Stop being an emotional punching bag before it destroys your life
Tired of taking a beating for everyone else’s needs? Stick up for yourself and stop being an emotional punching bag.
by: E.B. Johnson
When you allow yourself to be buffeted through life and your relationships by the old habits and patterns of your past, it can lead to some strange and painful shores. The more we give in to these dubious relics of who we once were, the more we lose touch with who we are right now. Becoming an emotional punching bag doesn’t happen overnight. It happens as a result of losing ourselves in the shadow of toxic.
Stop being an emotional punching bag to the people around you, and do it by cultivating strength, self-compassion and — above all else — understanding. By arming yourself with knowledge, you can come to realize that you are just as deserving of love and happiness as anyone else. The sooner you embrace this, the sooner you can let go of partners, friends and family who take advantage, break your heart, or leave you feeling small.
When it’s easier to take the hits than call the shots.
Relationships are complex and dynamic and that can make them difficult to manage and balance. It’s not hard to find yourself off-center and taking on more of the emotional labor (and subsequent safeguarding) than you meant to. In these moments, it can often become easier to just take the hit — rather than doing the extra work it takes to step up to the plate and start calling the shots for our own needs.
If you’ve started rolling over and accepting horrendous treatment from the friends, family and romantic partners in your life it can be a sign that you’ve allowed yourself to become an emotional punching bag; forever beholden to their needs and toxic, changing desires.
When you become the emotional punching bag in your relationship (be it platonic or romantic) you start taking on an unequal amount of the labor and responsibility that go into that relationship. This might mean handling a partners extreme mood swings, or it might look more like dampening your own light or becoming a “second parent”. However it occurs, it’s critical that we learn how to spot these patterns of rolling over and learn how to stick up for our needs.
Why we set ourselves up for a beating.
We don’t wake up one morning and decide we want to be unhappy at the benefit of someone else. It’s usually the consequence of misunderstanding our rights, our needs, and the cosmically ordained things that are meant for our future happiness.
Misunderstanding rights
Frankly, some people allow themselves to be emotionally vomited all over because they don’t realize there’s any other option. Society and our caretakers teach us a lot of things about life and relationships. Unfortunately, they don’t. always take care to teach us about our natural and cosmically given rights within those spheres. You have a cosmically ordained right to feel confident, peaceful and secure in your relationships. You are the only person who can guarantee that happens, however.
Low self-esteem
There is no killer of joy and happiness like low self-esteem, and nothing that can make us more likely to set up camp as an emotional whipping boy in someone’s life. When you come to believe that, you’re worthless or otherwise deserving of disrespect, belittlement or outright dismissal, it can cause you to bow down to people who take advantage of you. Or people who otherwise use you to alleviate their own complicated and negative energy.
Complicated relationship ideas
We form strange ideas on what constitutes healthy relationships, especially when broken or abusive connections are all we’ve ever known. More often than not, if you look at someone who is an emotional punching bag — you’ll find someone who has just accepted that that is what love looks like in their life. Their perspective on happiness and bonding is broken, because that’s probably all they’ve ever known.
A history of pain
A history plagued by pain, abuse or trauma has a funny way of setting us up to take emotional beatings later in life. While some of this has a lot to do with our insecurities, it has even more to do with the types of patterns and behaviors we come to accept as our baseline. An unaddressed history of pain will continue to undermine your happiness in a number ofalarming and subtle ways.
Pressure from within and without
Inward and outward pressure can go a long way to inform the way we connect and build relationships — no matter what plane they’re on. Society pressures us to pair off (often at all costs) and this can lead to us forcing ourselves to stay in places we know we don’t belong. Likewise, our own strange ideals and imaginations can create similar pressure to conform or otherwise settle for less than you deserve.
Signs you’ve become an emotional punching bag.
Think you’ve become the emotional punching bag of a friend, family member or partner? These are the common signs that you’re being taken for granted and dumped all over with little thought to your own wellbeing.
Feeling taken for granted
The most common sign that you’ve become an emotional refuse yard for other people is the feeling of being taken for granted. If you feel as though you’re always there for other people, but they’re never there for you, it can create feelings of resentment and a harsh resentment that can leak out into every other aspect of your life.
Never listened to
Consider the communication that you and your partner share. Is it mostly one sided? Or do you feel as though there is regularly space made for you to express what you need to express, safely and without fear of blowback? Communication is key in any relationship, and all parties have to feel seen, valued and listened to. If it’s never okay for you to express your side, it might be time to consider that you’ve let yourself become a punching bag.
