January 22, 2025 • 47 mins
Empathy is a wonderful personal quality, caring for others goes hand-and-hand, and giving others the benefit of the doubt goes a long way with respect to specific situations and circumstances. We can acknowledge other people's pain and life stressors. However at what point does making excuses for others actions and choices become unhealthy? Are we unintentionally enabling unhealthy behaviors? During this podcast, I fully discuss and explain when making excuses crosses the line into unhealthy territory. Recognizing when these excuses hold us back from doing what’s best for us or doing what is best for someone else. The more we stop making excuses for our actions, the less likely we are to make excuses for others. There's a fine line when excusing specific behavior becomes unhealthy, both for the people in our lives and in our own life. It’s also important to remember that we cannot judge others’ behavior without first looking at our own. Understanding this balance allows us to maintain healthier relationships and live more authentically.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're in a good place now. You are listening to
Perspectives with Ashley Burgess.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome back Live to Live Your True Life Perspectives and
I'm your host, Ashley Burgess. We know that it's good
to be empathetic. We know it's good to care for
other people. We mostly try to give the benefit of
the doubt to others. We want to care about others.
(00:34):
We care about people deeply. We acknowledge people's pains, we
acknowledge people's stressors, we acknowledge the issues they're going through.
But when does making excuses for others in our life
and for ourselves become unhealthy? When does this become unhealthy?
And that's what I want to talk about in today's
(00:56):
podcast because I think it's something we don't talk about enough.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
We don't really talk about it at all.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
When does it become unhealthy to continue to make excuses
for others and ourselves? And how do we understand when
it's kind of that gray line or the black line,
or the horizon line or the Okay, you've reached a
place where it's not a good position to be in.
You've reached a place where you're making these excuses and
it's no longer healthy, and let's determine that today. Because
(01:24):
I want to talk about it in perspective of other
people making excuses for other people. I want to talk
about it in perspective of making excuses for ourselves and
our own actions, and how that gets in the way
of us doing things we need to do, or how
it gets in the way of us continuing to do
things that we shouldn't do.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
And so we're going to really examine.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That today because I think it goes hand in hand,
because I think that the less excuses we give ourselves
for the most part, sometimes the less excuses we give others.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
But sometimes it can be.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You know, from my perspective, if you know, doing what
I do in the career that I am in, I
don't make judgment calls on people. If I make judgments
calls on people, I wouldn't be a very good coach
at all. I wouldn't be very good at my job
and what I do. So I have to dispel judgment
on a daily basis, and in that process that works
(02:18):
in session.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Theoretically.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That's a really great concept in sessions because I'm looking
at it from every angle. Understand the perspective of where
people are coming from, walking in their shoes and understanding
different choices, good, bad, and different. However, when it comes
to my personal life, my friends, family, coworkers, what have you,
often I can obviously not make any judgment. But sometimes
(02:42):
in the process of not you know, making any judgment,
you know, a lot of things happen in the process
that aren't necessarily healthy, They aren't necessarily good, they aren't
actually good for myself or even others. And so we're
gonna talk about that today because I think we need
to uncover that. I think everybody needs to know where
(03:04):
that line of demarcation is, because if we know where
the line of demarcation is, we can make sure that
we are actually, first off, staying in more of a
healthy realm.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Understanding the truth.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Because you know, it's easy to start skewing the truth
to make things work for us, or at least we
think it's working. But again, we're just hurting ourselves, you know,
we're just lying to ourselves, or we're lying.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
To other people, or we're doing both.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Because most of the time, when we lie to ourselves, right,
we have to lie to others because it comes hand
in hands, you know, it's part of the deal. You know,
if you're lying yourself, you're lying to others just automatically.
And that's one of the things that I think is
an ultimate interesting excuse. And I've given it to others.
