Listening with love starts with listening to ourselves first. If a person’s words or actions are causing us harm, it’s important to protect our peace. Remember, we are our own lifelong partners from the cradle to the grave. Everyone else, and I mean EVERYONE else isn’t guaranteed. There are only a few relationships that even have the potential to be for the entirety of our lives. Yet, even if a person’s words, actions, and/or behaviors are detrimental to our health, we can struggle to know when it’s time to walk away. That’s really sad to me.
I’m not even talking about permanently walking away. Sometimes it’s in our best interest to walk away from conversations. Other times it’s necessary for our health to walk away from relationships, jobs, and other situations. What’s important is that we honor our health and well-being in the process.
When We Don’t Walk Away
If we find that we aren’t capable of listening with love in this moment, then it’s a good time to walk away. It’s better to walk away than to say or do something hurtful that we need to apologize for later. Even when we apologize, we can’t take words and actions back. If someone is hurt because of our choices, they will have the memory of what we said or did. Even if we didn’t mean it. That’s a tough pill to swallow.
No matter what our reasoning for saying or doing something hurtful towards someone else, the people involved have to permanently live with the choice. Even when we are forgiven, we forgive ourselves, and we forgive someone else. I was drunk, high, angry, pissed off, or whatever the justification, is not an excuse. Those choices and feelings are not to blame for not communicating from a loving place. We are responsible and accountable to know when it’s best to walk away.
Coming from a verbally abusive relationship, in the height of the abuse, I attempted to try to make him know how it feels. It was horrible. I hated saying the things I did. I felt awful about myself for saying them. I fed the energy of fear, lack, and separation right back to him. I had to live with the consequences of that choice over and over again. It sent me into a deep depression. I still lost my peace. It didn’t make me feel better. It also didn’t effect how he treated me. He just had another excuse in his head to treat me even worse. He would just throw what I did in my face.
I have to live with anything I put out into the world. The reason I put it out there doesn’t matter. If I do something in the energy of fear, lack, and separation. I’m responsible and accountable for it. No matter how justified I or others believe I am. This doesn’t mean I’m going to beat myself up about it, but I am going to acknowledge it. I will apologize for whatever I contribute to. I’ve taught my kids through example on this one.
My daughter and I actually had a conversation recently about how she learned to always apologize for her part, and she does. Even in the worst of the teen years, she would come back and apologize for how she treated me. I did the same when I lost my peace. I always told my kids they can’t make me yell at them. If I yell, it’s because I lost control. That’s on me, not on them. In turn, if they yelled at me, they knew that was on them, not on me. It goes both ways.
It’s much easier to apologize for walking away to process the situation before responding than it is to work through forgiving ourselves for treating others with a lack of compassion, love, and respect.
How to Walk Away from a Conversation
First, don’t make the reason you’re walking about the other person. That will just get the defenses up and it fuels the energy of fear, lack, and separation. When our defenses our up, we often act like teenagers fighting. We go back to a place where we feel victimized and if they are in it with us, so do they. Two teens fighting often don’t have the communications skills to know when to walk away in a healthy way. Especially when they don’t have examples of it.
Here are a few ways to excuse yourself:
- I need to excuse myself. I just need to take a few minutes to process the situation.
- I really want to focus on the solutions for this. I’m going to take some time to brainstorm.
- I need a timeout.
- I’m going to take a walk. I will come back when I feel like I can discuss this with a solution-based mindset.
There are so many different ways to excuse ourselves, but I highly suggest coming up with some ways that feel right to you before you enter any conversation that has the potential of getting heated. With kids, it always has the potential. Mentally prepare yourself for the conversation. Just remember the goal is to listen and respond from the energy of love, abundance, and peace. That’s where the best solutions come from.
If someone is being verbally, emotionally, or psychologically abusive in a conversation, it may take a little more work on your part to feel comfortable walking away from the conversation.