Holding all the blame
When it comes to relationships of any sort, it can be easy to fall into the blame trap when things get difficult or challenging. This is especially true for narcissists and those who find themselves in platonic or romantic relationships with them. In these relationships, you’re not only the emotional punching bag…you’re also the one who is left holding all the blame when things go south. It doesn’t matter if it’s your fault or not.
A second parenting
A more subtle (yet still insidious) sign that you’ve become an emotional punching bag is your tendency to “parent” those you care for. If your partner looks to you as more of a parent than a partner and expects you to see to their personal and emotional needs in ways that are both unfair and self-defeating — it can be a sign that there’s an imbalance and a one-sidedness that isn’t being addressed.
Unlimited dumping grounds
When you’re the punching bag, you become the emotional “dumping ground” for everyone around you. You get all the leftover nastiness from their day; if something doesn’t go right at work — you’re the one who gets yelled at (not the boss). When plans don’t quite pan out, you get a steaming-fresh pile of emotional vomit. Toxic people never shows their true face to the outside world. They expect their partners to accept the punishments they’re too cowardly to dish out on those who deserve them.
Taking what you’re given
Look at your important relationships. Are your needs ignored? Do you have to squeeze yourself into a box for the other person? Despite all this, they still destroy you with endless belittlement, affairs or even physical abuse. This type of partner knows that you’ll take whatever you’re given, so they dump on you and do anything and everything they want…whenever they want. There’s little compassion where your feelings are concerned and even less consideration.
Diminishing light
Do you feel like you have to stifle yourself in order to allow your partner or your friends to be seen? Do you feel like you have to put yourself in a corner, so that they alone get to be the ones to enjoy the dance? When you dampen your light to ensure that the other person gets to shine or somehow display an “exceptional nature” (that they don’t really have) — you’re selling yourself short. You’re also putting your needs on the back-burner and ensuring unhappiness for yourself in the future.
The long-term effects of taking an emotional beating.
Becoming the emotional whipping boy of the surrounding people isn’t a laughing matter. It comes with a number ofserious consequences that can tragically undermine the quality of our life and happiness.
Losing touch, losing sight
Perhaps the most damaging side effect of accepting a life as someone’s emotional punching bag is losing who you are. The more you are used as storage for all the bad and negative things in other people’s lives, the more you lose sight of the things that you want or the things that provide joy and fulfillment. You get mired in their misery and therein lose yourself.
Increased chance of abuse
Though not every case of “emotional dumping” could be labeled as emotional abuse — the line is a very thin one. However it starts, the longer you normalize this kind of behavior in your life, the more vulnerable you can make yourself for future or more advanced types of abuse. This is because this constant emotional battery normalizes the toxic behaviors and pushes your limits further and further away from where they need to be.
Bottomed-out confidence
Though eroded self-confidence is often one of the reasons we accept our role as an emotional punching bag, it’s also one of the symptoms of remaining someone’s emotional refuse bin. Taking heartbreaking and soul-crumbling beatings of rage, sorrow and contempt completely erodes your self-esteem and can cause you to look down on yourself and your ability to lead a quality, happy life.
Missing opportunities
Like it or not, we have finite space and time in our lives for people and experiences. The longer we cling to old patterns and toxic relationships, the more these things take up space in our lives which results in missed opportunities and chances to get in touch with our deeper meaning. If you chase only bad, there’s not a lot of time and energy left to pursue the good.
Inherently resentful outlooks
When you live in a world of negativity and emotional dust-ups, it can lead tto a negative outlook on life and most people in it. Constantly taking on bad treatment can lead to the personally held belief that all people are only capable of bad treatment. You can start to see everyone as the enemy and even turn inwardly on yourself.
How to stop being an emotional punching bag and start sticking up for ourselves.
You don’t have to remain the emotional punching bag of your friends, family or lovers for one more second. You can get serious about transforming your life and doing it through personal strength. That requires courage, however, and learning how to celebrate yourself for both your strengths and your weaknesses.
1. Figure out who you are (and what you need)
There is no power greater than knowing who you are and what you need and want from this life and your future. When you know who you are, you are able to set limits and boundaries — and you’re able to stick to them without fail. You exude confidence because, once you figure out who you are, you don’t have to rely on the insecurities and uncertainties anymore.
If fear is what keeps you at the mercy of other people’s emotional whims, start letting it go by getting to the root of who you are. Dig deep and find that authentic core of being that guides you and directs you toward your ultimate purpose.
