Get rid of the takers in your life!

Do you have people in your life that just take and take. These are the people that you need to get rid of. If you don't, your quality of life will suffer. When you do put up boundaries and stick with them, you will feel much better!!

Doc David

Transcript

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Hey friends, Doc David here. Let's talk about family obligation. You are listening to Ed Drinking, your answer to life, relationships, and daily living. Hello, hello, friends. Doc David here with another podcast episode. This one might be a little bit. This podcast isn't gonna be giving advice. Maybe it'll I I can't help but give advice. So possibly, it's probably gonna be giving advice. Um I am coming to you live. Well, when you listen to this, it won't be live, but I'm coming to you from my office. It's Memorial Day weekend, and I for years I've often thought, okay, should I work on a holiday? Should I not work on a holiday? And so I sh am working today, and I probably shouldn't have because it's nice outside, and my family's off doing something, and so I'm a bit distracted. And I had a couple people cancel, and it's just like, uh, why did you cancel? So it makes me want to not work on holidays in the future, but then I probably will. So it's it's my it's my first world struggle, anyways. Um I just had I just participated in an awesome weekend um wedding of a nephew that um we love dearly, and he got married, and so there was uh family laughter, uh dancing, met new friends, uh just an overall great weekend. Um, and it got me to thinking, you know, I'm I'm in I'm getting up there in years, and there's a particular in at this event there is a particular family member that is just takes and takes and takes, and they're just tiresome to interact with. And um I didn't interact with them at all, which I mean on purpose, because I don't I don't value that kind of interaction, and so it got me to thinking um about those family members that we have that just seem to take and take and don't give, and how they just kind of suck energy out of things, they suck um people's life energy. They're not vampires, but they just have expectations, they just want a lot, and they don't give back to family. And so it got me to thinking about family obligation. Um, because there are you may have someone like that in your family, it could be a mother or it could be a father. Um, a lot of times the people that I talk to tell me stories about um trauma that they experience from their parents in regards to either being a negligent parent or just having no boundaries, allowing a lot of freedom and letting you do whatever you want, which for for a lot of teenagers is like, yeah, that's great. But inevitably, what it means is that teenagers will make uh not great choices, and so they'll be out using a lot of drugs or skipping school, and then as an adult, they look back on that and think, why didn't my parent have boundaries? So if you are a parent, boundaries are good, just in case you're wondering. Um, but it gets me to thinking that you know, these people come up into my office and they talk a lot about kind of the upbringings that they have and the trauma that was related, and then inevitably they have to interact with these parents or these family members, and they don't do it because they love them, they do it because they feel there's an obligation of sorts, and so then it leads to pretty good conversations. Like, why do you feel obligated to interact with this person that abuses you that did abuse you? And usually they have they don't change, um they're just older, and you have more as an older person yourself, you have more agency. You can say, No, I don't want to do this thing, or yes, I will do this thing. And the problem is that there's feelings related to the no, like there's feelings related to the boundary, and a person feels guilty. And so then I ask the question, like, why do you why do you feel guilty? Well, because they're my mom. Okay, great. They have similar DNA as you, but they did nothing in your life um that a typical mom or dad would do. So then what's going on? Well, and then ultimately it comes down to they feel obligated, and whether it's a societal obligation, whether it's their friends do things for their parents, and so they feel like, well, I guess I need to be doing something for my parent. Um, it does create really good conversations, and so it got me again to thinking about this weekend having an interaction with a family member. Actually, I didn't have an interaction with the family member. I was surprised they showed up to this event, um, and just really seeing wow, this family member is creating a lot of ill will at this wedding, and they were asked essentially kind of asked not to show up. I guess it wasn't very specific, but there was an assumption that they weren't gonna show up, and they showed up. And so there's this obligation that people have, like, well, they're here, so I guess I need to go and interact with them. And and I'm of the mind, like, no, you actually don't have to go and interact with them. There's no obligation to interact with them, other than you're putting it on yourself, or what will others think of you. And as I get older, I think, you know, where appropriate, there's times when you gotta stop thinking about what are other people gonna think about you because life is short and you need to really invest in the relationships that matter to you and not invest in the relationships that don't matter. And the relationships that don't matter are the ones that take energy, consistently take energy. Um, they don't give back to you, and they actually create emotional harm for you to have to try to keep interacting and finding ways to protect yourself and create boundaries for yourself. And so, one of the things that one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this on this podcast today, and it's not gonna be that long, is if you have a person in your life, here's my opinion, right? I told you I was gonna share an opinion. If you have a person like that in your life, my encouragement to you is to not feel any kind of obligation