It's an old trick but it works, especially when you come from a society like ours where we are taught that certain presences and certain behaviours are necessary to be happy.
For a man or woman to be happy, they must: be in good rapport with their parents, be in good rapport with their siblings, be married at a certain age, have at least a certain number of kids and be spiritual and religious. Men need money as a means to fulfil this happiness and women need men with money as their own means to fulfil their own happiness.
But what happens when one of these things is not possible, either because your parents are abusive, your siblings are abusive, your spouse is abusive, you can't have or don't want children and/or you are not spiritual?
Well, nothing really. If something is not good for you, you can try and fix it. If, after you have tried to fix it, it is still not good for you, then you ought to get rid of it. Nothing good comes out from keeping people or associations that do not impact your life positively.
When I relocated to the UK in 2013, I made a series of drastic but important decisions in my life. One of them was to cut my birth father off completely. It wasn't a hard decision at all, since we had never been that close. Five years later, I am still convinced that I made the right decision.
I also made the decision to cut my mother off and limit my association with extended families. In my opinion, It was about time. Even though I recognised some of the things that my mother had done for me, such as taking me out of Nigeria and bringing me over to a country where I could acquire good education and be myself, life with her around was extremely stressful. First of all, I could not really be myself because she wanted me to be like her. I didn't like the person that she was, the friends that she had and certain decisions that she had made in her life, so I vehemently refused to become a copy of her. This caused a lot of tension in our relationship as she was convinced that she knew me and knew what was best for me. That was ironic since she had never made any effort to know the kind of person I am, while I made effort to know the kind of person she is. Over the years I studied her well enough to understand that she engaged a lot in self destructive and destructive actions. Not only was she fond of making terrible decisions for herself, which affected her on a long term, she also insisted on making those terrible decisions for other people, including me. Perhaps her confidence came from a place of ignorance, but it still doesn't change the fact that her decisions affected me in many negative ways.
Several years after making those personal choices, some people are still trying to convince me that I was wrong in making those choices.
Even though they see the damages that my parents have caused in my life and my current state of happiness, they do not want to admit that I am truly better off without them. They keep denying my state of happiness, in the hope that one day I will start denying it too and cave in to their requests.
I have never been one to give much importance, or any importance at all, to culture and social norms, so I can tell when I am being manipulated into doing something that will result in disastrous consequences for me.
First of all, none of these advisers could give me one good reason why I should reconcile with my parents. Instead they confided in me to simply respect the social contract between parents and children and, as the lower party in the social hierarchy, to bear the burden of tolerating anything my parents wanted to dish out.
And do you know the most interesting thing all these advisers have in common? They are perpetrators and victims of toxicity.
A toxic person cannot rely on a person who dislikes toxicity to coerce a victim into coming back. They need someone who is either as toxic as they are or who is a compliant victim of toxicity to do the persuading.
A toxic person will try to convince you that you are not truly happy unless you have him or her in your life because in many cases, he or she actually sees himself or herself as the one and only true source of your happiness.
Toxic people do not have you in mind at all when they try to make a come back. Their only concern is to be able to feed again on your misery because that is how they derive their own happiness.
You do not need toxic people: they need you. What they aim to achieve is to convince you that you need them just as much as they need you. Their need is true, but your need is a lie.
It can be tough to see through the lies that toxic people tell to have a hold on you but once you see through them, there is no going back.
The power to break free from toxicity is not on the outside. You won't find it in your family. You won't find it in your friends. You won't find in your lover. You won't find it in your pastors. The power to break free is on the inside and you can only find it within yourself.
That power is called self love.
When you don't love yourself, someone else will still love you all right.
But when you don't love yourself, you won't be able to tell if that person is not loving you right.
The absence of self love can capsize your understanding of love and personal well-being. Love becomes a dependency and a need. When you are not needed, you feel useless. So you constantly make yourself needed, to the point in which being needed becomes your own need.
When you love yourself, you will be able to tell when someone is not loving you right. Love becomes a matter of decision. You can't choose whom you love but you can choose whom you want to love. That WANT is the key.