Embrace some radical self-acceptance, and stop running away from the things that you really need and desire from your life, your relationships, your family and even your career. You have every right to be happy, and you have every right to live in a world which is peaceful and aligned with who you are. Build that world by embracing your authenticity and using that authenticity to set limits for everything and everyone around you.
2. Become the best version of you
Nothing says “I’m not your punching bag anymore” like becoming the best possible version of yourself. Think about the most confident and truly self-assured person that you know. Do you think they allow people to dump all over them or talk down to them? Probably not, and you shouldn’t either.
Once you know what you want and where your limits lie, focus on becoming the best possible version of yourself that you can be. This doesn’t mean that you have to lose a million pounds or get a million-dollar job.
It simply means you have to start looking after yourself and setting limits for the world around you. Find your flow and level with it. Do things that make you feel good and pursue experiences and people that enhance the quality of your life. The better you feel inside and out, the more you will find that you exist within a micro-reality of your making.
3. Increase your confidence levels
Confidence is key when it comes to breaking free of our tendencies to sacrifice ourselves emotionally. You have to startsticking up for yourself and protecting your own wellbeing. In order to do that you need a special sort of courage that can only come within. You’re the only real cheerleader you have, and the only one you need. You have to tap into that with personal confidence, however.
Start focusing on rebuilding your self-esteem from the inside out. Get a journal and take 5–10 minutes of alone time each day. In that time, write down all the strengths you can think of, then all the hundreds of tiny accomplishments you have managed to score throughout your life.
Look at your wins for what they are and celebrate them. Celebrate your little victories and accomplishments every single day. Little-by-little you will come to see your strength increasing and the personal value you are coming to recognize too. In your lowest and darkest moments, pull out that journal and recall those strengths. Take a hard look back at all you’ve overcome and know that you’re strong enough to stand up for yourself.
4. Reshape the way you prioritize partnerships
Our romantic relationships hold especial importance in our society, but we can often mistakenly prioritize these relationships above everything else in our lives. When that happens, we find ourselves lost, isolated and disconnected from the passions and people who provide us with perspective and meaning. If we truly want to stop being at the mercy of the whims of our partners, we have to learn to prioritize our relationships with them accordingly.
You need to spend some time on your own thinking about what you want from your closest and most intimate relationships. You also need to define what you see as “love”. Clinging to toxic standards will leave you vulnerable and at the mercy of people whose intentions may not be pure.
Understand that romantic relationships aren’t the end-all-be-all to life, and that you don’t have to sacrifice yourself in order to have one. Love should not come at the cost of who we are or the friendships we enjoy. We should not have to suffer a beating (physically or emotionally) just to find acceptance, peace and an authentic place to lay our heads. Reshape the way you prioritize the relationships around you and start placing value in the places you are truly seen.
5. Work on resolving the past
P! So many of the toxic behaviors, beliefs and patterns that undermine our happiness originate deep in our pasts. Whether it be a traumatic childhood or just a previous romantic relationship gone awry — one of the most powerful ways to start building better relationships in the right here and now is by resolving the pain of our past.
Stop seeing your relationships or your future as something that will magically heal the pain that’s following you. Know that the only person who can give you peace and resolution is you, so you might as well start now.
Resolving the pain of our past allows us to live more fully in the present. The longer we cling to old pain and the traumas of a childhood un-lived, the more we find ourselves falling back down into toxic patterns and bonding methods that make it impossible to stay happy for long. If we want to build better relationships (of any kind) we need to learn to come to them whole, and that’s something that comes only when we start dealing with our baggage.
Putting it all together…
It’s easy to get caught up in the chaos of life and it’s even easier to find yourself being an emotional punching bag for everyone around you. When you constantly sacrifice your own needs in favor of others, or allow them to make you the dumping ground of all their most toxic emotions, you’re selling yourself short and selling yourself out. True freedom comes when we learn how to stand up for what we want and the future’s we’re aiming to build with the people that we love.
Spend some time on your own and use that time to get more familiar with who you really are and what you really want from this life and your relationships. We often accept poor treatment because we don’t know anything else. Embrace who you are and embrace your needs; commit to becoming a better version of yourself and allow that version to guide you toward a future that can provide you with meaning and fulfillment. Boost your confidence and understand the importance of self-esteem when it comes to forming our boundary lines and relationship limits. We all have a right to be happy and secure in whatever relationship we build for ourselves. Prioritize your relationships and work on resolving your past so that you can start to radically embrace your future for what it is — a completely clean slate of opportunity just waiting for you to open the door.