I go, well, I know they're at least lying to themselves,
so it's not just me that they're lying to. Okay,
(03:52):
that's great, at least I recognize that reality. However, how
does that help them? And then how do we bring
light into the subject matter? And my biggest thing is
that we really got to look at our own backyard
first off, because we really can't, you know, kind of
like bring light to a subject if we're not bringing
(04:13):
light into our own life. So like, if we're doing
things that we're making excuses for our own stuff, and
we're doing it on a constant basis and we're not
working to be better. If we sit there and point
it out on others, they're probably gonna turn around and
be like, okay, you know, pot kettle, sure, okay, well
let me point out what you got going on?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And so I know that everybody's got stuff hidden from
their eyesight. Everybody has a set of blinders. Some people's blinders, well,
some people got lots of sets. Other people might have
one set, other people might have two sets. Okay, so
there's lots of things going on here. Nobody's perfect, no one.
(04:52):
Everybody's got some sort of blinder on that's enabling them
to do something that's not healthy for them. It's enabling
them to continue to you know, have a pattern of
reaction action, you know, what have you. And in this situation,
we have to really realize that because we all have
that within us, and we all probably see it more
(05:15):
in other people. So we have to check ourselves first
and really analyze that before we check others. But I
think this is a really cool conversation today that it's
not about judgment. It's just about getting better than we
were yesterday. This isn't a judgment show. You know, we
don't really talk about judgment, but it is a show
about like, let's look at how we really feel, let's
look at what we've been doing in the past, and
(05:37):
let's move forward. Okay, So when does making excuses for others?
When does that become unhealthy for us? And I think
the first morning sign is when you're taking on the
blame fully on yourself, When you're blaming just yourself when
(05:58):
you're blaming yourself, when you're blaming yourself for someone else's
negative behavior, when you're blaming yourself for someone else's negative behavior.
So when somebody else is doing some crazy stuff out
of line, maybe doing drugs, alcohol excessively, going off, yelling, screaming,
causing fights, you know, fighting with you, all that stuff,
(06:19):
and you start holding onto that, and you start dealing
with that, and you start holding onto all that saying, Okay,
you know this is all me, you know this is
all me. I'm the creator of this, I'm the reason
why this person's doing this, and you're not at all
looking at the fact that this person is a human
being that can make decisions for themselves. And so when
(06:40):
we take on negative blame, you know, we're also believing
that we cause them this pain, that we cause them
to do this. That's not healthy. That's very codependent. It's
very codependent thinking. It's probably something that you've dealt with
in childhood. You probably felt that way around mom or
dad that you know, when they acted bad, you know,
when they acted wrong, when they went out drinking and
(07:02):
came home stumbling drunk, or they started fights, you were
to blame and that's normal because that's what kids do.
We assume, Okay, well, I'm the one that caused this
to happen. I'm the cause for the problem, and that's
not it. And so some of this stuff is learned,
and a lot of it's learn from our childhood, unfortunately,
(07:22):
and a lot of it is learned from our childhood.
We take on things we don't need to take on
based on the consideration of how our family dynamic was,
and that's something that we really need to look at
as well, but not that much in today's show, because
that would take up at least five shows of its own.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
So think about that.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
When was the last time you took you blamed yourself
for something someone else did? And sometimes we do have blame.
I'm not saying that there's never any blame, that we're
always innocent. That is not the case. You really got
to look at yourself in these situations and analyze it. However,
I think there is a lot of times that we
do blame ourselves and necessarily something we need to be doing.
(08:02):
And I think that that comes, you know, part and
partial from the fact of our family dynamic.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So look at it. Has somebody been nasty.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Mean, angry, volatile with you, and you've owned it all.
You never once thought about what the other person contributed.
I mean, and that happens. I've been there before where
you're not The first thing you think about is not
what they did, it's oh god, you know I contributed
to this. And then you you know, you ruminate in it,
and you feel bad about it, and you try to
(08:29):
calm they don't answer the phone. You apologize, and you're apologizing. Yes,
everybody has some room to apologize, but you're basically apologizing
for everything and allowing this person completely off the hook.
And that leads me into a next pattern. And I
call this enabling behavior. You know, enabling behavior is very
(08:51):
interesting when you excuse others and allow someone to engage
in harmful behavior without facing any consequences, not taking any responsibility.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Enabling behavior is one of the worst things we can do.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Enabling somebody else to do things that's not good for
them is one of the absolute worst things we can do.
