There is a difference between a person who hurts you by making a mistake and a person who hurts by continuing a pattern. Mistakes can be forgiven. Patterns should be broken. – Jay Shetty
You never know why you were born into your particular family. Nothing happens in this universe without a reason. The movement of every planet is precisely synchronized. Even a slight change in a planet’s movement could collapse the universe. So, your birth is not just a coincidence. It must have some reason, and the best reason I can think of is your karmic debts from previous lives. We are all here to reduce our karmic debts. No one is inherently good or bad; it is all circumstantial. One may be good to ten people and bad to ten others. The same is true for our families.
We must analyze these relationships by the time we attain adulthood (the sooner, the better). Otherwise, like me at the age of 60, you will realize that instead of living with low self-esteem for 60 years, you could have changed your circumstances for the better by leaving the family.
People in my family were not bad to others, but there were very negative vibes towards me for no apparent reason. I now realize that every action and discussion indicated that I was born into this family to repay my karmic debts.
What are the signs that you should look for to understand that you are undergoing this unknown trauma?
Check if you are being emotionally abused. When they come after you, the whole family will start imposing on you that you are the most loved person in the family, and then the emotional blackmail starts. In my case, I was always under observation. I never had my own space, and according to them, it was because they were always worried about me. All my cousins, sisters, etc., had wonderful lives. They had access to all the gadgets like tape recorders, etc., in the house, but as soon as I touched anything, e.g., a camera, my whole family immediately expressed concern that my studies would be hampered. They orchestrated this whole operation so cleverly that I believed in it.
I really believed that all these people were working hard only for my welfare. And because, deep inside, I was quite sad in this situation, I always lived with very low self-esteem. I always felt guilty. For me, the goal of my life became to please all these people to prove that I am a good person.
They would be abusive, sarcastic, and dominating, but the discussion would end up stating that they were doing all this because they loved me and cared for me. It was too confusing for me, but with time I accepted that they were all correct and I was wrong.
It is difficult to believe, but it went on for over 55 years, and that’s why I am writing now so that no one else should go through the same trauma. Start pinpointing and analyzing the warning signals so that you can come out of this kind of situation cleverly without struggling, fighting, or annoying anyone.
How I came to understand about of it all?
“These kinds of people love it when you start responding to their behavior the way they want. But when I permanently moved overseas, I started to forget about my traumatic past and stopped responding to them. They found it difficult to accept this fact and took it as a challenge. To intensify the situation, they started targeting my family. Just imagine, I am ten thousand kilometers away, and these people would call me and, instead of asking about our welfare, they would start giving sermons about how to maintain our legacy, how to respect our culture, religion, and traditions. This would all start very politely and slowly escalate to the point of ultimate abuse.
When they started targeting my family in a similar way, that was the first signal to me that something was dangerously wrong. I was confused. I went through hundreds of YouTube videos to learn more about my situation, and then I came to know about people known as ‘Gas lighters’.
Instead of explaining what kind of people Gas Lighters are, I will write how Oxford dictionary defines Gas Lighters:
Just imagine if only I had known about gas lighters 55 years ago, my life would have been so different. So take action before it is too late.
My Recommendations:
- Do not allow people to give their advice to you if you have not asked for it and be brutal about it.
- Do not seek someone’s approval for your actions or lifestyle. It is your right to do what you do or how you act unless you are affecting someone else.
- What people think about you is none of your business.
- Be kind and polite but do not allow anyone to dictate their term on you.
- Life will never be fair but you need to learn to deal with that if you want to live happily.