Maybe it’s about your partner, your parents, your children, your boss or even your best friend or a co-worker, people with whom you often interact and who, little by little, are gaining prominence in your life, sometimes too much, reaching beyond the limits of what could be considered healthy.
These people can have a negative influence on the way you think, feel and behave, affecting your emotional balance because you gave them too much power in your life. And as their control grows, you dwarf more.
The problem is that often the signals are so subtle that they go unnoticed and we attribute them to other circumstances. However, learning to detect those signs of domination or manipulation in time is essential to regain control over your life.
The signs of emotional control that indicate that you are leaving your life in the hands of others
- You feel increasingly guilty
If you change your decisions and behaviors because someone have an emotional influence on you, that means you are giving him enormous power over you. If that person plays the blame card, directly or indirectly, and you assume that the responsibility is totally yours feeling bad even for things that really do not correspond to you, it is likely that he is manipulating you. That’s why, if when you are next to a person and you usually feel guilty, it is an alarm signal that tells you that you gave him too much freedom to play with your emotions.
- Your opinion dictates your self-esteem
Some people will not like the decisions you make, and they can give you their opinion about it, but if you suddenly notice that you start to feel bad about yourself because their opinions generate a negative self-image, it’s time to take a step back. If you discover that your self-esteem rises and falls depending on the opinions or the degree of acceptance of someone else, you have a problem: you are giving too much power to that person and you are letting that his judgments influence how you consider yourself and feel.
- You complain about the things you “have” to do
If you discover that in recent times you are complaining more than usual, it may be because someone is trying to impose his decisions and way of seeing life. It is common among parents and children, for example, of who intend to decide on the lives of their children, “forcing” them to take responsibility and undertake projects that really do not appeal or interest them, just because it is what they are supposed they “have” to do. Therefore, if dissatisfaction has set roots in your life and lately the commitments begin to weigh on you, the time has come to reassess your priorities.
- You insist on showing that someone is wrong
Sometimes, when someone has too much power over you, instead of using a strategy of direct confrontation, you undertake a subceptive struggle to show that he is wrong, with the pretense of regaining your freedom. Actually, it is a useless strategy that leads nowhere. Your decisions are yours, you do not need to convince the others, so if you discover that you are trying to convince someone else that you have made the right decisions, you should reassess your true motivations. One thing is explaining your motives and another needing that person’s approval.
- You try too hard to avoid criticism
The opinions of the others can help you grow and make better decisions, but if at some point you discover that you are trying so hard just to avoid criticism, you have a problem. That means that you are focusing your life on pleasing the others, instead of doing what you really like and want. It is obvious that we must find a middle point, but it is also obvious that it is not possible to live the life that the others want for us. That is why, if you fear a person’s criticism, it is because you have given him such power in your life that you are letting him determine your worth with his measuring board.
- You let them take the worst out of you
We all have a light side and a darker one. It is normal. However, if you find that when you relate to a person you are almost always responding with irritability or anger, that means you are giving him too much power over you, you are allowing him to take out the worst part of you. That person is exerting a negative influence and will not help you grow, quite the opposite. As emotionally stable as we are, there are people with whom it is difficult to deal, who end up touching our red buttons and testing our inner peace.
- You spend a lot of time talking about a person you do not like
Every minute you spend thinking about someone you do not like or complaining about his attitudes, it’s 60 seconds of happiness that you are losing. The problem is that many times that person catches you in his spider web and, without realizing it, little by little you spend more time complaining than to solve the problem. Therefore, if you think a lot about someone’s bad attitudes, their hurtful words or their criticisms, you are giving them too much importance in your life and perhaps you should learn to establish a psychological distance.
