Givers and Takers

I was rather angered today by a client who really served me up a huge portion of guilt when I told them that I could not keep an appointment due to a personal change in circumstances.
They sent me on a fast tracked guilt trip down misery road with a spitfire attack on "how could you"!!!

How could I change times and dates on them when they had made arrangements!
How could I make them be inconvenienced!

Of course there is more to this but I wont go into it - suffice to say, that my point here is, that, I have always been a 'giver' and givers get hooked and get their buttons pushed by people who are good at attacking with guilt.

And yes...I felt the emotional turmoil of letting someone down, someone I didn't even know but that really didn't matter.
I was hooked into the same old role play - I was a giver and I had not fulfilled my role in giving them what they wanted.
I have fought this role my whole life.
My mother was very good at making sure I was kept in an infinite cycle of guilt my whole youth.
This imprinted me with a need to fulfil the life of others.
This made me a pawn in games controlled by other people and making terrible decisions based on what other people wanted.

As nature would have it some people just are givers and some are takers.

I learnt how to say 'no' terribly late in life and even when I do - it still feels awful.
I am letting people down.

Givers have a way of being in the world.
Givers react by often backing down, feeling guilty and doing for others out of a sense that they owe the world.

Takers have a way of being in the world.
Takers work by creating friction, dis-empowering, putting themselves first and serving up guilt in spadefuls.

Ah - there we have a balance!

Of some sorts.It works for the takers -but not the givers.

Givers often end up feeling shit and worthless for being sucked in all the time and takers bask in glory but will often still feel like shit because they will never ever feel as though they have enough of anything.

Needless to say that neither end of this scale is a good place to be.

It is a place of incredible energy sapping of all those who are in the vicinity of these sorts of givers and takers.

Both are energy vampires in their own weirded out way.

Part of crafting your life means that you learn which one you are - and I reckon you are a giver as a taker wouldn't be reading this!!

As I have learnt, you can only give so much and then you are empty.

That emptiness leads to anxiety and depression.

If there is ONE THING that a giver needs to learn it's to GIVE TAKERS A WIDE BERTH!

Learn to recognise when you are in the loop of anxiety filled living trying constantly to fulfil someone else's agenda.

Save your energy. Remember what Henry Ford once said:

Breathe and say:
I am as important as anyone else.
I am allowed to say 'no'.
It may make me twinge or feel a little insecure to say 'no' but it's still OK to do so.
If it doesn't feel right I shouldn't be made to do it without good reason to.

More about energy vampires tomorrow.