Because see, the thing is, it's always gonna come back
to you.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
It's always gonna come back to you.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So, for example, you know, you live with somebody that's
you know, pretty much an alcoholic right.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
And you know you enable them. You allow them to drink.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
You accept that and all that stuff, even though they
need to be going to rehabit, you continue to do it.
Eventually they throw it in your face and say, you're
the one that allowed me to drink. You're the one
that went to the liquor store. You're drinking too, Look
at you, You're no better than me. And so they're
gonna throw it in your face at some point. But
then there's that flip side when you say, hey, you're
(09:50):
not gonna have any alcohol. We're not gonna do that,
and they start fighting you. You're a bad person, you're
a mean person. You're trying to control me. I can't
believe you're doing this to me. I'm a grown d old,
I can drink. I can't believe you're doing this to
mean you're not allowing me to drink. You're a bad person,
You're mean. And then all of a sudden, guess what
you give in. Can't handle it. After a couple of days,
(10:11):
you go two days dealing with it over and over again.
You're not drinking because you don't want them to drink,
and then you give in because you don't want to
hear it anymore, and for for like one hour, they're
actually great to be around.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
You're like, oh man, they're actually.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Fun and they're they're cool, and they're you know, they're normal,
more normal, And it all flips around again, right, because
they're an alcoholic. You know, the first two drinks, anybody's fun.
After that, it is not fun anymore. When somebody when
it's five am in the morning, somebody's not going to
bed because they're still drinking. Okay, but then they can
throw it in your face. You're the one that got
the alcohol. You were drinking with me, right, So it
(10:47):
sucks because there's no middle ground here.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
You either do it, damned if you do, or damned
if you don't.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
So when we're trying to be talking more about this,
because this is a very interesting dynamic that I think.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
A lot of people are going through.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
A lot of people are experience and scene and we
want to make sure that we're living our life as
healthy as possible. We want to make sure we're doing
the right thing, and we want to make sure that
we're not enabling others literature life perspectives. With your host
me Ashley Burgers, will be back in I'll be back
this time in two shakes.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Turn it up and jump in the deep end on perspectives.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Now here's Ashley, Welcome back, live to literature life Perspectives,
and I'm your host, Ashley Burgess. It's okay to care
for others.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's a good thing, and so it's a great thing
to be able to be empathetic, to care about others feelings,
to care about others pain. However, there is a demarcation.
When is it unhealthy to make uses for other people
for their behavior, for their actions, for their choices. When
(12:05):
is it unhealthy for us to make excuses for our behavior,
our decisions, our actions, our choices.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
This goes hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
We can't just look at other people's actions and choices
and discernment and judge that if we're not looking at
our own.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I find that it's.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Interesting, Like right before the break, I was talking about
enabling behavior, when we enable someone else, we actually do
them a complete disservice. And some of you will be like, well,
if I don't enable them, I have to hear grief.
If I don't enable them and give in, I have
(12:41):
to have pain and suffering all day, all night because
they want to drink, or they want to do drugs,
or they want to do this, or they want to
do that. And so either I give in or I
just get yelled at and I go through the process.
And that's the determination you have to make about dealing
with the relationship like that, knowing that this person one
obviously has an addiction problem, has other issues as well.
(13:06):
You know, it's it's a matter of time that you're
either going to just fall into the full on enablement,
losing your identity, you know, creating great harm in your
own life.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Because I found that when you're dealing with either enabling
or not enabling, when it becomes that cut and dry
and it's either you do it or you don't, you
either get peace or you don't get peace. That's when
we're in a relationship that's actually very toxic, and that
might be something that you might need to be aware of, uh,
if you're dealing with a relationship like this, because if
(13:40):
you're in a relationship like this, you're in a very
toxic relationship. It's a very challenging relationship. And that's something
that we want to definitely understand.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Two. Enabling behavior.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
You know, when we enable people to also not do
things like if we enable somebody to not not work,
if we enable somebody not to to get out of bed,
if we enable somebody to stay at home and never
to drive and to stay at home, if we enable
somebody to sleep all day, all these things prevent this
person from doing what they need to do. And I
(14:16):
know it's almost like the prevention when people are about
to hit rock bottom. When people are about to hit
rock bottom, many of us enable them, right, We enable them.
