotional Abuse test at this link.
If you are seeing signs of abuse, you should seek professional help and do something about it right now, especially if there are children in your home. We often hear people in abusive relationships say they are “staying for their children” and don’t want to break up the family. You must understand that even watching this kind of abuse can damage your children. Safe Horizons (a website for victims of abuse) says that without help, children who witness abuse are more vulnerable to being abused themselves as adults or teens, or they are likely to become abusers themselves. 

You and your children deserve to feel safe and respected in your home. You should also be able to have mature, rational, mutually validating conversations about problems that arise with your spouse. If your partner can't do that and is tearing down your self-esteem on a regular basis (so you feel miserable and worthless) and you experience fear whenever they are home, you are probably a victim of abuse.
Your rationalizing this behavior as normal makes sense, if it is all you have ever experienced, but it is not normal or acceptable. If you love yourself, your children and your spouse at all, you owe it to them all to seek help. It is time for your spouse and children to learn that all people deserve to be treated with kindness and respect
If you don’t have a religious leader, counselor, or coach to go to for help, start with the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, they can point you in the right direction.

We know that change and seeking help sounds scary because ‘the known’ even though it’s bad, feels safer than the ‘unknown’. But you will all grow and learn so much it will be a win in the end. There will be some hard moments, but you are stronger than you think you are, and you deserve better.

You can do this. 

This was first published on KSL.com

Question:

Last year was the worst year ever for me and 2017 has started out pretty bad too. So many things have gone wrong, including my family being ripped apart and my career taking a big hit. I am a good person, I treat others right, and am a giver not a taker. I live my religion and keep the commandments, but I am not seeing the promised blessings at all. I feel God has left me on my own and out to dry. Why do these things keep happening to me? What can I do different to change the course of my life?

Answer:

Because I don’t know the details that created the situation you are in, I’m not sure what changes you personally need to make to change the results you are getting. I highly recommend you get a good life coach to help you work that part out, but I can tell from your question that some of your fundamental beliefs about life and the nature of the journey aren’t accurate.

This is a common problem because most of us picked up our beliefs about life (that define how we see everything that happens to us) before we were even 7 years old. Most of these are subconscious beliefs so we aren’t (obviously) consciously aware of them and the havoc they create in our thinking. And, if we did look at them and question their accuracy, we would immediately see how flawed they are and disregard them, but because we don’t even realize we have them, we never do.

Here are a few subconscious beliefs about the nature of life many of us have (unfortunately) accepted, which create negative attitudes and feelings and lots of discouragement.

• If I am righteous and follow my religion, I will prosper in the land and be blessed with good things and protected from bad things. (Is this really the promise?)
• Because of agency everyone is out there making choices, which can affect my life and even ruin my journey. When these things happen it is random bad luck. So, I must constantly protect myself and worry about being mistreated.
• If bad things happen, it means I’m not worthy of better, God doesn’t care about me or he isn’t there at all.
• The universe functions in random chaos and my journey can be ruined or less than it could have been because of other people’s choices.

Take a minute and reflect on these ideas. Do you believe any of them are true, or do some feel false to you? Is there any chance the promised blessings you mentioned in your question were tied to these beliefs?

It is very common for us to misinterpret the real reason, point and purpose of our being here and our higher power’s involvement in our lives. The real purpose of this journey is simply to learn and grow to become better, more loving people, and growth requires struggle, challenges and hard times. So, would it make any sense for God to promise you that obedience would get you out of rough experiences? The very rough experiences that are required for you to grow? Would it make more sense to believe that hard times are required so we can learn and become smarter, stronger and more loving?

In my book, "Choosing Clarity," I give readers the opportunity to change many of their faulty subconscious beliefs and replace them with beliefs or perspectives that create less fear and more peace. In the book, I encourage you to choose to view the higher power in the universe as love, not someone to fear. This alone can be a life changing shift. I also encourage readers to choose to see life as a classroom, not a test, where your value is on the line. I also encourage a belief that there is order, purpose and meaning in the universe and it is working with every choice you make, to create the perfect classroom journey for you, every day.

This means your journey cannot be ruined by anyone else, because you will always get the experiences that will facilitate the lessons you need most. So, if someone injures you or breaks your heart, that has to be the perfect next lesson for you or it wouldn’t happen. I encourage my clients to trust the universe that it knows what it’s doing. At least you have the option of playing with this perspective and seeing life this way if you want to. Try this perspective on for a week or two and trust you are right where you are supposed to be, learning your perfect lessons, safe in God’s hands, no matter what happens. Just see how this perspective feels.

I know some of you will be thinking that I cannot prove this idea is truth and it might be delusional or wishful thinking, and you might be right.

But you cannot prove I'm wrong either. You can’t prove the universe is random, chaotic and without order. So, where does this leave us?

This leaves us that we each get to choose our perspective. We can see the universe as conspiring to serve us and bless us at every turn, or we can see it as chaos or ambivalent to our needs. How do you want to see it? You get to choose.

If you don’t consciously choose a perspective that feels best for you though, your subconscious mind will choose for you, and it will probably choose chaos. Chances are this has already happened and it is why you aren’t feeling peace about your life.

So here it is, the big secret to a better attitude when things go wrong in your life (and this secret comes from one of my best coaches, Sean Barnett) lies in changing one little word from the question you asked me above.

Change your question from “Why do these things keep happening to me?” to “Why do these things keep happening for me?”

You could choose to see the universe as a wise teacher constantly conspiring to serve and educate you. You could choose to look for lessons, growth and knowledge in every rough experience that comes your way. You could choose to see every mistake as a lesson you signed up for, because you apparently needed the lesson that mistake would create.

This mindset would mean you always make the right wrong choices you need to learn something from. If you married someone, but it ends in divorce, you married the perfect teacher and the divorce must have served your growth in some way. At least you have the option of seeing it this way if you want to. You might try this perspective and see how it feels.

Here are four new belief options you might use to replace the inaccurate ones above:

• If I am righteous and follow my religion I will have added strength and comfort to get through life’s perfect classroom and whatever rough lessons it brings.
• There is perfect order in the universe and everything that happens is here to serve and educate me. There is purpose and meaning in everything and everything happens for me, not to me.
• If bad things happen and I feel distant from my higher power, it’s not because I’m not loved and cared about. It just means this experience is an interesting part of the perfect lesson I need right now.
• No person, no situation, no accident or problem will show up in my life unless it will serve me in some way. If I look hard I may eventually see the positives each experience has created for me, but even if I can’t see it yet, I can trust there is one and this will bring peace.

If you choose to believe every experience is in your life for a reason, and the purpose is always to benefit you, it will soften the blows (at least a little) and bring some level of comfort even though the rough times are still rough.

Hard times are not a punishment or a sign God has forgotten about you or doesn’t care, but a sign that you have the capacity to grow a lot from this challenge. Take the rough times one day, one hour or one minute at a time, and stay in trust that you will grow past this and better days are coming.

I know this, because it’s the nature of the universe that nothing lasts forever. Rainy days always end and eventually the sun comes back out. If you are really struggling with the hard times consider getting some life coaching with a certified Claritypoint coach (we have options to fit any budget).

You can do this. 

Kimberly Giles is the president of claritypointcoaching.com. She is the author of the book "Choosing Clarity: The Path to Fearlessness" and a life coach, speaker and people skills expert.