Buying Into Other People’s Realities

Have you ever had the experience of realizing that you just gave up your reality for someone else’s?  Do you find yourself either aligning and agreeing or resisting and reacting to what other’s assert is “the truth”? Often people try, consciously or unconsciously, to impose their beliefs, opinions and conclusions as absolute truths that you should accept as valid.  They then expect you to act in accordance with their created realities.

For instance, people may want you to believe that they know what’s right for you, that you’re wrong to leave them or a relationship, that you owe them, that they are really a good person, not actually mean, or that addiction is something you can never get over, and that your addiction is what is causing all of their problems.

If you are not aware of what they are doing, there is a tendency to either decide they are right, and alter your point of view accordingly, or decide they are wrong, in which case you have to go against them and agree with whatever is opposite of what they are saying. Neither  of these responses gives you any freedom, and both of them actually require you to discard you own reality and essentially disappear.  What’s interesting about this is that the disappearing into other people’s realities is very similar to the disappearing into your drug of choice.  I have yet to meet someone with an addiction who hasn’t spent a lot of time in discarding their own reality in favor of other people’s realities.  Essentially, your addiction is just another variation of someone or something else’s reality.  It’s NOT YOU!

Another great drawback of buying other people’s realities as valuable is that you limit what you can be to what they can be.  For instance, if they are color blind, and can only see in black and white, and you buy their POV as real and true, then you have to limit what you can see and accept their point of view that you must be crazy and delusional and a dreamer to talk about seeing things in color. This may seem far fetched, but it’s actually a fairly mild example of what I see happening all of the time. Consider the child who buy’s their parent’s point of view that they (the child) are responsible for all of the family’s unhappiness or financial problems. He or she will go on to create a life where they feel responsible for other people’s choices, yet powerless to do anything about them.  What about the wife who buys that she deserves to be beaten because she didn’t have dinner on the table at exactly 6:00 PM?  Or the man who takes on other’s realities that he’s a wimp and a loser because he’s not interested in sports or is gay?  The world is full of people and situations where individuals give up what they know to be true in favor of what others, including individuals, family and culture, tell them is true. Many of these individuals end up with problems with addiction.

What if, instead of feeling trapped by what others present as true and real, you started asking questions.  Questions are very empowering and can help you gain clarity and get out of almost any situation. One of the questions I use for clarity is: Does this feel heavy or light?  (The truth always makes you feel light). If things feel “heavy” – you can bet there is a lie somewhere.  You can then ask:  What is the lie, spoken or unspoken?

I also ask: What is their reality here?  Is there anything that’s true for me about this? What are they trying to get me to do or buy into?  Are they trying to control me in some way?  The more you realize that other people’s realities are not true and real, they are just what they have created, the more freedom you have.  And… you might just begin to see any areas of your life you have created as real and true that are actually just someone else’s point of view or belief you have adopted. The more clarity you gain, the more you have the possibility of creating your own reality, based on what works for you, not someone else. And, the more you begin to have your own reality, the less you will find yourself pulled to engage in you addiction! Isn’t it time to start claiming what you actually know to be true for you?