we need not think alike to love alike

"Three separate bins of rice are kept. Each day in the house, the entire family including the kids on the way in and out the door to school participate in this "experiment." To the first bin, loving words are recited such as "I love you." To the second, nothing is said. And to the third, mean words are said, such as "You ugly fool" or any of their own favorite insults. Over time, the three bins showed markedly different stages of decay.

Which do rice bin do you think rotted right away? From "The Hidden Messages of Water".

The totally ignored bin suffered much worse than the one that was hurled insults.

I believe that when someone is ignoring you it's often used as a control mechanism to get the upper hand in a conversation or to keep the other person at bay because they have touched a nerve.

Ignoring someone who is not out to hurt you is cruel and insensitive. I keep thinking about it because in many ways this is one of the biggest that someone dearest inflicted on me as child and so now when it is done when I am an adult, it hurts very, very much.

I have to keep reminding myself that what the other person is choosing to do says much more about the person than anything else. The fact that I have to keep reminding myself is what let's me know that this is a big issue for me.

The fact that I'm even posting here is very telling. Right before Eid Fitr I was doing really well. I didn't have any issues to post about. But here I am and it is because a person I was getting to know kept asking me to post on a forum I used to post. I had been feeling I had outgrown that forum and really didn't feel compelled to post there because I noticed many there who were stuck. I was looking at my own role in the relationships I have had through out my life and I didn't want to try and figure out what was wrong with the other person any more.

This person kept asking me to post on the forum. When I tried to explore the concept of creating your reality and Law of Attraction, she responded very strongly by blocking me from PMing her and ignoring my emails. So all of a sudden I was upset and had a reason to go back to the forum!!! She eventually apologized for her blocking my emails and asked to try again. I mentioned Law of Attraction again, as I said, and creating our own realities and BLAM, she did it again!!!!


Steve Pavlina says in his article "Dealing With Difficult People" you should treat someone like that as such:

Confront the person about his/her behavior directly. Raise your standards for what you’re willing to accept in your life, and enforce them. This strategy is my personal favorite, but some people aren’t comfortable with it. The advantage of this approach is that you stop playing games, and you find out exactly where you stand with the other person. This is what I’d use if I had a difficult boss or coworker — I’d just lay everything out on the table with that person, explain why certain things were no longer tolerable for me, and detail what I wanted to see happen. Now the other person may decline your “demands", but then at least you know where you stand and can decide based on that. Paint a line, and if the other person crosses it, you now know the abuse is willful.

But when a person does something hurtful to you and then tries to ignore both their behavior and you, it seems to rob you of that chance. In my opinion, it is willful, because the other person doesn't want to be confronted. As Steven says, "some people aren't comfortable with it". I think then you have to go through the painful process of working things out on your own, going out, speaking to trusted friends, writing it down.

I am upset at myself because I would think I would not be bothered by the "being ignored" control tactic, but I still feel it emotionally as a slight, dismissive, insulting, dehumanizing, rude, controlling, mean-spirited.

In the case of the person I'm speaking of, it wasn't enough for her to ignore me, she also had to get other's to do it to as well, by maligning my motives and my character in behind my back conversations where she told half truths about what really went on, and that is also a huge trigger because my family was famous for doing this.

If I wanted to confide in someone about the abuse I was suffered as a child, they had already gotten to that person and told them about something awful I had done or what a liar I was, so my reception was already colored by their half-truths and my image distorted. Before I had even opened my mouth.

The point is I want to let this go and not have it upset me as much as it does, I know that writing out how I feel will help me get past these negative emotions.

Any thoughts?? 

-based on an article of steve pavlina's-