Bipolar can make disrespect feel overwhelming. Reframing others’ behavior keeps the focus on their actions — not your worth.
Did you know that no one can disrespect you?
That’s right! No one can disrespect us. When we feel disrespected, we’re taking someone’s words or actions personally, and we choose to feel disrespected. We assign to our response feelings like invalidation or disrespect. In actuality, they are not disrespecting us. Here’s why.
You’ve probably heard it before, but it’s absolutely true: People’s actions are a reflection of the person they are. They are projecting their behavior onto us.
Don’t Take Disrespect Personally
Learning not to take things personally is so important to our mental well-being and happiness. When we think people are being disrespectful, invalidating, or rejecting, that’s when we’re taking their behaviors personally and making their behaviors about us.
Another person’s behavior is not about us. It may feel like people are acting a certain way because of us, but the way people act is always about them.
When we feel disrespected, this is our cue to start reframing the situation for clarity and perspective. Instead of taking things personally and feeling bad about ourselves, we need to change our thinking to find perspective, objectivity, and clarity.
Reframe Negative Thoughts for a Healthier Perspective
I used to feel disrespected all the time, like I didn’t matter, and people put me last or trampled my boundaries. We can feel very low and cultivate a lot of negative thinking about ourselves when we have this perspective. This is not good for promoting a solid sense of self, healthy self-esteem, or positive self-image.
We need to protect ourselves from emotional hurt and invalidation. I’ve found that when I can reframe hurtful actions as experiences rather than taking them personally, it helps me cope with people who may be unaware or hurtful.
Not having the situation be about me makes it easier to maintain perspective, distance, and detachment.
How do you do this? Instead of claiming disrespect, detach from that idea and reframe the situation in terms of how the disrespectful person was behaving. Your thought process is no longer, They were disrespectful to me, which hurt my feelings! Instead, it becomes:
- They were being rude
- They were acting like a jerk
- They were being insensitive
- They were being disrespectful
And here’s the important part, … but that is a poor reflection of them and not hurtful to me. Again, the key here is, that’s not hurtful to me.
Why Strong Boundaries Protect Your Mental Health
The most important dynamic in human behavior and healthy relationships is creating and maintaining boundaries, in my opinion. Boundaries allow clarity, perspective, and detachment because they keep us in a safe space and separated from what crosses our boundaries and creates anger or hurt.arated from what crosses our boundaries and creates hurt or anger.
UPDATED: Originally posted September 28, 2019