We keep enabling them, enabling them to not hit rock bottom,
which is absolutely the worst thing we can possibly do.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
And I've been there before where I enabled somebody for
a long, long period of time for several years, thinking
I was doing the right thing by them, thinking I
was protecting them, and I wasn't. I was doing the
exact opposite, you know. And I didn't want to have
the argument. I didn't want to have the conflict, you know.
(14:58):
And that's another is and that kind of jumps into
where I want us to talk about now, is avoiding conflict.
In the avoidance of dealing with conflict, I would allow
certain things to happen because I didn't want to have
the fight.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
I didn't want to have the argument. I knew what
was going to happen.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
But inevitably, and I hate to say this, but the
more you fight it, it's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
It's inevitable.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
If somebody is very upset, very angry, if somebody is
you know, avoiding responsibility, if somebody is under the influence
of drugs and alcohol, if somebody is abusing pharmaceutical drugs,
if there's a combination of all of those, and they're
avoiding doing, you know, any sort of work, if they're
avoiding being a part of society, any of that, and
(15:50):
we're not speaking up and saying, hey, you know, you
really got to start doing this, or hey you need
to go back to school, or hey you need to
get a job, or hey you need to do the
bare minimum things that you've been saying you're gonna do
this whole time, that you still haven't stepped up the
plate to do. And then we got to look at ourselves. Okay,
and this enabling and this avoiding conflict, you know, avoiding conflict. Wow,
(16:15):
I mean, conflict's gonna show up. Okay, you can avoid
it all you want, Good luck, cause it's gonna still
come for you. So why are we enabling somebody to
eventually screw themselves over who eventually screw us over? And
it's interesting when I look back through my life. The
few people that I have enabled and then tried not
(16:36):
to hit rock bottom and did everything I could for
them not to hit rock bottom, they still hit rock bottom.
I mean not bad, not like horrible, not like some
of the stuff you hear. I mean I did help
a little bit, But at the same time, they could
have started getting help a long time before. Also, I
could have been working on my life and focusing on
my needs and things I needed to do a long
(16:59):
time prior to two if I would have stopped enabling.
You know, the thing is is that we get lost
in other people's negativity. We get lost in other people's
problems because it becomes easier for us because we have
problems too, they just might not be as huge of
a problem or as a parent as a problem. For example,
(17:20):
you have a job. You try to go to work,
maybe you get stuff done. Maybe you have days you don't,
but you show up and you do it. You get
out of bed, you take your shower, you take care
of your responsibilities, you know all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
But you got someone.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Over there that you're you're interacting with on a daily
basis that's doing none of that. And so it makes
you look like you got everything going on, like you
got your life, you know, kind of you got things
working for you. But you have to really start analyzing
because you can't judge yourself off that other person's life.
(17:54):
You can't judge that. And you also have to look
at who are you trying to avoid conflict in your life?
And a lot of times when you're trying to avoid conflict,
you have somebody the other person likes conflict. You can't
avoid conflict with somebody that likes conflict. It doesn't work
that way. There's a lot of people out there that
love argumentation. There's a lot of people out there that
(18:17):
love to fight. That's what they do. Okay, they're the Karens,
They're the negative nancies in the world. They're the ones
that make life shitty. That's what they do. That's their life.
That's like their entire mantra. And you don't know it
when you first meet them, because it's not like they
tell you that. I mean, most people wear masks, right,
It's it's funny. The fascination with masks in our society rights,
(18:43):
our mask fascination of Oh, people love to wear masks
like a you know, at balls and Halloween and Maddy Girl,
and the list goes on back in you know, in
Italy and Venice, back in the day when they would
wear these masks to these you know, these parties and
all these sex parties, all this going on. Very interesting dynamic,
but people gravitate to masks, and especially if somebody's initially
(19:06):
wearing a mask in the beginning of relationship. And so
many of you out there that are married to somebody
or been in a long term relationship, or maybe it's
not really been that long, but you see how the
mask came off over time, and that can be very
alarming and scary because the person that you thought you
were with is really not the person that you're with.
