The price of forgiving too soon!

Another video of Doctor Ramani’s that made interesting viewing last night was on the five things that make people vulnerable to narcissists. I won’t go into all five here but what she talked about on that video dove tails with a post I shared from Cynthia Bailey Rug a few weeks ago on the subject of forgiving too soon or too much. This was the fourth thing she mentioned, after an apology, giving someone the benefit of the doubt over and over again when they hurt, use, disrespect us, shame us, unfairly criticize us or let us down and continue to do it without any remorse.

Because narcissists are takers they will take what they want.. they see that they are entitled to it, in fact we may have even attracted them as we do not take our own needs seriously enough at times. Narcissists also genuinely believe they are superior to others and feel this warrants them treating others badly. They may even use the name of God as an excuse.. For the vulnerable among us, we maybe innocent, caring and overly empathic, we may want to help out of a genuine desire or out of a wish to fill a deep hole or heal a wound we carry from having self involved or narcissistic parents who did not see or really show true care and concern about and for us or out of a lowered sense of our own self value.

When we forgive the narcissist too soon, when we let them get away with hurting us, taking advantage, using our good nature, being mean, insulting, demeaning and devaluing us over and over again, we are unwittingly showing them its acceptable to do so… So boundaries here are necessary as is a strong sense of what is doable for us energetically.. If its beyond our capacity to help and be empathic and kind, if it is depleting us, emptying us out, hurting us, eroding our healthy ego and self concept or making us feel lower and breaking us down on some level we need to stop forgiving them and put a stop to the help or pulls they are placing upon us.

Often after we do leave or set a boundary we may have a lot of work to do on our own sense of self worth and value too, as many of us know when these type of relationships fall apart (if they dump us as they will inevitably do if we have outlived their usefulness) we may be the ones taken down by them and it may take a hell of a lot of inner work and rebuilding to eventually find ourselves again.