If you want to know more about someone, just look at how that person relates to others. After all, the more we respect and love ourselves, the more carefully and caringly we treat our loved ones.
Reading another story about domestic violence, a friend said irritably: “I absolutely cannot understand what is going on in their brains! How is it possible, on the one hand, to mock a person like that, and on the other hand, to endure for so long?! It’s kind of crazy.»
When we encounter behavior in others that we cannot explain, we often speak of their insanity or stupidity. It is difficult to penetrate someone else’s consciousness, and if you yourself do not behave like the one you do not understand, all that remains is to shrug your shoulders in bewilderment. Or still try with the help of logic and your own experience to find the answer: why?
In these searches, one can rely on the principle discovered long ago by psychologists and philosophers: in communication with another, we cannot rise above the level of relations with ourselves.
The victim has her own inner tyrant, who terrorizes her, depriving her of the right to self-respect.
In other words, how we treat others indicates how we treat ourselves. He who constantly shames others is ashamed of himself. He who pours out hatred on others hates himself.
There is a well-known paradox: many husbands and wives who terrorize their families feel that they are not powerful aggressors at all, but the unfortunate victims of those whom they torment. How is this possible?
The fact is that inside the psyche of these tyrants there is already an inner tyrant, and he, completely unconscious, mocks that part of their personality that is accessible to consciousness. They cannot see this inner tyrant, he is inaccessible (just as we cannot see our appearance without a mirror), and they project this image onto those who are nearby.
But the victim also has her own inner tyrant, who terrorizes her, depriving her of the right to self-respect. She does not see value in herself, so relationships with a real external tyrant become more important than personal well-being.
The more we sacrifice ourselves, the more we demand from others.
The rule “as with yourself, so with others” is true in a positive sense. Taking care of yourself starts taking care of others. By respecting our own wants and needs, we learn to respect others.
If we refuse to take care of ourselves, completely devoting ourselves to others, then we will also deny those around us the right to take care of ourselves without us. This is how the desire to “strangle with care” and “do good” is born. The more we sacrifice ourselves, the more we demand from others.
So if I want to understand the inner world of another, I look at how he treats others.
And if I want to see something in myself, I will pay attention to how I am with other people. And if it’s bad with people, it seems that I’m doing “bad” to myself first of all. Because the level of communication with others is determined primarily by the level of communication with oneself.