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Tears (of manipulation) i.e. how are your boundaries?

We are seemingly prone to give in when we see tears. I wonder why?

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Children have seemingly endless creativity to convince, coerce, persuade their parents to change that NO into a YES.

Those crocodile tears do not necessarily flow like a river because they are hurt, sometimes they just simply do not want to accept that NO as an answer. I was too a kid once 😊

Tears seem to work most of the time.

Even when adults cry for the same reason.

We are seemingly prone to give in when we see tears.

I wonder why we give up our boundaries so easily?

I do not know for sure, but my guess is that our subconscious pulls out a formula that drives us to give in.

Even if it is about nothing else but trying to push those boundaries. Which adults do too. However, they usually do it very consciously.

Tears can manipulate us to say YES when we want to say NO.

Sticking to our NO is tricky because we need to do two important things. And we must do both:

  1. We need wisdom to determine if those tears are genuine or manipulative.
  2. If the latter we must believe that keeping our choice of NO
  3. will do no harm and
  4. it does not mean lack of love.

Sometimes our NO originates in our self-care – which is paramount for our own wellbeing.

Other times it is for their benefit (just think of bringing up children). It can be good in the short term, but mostly it is good for the long term. Even if it is painful now.

When we say NO we teach the other person (whether a child or an adult) as well:

  1. By “enforcing” them to respect our boundaries they can exercise self-control.
  2. As role models we show it is ok to say NO, teaching them not to be afraid of setting boundaries.

If we love them, we must take on healthy confrontations with them in order to teach them about boundaries.

Love without boundaries is not love.

More about #love here

Here is my hand.