Start loving yourself today and nobody will ever be able to convince you to deny your state of happiness.
For a man or woman to be happy, they must: be in good rapport with their parents, be in good rapport with their siblings, be married at a certain age, have at least a certain number of kids and be spiritual and religious. Men need money as a means to fulfil this happiness and women need men with money as their own means to fulfil their own happiness.
But what happens when one of these things is not possible, either because your parents are abusive, your siblings are abusive, your spouse is abusive, you can't have or don't want children and/or you are not spiritual?
Well, nothing really. If something is not good for you, you can try and fix it. If, after you have tried to fix it, it is still not good for you, then you ought to get rid of it. Nothing good comes out from keeping people or associations that do not impact your life positively.
When I relocated to the UK in 2013, I made a series of drastic but important decisions in my life. One of them was to cut my birth father off completely. It wasn't a hard decision at all, since we had never been that close. Five years later, I am still convinced that I made the right decision.
I also made the decision to cut my mother off and limit my association with extended families. In my opinion, It was about time. Even though I recognised some of the things that my mother had done for me, such as taking me out of Nigeria and bringing me over to a country where I could acquire good education and be myself, life with her around was extremely stressful. First of all, I could not really be myself because she wanted me to be like her. I didn't like the person that she was, the friends that she had and certain decisions that she had made in her life, so I vehemently refused to become a copy of her. This caused a lot of tension in our relationship as she was convinced that she knew me and knew what was best for me. That was ironic since she had never made any effort to know the kind of person I am, while I made effort to know the kind of person she is. Over the years I studied her well enough to understand that she engaged a lot in self destructive and destructive actions. Not only was she fond of making terrible decisions for herself, which affected her on a long term, she also insisted on making those terrible decisions for other people, including me. Perhaps her confidence came from a place of ignorance, but it still doesn't change the fact that her decisions affected me in many negative ways.
Several years after making those personal choices, some people are still trying to convince me that I was wrong in making those choices.
Even though they see the damages that my parents have caused in my life and my current state of happiness, they do not want to admit that I am truly better off without them. They keep denying my state of happiness, in the hope that one day I will start denying it too and cave in to their requests.
I have never been one to give much importance, or any importance at all, to culture and social norms, so I can tell when I am being manipulated into doing something that will result in disastrous consequences for me.
First of all, none of these advisers could give me one good reason why I should reconcile with my parents. Instead they confided in me to simply respect the social contract between parents and children and, as the lower party in the social hierarchy, to bear the burden of tolerating anything my parents wanted to dish out.
And do you know the most interesting thing all these advisers have in common? They are perpetrators and victims of toxicity.
A toxic person cannot rely on a person who dislikes toxicity to coerce a victim into coming back. They need someone who is either as toxic as they are or who is a compliant victim of toxicity to do the persuading.
A toxic person will try to convince you that you are not truly happy unless you have him or her in your life because in many cases, he or she actually sees himself or herself as the one and only true source of your happiness.
Toxic people do not have you in mind at all when they try to make a come back. Their only concern is to be able to feed again on your misery because that is how they derive their own happiness.
You do not need toxic people: they need you. What they aim to achieve is to convince you that you need them just as much as they need you. Their need is true, but your need is a lie.
It can be tough to see through the lies that toxic people tell to have a hold on you but once you see through them, there is no going back.
The power to break free from toxicity is not on the outside. You won't find it in your family. You won't find it in your friends. You won't find in your lover. You won't find it in your pastors. The power to break free is on the inside and you can only find it within yourself.
That power is called self love.
When you don't love yourself, someone else will still love you all right.
But when you don't love yourself, you won't be able to tell if that person is not loving you right.
The absence of self love can capsize your understanding of love and personal well-being. Love becomes a dependency and a need. When you are not needed, you feel useless. So you constantly make yourself needed, to the point in which being needed becomes your own need.
When you love yourself, you will be able to tell when someone is not loving you right. Love becomes a matter of decision. You can't choose whom you love but you can choose whom you want to love. That WANT is the key.
Start loving yourself today and nobody will ever be able to convince you to deny your state of happiness.
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