to interact with them. I mean, life is so short, and we have few chances to um really invest in family members. And so, why are you investing? Here's the question: why are you investing in the family member that just takes and takes from you? Why are you not investing in the family members that give back to you, that you enjoy, that you have really great times with? And that's why I was so thankful for this wedding that I was be able that I was able to go to, because the vast majority of people that I didn't know everyone there, obviously, but the vast majority of family members that were there and the new people that I met, um it was just so enjoyable to be able to be there and have a good time and laugh and interact with people that were also interacting and enjoying interacting with me and my family. Um, and so it really kind of solidified in my mind like I don't have time to invest, I don't have time or energy to invest in people that I can't trust, that are not emotionally available, that are just there to take from me and take from my family. And I really want to encourage you that if you have people in your life that are taking from you and taking from your family and taking from the enjoyment of just living and experiencing life, you need to start cutting those people out of your life. Now, you may have people that will say, Well, that's not Christian, that's that's hurtful, that's rude. Um, possibly, but at some point you have to be protective of yourself and you have to be protective of your family. And if a person shows you that they can't be trusted, why do you keep going back to that? Um, well, people will tell me, Well, it's because they can change. Well, maybe they can, but it's not your job to change them. And typically you don't have the magic, if you will, to change somebody. They have to do it on their own. Um people say, Well, I'm hopeful. Yeah, you can be hopeful, sure. But in the meantime, you're being damaged by staying in these relationships. I have a client in particular that um has a horrible mother, and she's an adult woman, both are adult women, has this horrible mother, was horrible when she was a teenager, was horrible now as a grown adult, and yet she keeps circling back there. And so we have these conversations of why are you continuing to interact? And there's this hopefulness. Well, I thought maybe someday she will be that mom that I never had growing up, and that is a powerful uh motivating force. But the problem is sh she keeps going, she keeps hoping this for this thing that 98 99% sure that it's not going to come to fruition. And so at some point you have to have a real con I think you have to have a real conversation with yourself. Is this a relationship that's like let's think logically and statistically speaking, is this going to uh fulfill me? And typically the answer is gonna be no if you're honest with yourself. And so then that's where I'd encourage people like if it's not gonna fulfill you, it keeps taking energy, you keep coming away from that relationship, drained, hurt, sad, uh emotionally spent, that's a relationship that you should just not be in. And there's so many other people in your family that you could be investing in and interacting with and having enjoyable moments of time with that why not just go into those relationships? Um, and so this is you may already be doing this in your life, you may already be a very boundary, um boundary-filled person that doesn't let nonsense come into your life. So this message is not for you because you're doing it already, already. This message is for those people that need permission or need to be told it's okay to not have to interact with certain family members. Um and and people that aren't at that place yet in their life, they will try to guilt you into interacting with those family members. They will try to shame you into interacting with those family members. Um, and honestly, probably what's happening in those moments is they're kind of putting on you what's going on inside of them. Because shame and guilt are not, they can be motivating tools, but usually they're not great for long-term change. And so if you find yourself in those places, it is completely okay to say to that person, you are more than welcome to go interact with this person. I've made a choice in my life that this is not how I want to spend my time. I want to spend my time with people that are gonna energize me and um bring me closer to a more fulfilled self. And typically the people that are um draining you, that are taking and taking the family members, they are not bringing you to a more fulfilled self. They are usually interact interactions with them, usually you come away with feeling bad, ugly, gross, irritated, annoyed. And that can happen with family members, it can happen with friends, it can happen with coworkers. And so my encouragement to you ultimately is to start exercising boundaries and to get out, like really carefully look at the relationships that you're in and get out of those relationships that you feel drained every time you come away from those. Because I'll tell you, if you can start putting up boundaries, your life will change dramatically and you will be um and you'll feel better ultimately about yourself and kind of how you're doing life. Another thing that this kind of goes off into that we'll probably talk about in another podcast is forgiveness. I mean, the older I get, the more I see what is the point of feuds that are going on between people. Um, but that's for a whole nother podcast because I think that relationships are key and being in a feud about something that happened 20 years ago is just silly. And um but but that's that's I digress. That's a whole nother topic for conversation. So if this has been helpful to you, I ask you to share it with a friend. Or if you're already doing this, share it with a friend who isn't doing it and give them some hopefulness on how to move forward from a dysfunctional family or dysfunctional relationship. Because ultimately, the more this the less dysfunction you can have in your life, the better you're gonna feel. Hey, this is Doc David. You know how to find me.