These kinds of abuse can come from anyone. When we have survived a history of these abuses from family, churches, schools, etc. It may take us a bit to even see that what’s going on is abusive. If we are self-abusing, it makes it very hard to spot.
Much of the work I had to do to learn to walk away was working on my own self-worth, self-esteem, and self-talk. When I stopped treating myself with a lack of love and respect, I stopped accepting others talking to me that way…even my kids. My son never called me a name throughout his entire childhood. He said some hurtful things, but never called me a name.
My daughter would name-call sometimes, but that was my cue to walk away. I knew things were too heated to have a positive outcome. I called her a name one time, and didn’t even remember doing it I was so angry at the time, but it didn’t mean I didn’t apologize for it, because the right thing to do in that moment would have been to walk away before it got that heated.
When I’m taking care of my own mental health, it’s much easier to walk away from any conversation.
How to Walk from a Toxic Person or Situation
First, if the situation is life-threatening, get help. Please, get help. There are many organization designed to help in these situations. If it’s an abuse situation, reaching out to abuse shelter first if often a very wise choice. Not all law enforcement is well-educated on signs of abuse. Quite honestly, it’s not easy to spot if you haven’t been well trained or survived and got help. Finding organizations who put their life’s work into educating themselves is a good start.
Start doing the work. Don’t speak from a place where you aren’t confident in what you are saying. Threatening to leave tends to make things worse. If you aren’t ready to walk away, don’t threaten it. Do the work to be ready.
It took me a few years from the time I realized how toxic my relationship was to the time I fully walked away from the relationship. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), it takes an average of 7 times to leave an abusive relationship. I attempted to leave two other times before fully being ready. This relationship lasted ten years.
I’m telling you this because I will never shame a person for staying in a relationship they aren’t ready to leave. I know from experience, I had to be ready. I had to stop abusing myself first to feel strong and confident enough to leave. When I believed I deserved how he treated me, I didn’t even recognize I was being abused.
This might not be a romantic partner for some. It can be family members, friends, bosses, teachers, religious leaders, self-help cults, political cults, religious cults, the list goes on. The more abuse feels normal to us, the longer we tend to accept it until we get the help for ourselves.
It took me wanting to break the cycle for my kids for me to start helping myself. I didn’t want my son thinking it was okay to treat women like that. I didn’t want my daughter accepting that kind of treatment from a man.
I didn’t have money at the time to get therapy, for me it started with trying different healing modalities, reading self-help books, going to church, and attending Al-Anon. In Al-Anon, I was blessed to find an amazing sponsor who you will hear me quote to this day. When I did leave, I went to college to get a degree in human development. This helped me to learn even more about the how and why of the situation. Doing that played a big part in me not shaming myself.
The church I attended didn’t use any shaming tactics. That would have kept me in the cycle of abuse. To this day, I remember one sermon where the Reverend said, “We will only ever be as happy as we BELIEVE we deserve. Anything more than that, we will sabotage.” That’s the moment I knew I needed to work on what I BELIEVED I deserved.
It doesn’t matter what situation or relationship we’re dealing with. If we want to permanently walk away and not repeat the pattern with someone else, we have to know in the deepest parts of our souls that we deserve to be treated with love, compassion, respect, and dignity. Then, we need to treat ourselves that way. Once we know what it feels like from the inside to treat ourselves with the love, compassion, respect, and dignity that we deserve, we will be able to walk away from situations and people that are toxic to our well-being.
There are always people there to help us when we are ready. We just have to open the door and recognize the helpers.
My Services
If you are looking for a coach in this area, please reach out to me rachael@fromalovingplace.com. I do private Zoom sessions to coach people on the self-awareness journey. I also teach different methods of calming the nervous system to help make healthy choices for ourselves and others.
This is the last episode for now. I hope you will go back and read or listen to all the tools I offer here, on the podcast, and in my book, Letters from a Better Me. Please feel free to reach out.
From A Loving Place 