That was the version that they were selling you, you know,
(19:27):
in order for you to get warm and fuzzy and
tell them your personal stories and give them all this
information about you so later on they could use it
against you. I call that forever ammunition. If you're dealing
with somebody that's using forever ammunition on you, meaning that
you did something five ten two three year ago, and
they keep bringing it up and every argument, every single
(19:47):
day of your life. You'll need to watch that video.
Check out my YouTube channel. Go to life Coach Ashley
Burgess Ashley Burgess. Either way, go to YouTube, you'll find
my channel. We're almost at two hundred thousand subscribers right now,
and put in the search bar forever ammunition. I think
it might actually help you to understand the conflict and
what's really happening as far as the power dynamic and
(20:10):
what they're wanting. Anyway, let's go back to this enabling behavior,
so we have to look at it and turn it
around on us too. Are we enabling ourselves in any way?
And I know we've all been there before where it's like, oh, no,
I don't I don't drink that much. You know, I
don't drink that I you know a lot of people
drink more than I do. And and you know, okay,
(20:32):
we've all had that conversation. We've all had that conversation.
But I mean, it's okay to to kind of sit
there and minimize. But then there's a part where minimization
isn't going to work anymore. So are we enabling ourselves?
Speaker 3 (20:46):
I mean, some of us.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Might be workaholics and we work all day, we work
late nights, you know, and we're all, this is right,
this is good.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
We have to look at that.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So it's not always just an addiction of some sort,
but you know, things become that way. You know, maybe
we're buried in our work because we're with conflict in
our relationship. You know, maybe there's some conflicts we're not
dealing with with our family dynamic, and it causes us
to bury ourselves in work, or it causes avoidance, or
it causes drinking, or it causes you know, marijuana usage
(21:15):
or other drug usage to escape from what we're dealing with.
And so it's like really analyzing these types of situations
and getting a good read and a good beat on
things so that we can actually make some honest, honest
decisions about.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Where we are now.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
You know, it really does go both ways, making excuses
for others and making excuses for ourselves. And when when
I return, I'm talking about intellectualizing, because intellectualizing is what
a lot of us have a tendency of doing. It
can come second nature, depends on how you raise and
when we do that, we'll talk about all that and
(21:55):
how that can also confuse us even more of what
we're doing. And so there's a lot of things that
we're doing here and we just need to get it.
We just need to get a good handle on things.
Because the more we understand why we do things, and
the more we understand what we're actually doing instead of
sugarcoating it or coloring it or acting like it's something
(22:15):
else or what have you, that's when we really understand
not only where we stand, where other people stand, we
understand why we do what we do. All those great
things come to pass, makes us a better person, makes
us more aware of who we are.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Okay, so stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
I will be right back Live your True Life Perspectives
with your host me, Ashley Burgers, will be back in
I'll be back this time.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
You know it.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I'll be back this time in two shakes.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
This is Jake Busey and you're listening to Perspectives with
Ashley Burges.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Welcome back Live to Literature Life Perspectives, and I'm your host,
Ashley Burgess. On today's show, we've been talking about when
is it unhealthy to be making excuses for others and
their actions and their choices and their addictions and what
have you.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
When is it unhealthy? Because you know, making.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Excuses for people is one thing, you know, giving people
the benefit of the doubt, But when does it really
get in the way of their growth, our growth, the relationship,
the connection all that, When does it really cause problems?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
And I found that the first.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Thing that we have to be aware of is enabling
enabling others to make poor choices, basically allowing ourselves to
be enabled by others, enabling ourselves.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
To do things.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Oh yeah, no, I only had a bottle of wine,
you know, you know, Diane had two bottles of wine,
so I got that going for me.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Or yeah, I'm only taking one sleeping pill and na,
da da da dah.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I mean it's like, you know, really not not like
underestimating it, not you know, you know, basically defining ourselves
against someone else that has some sort of major addiction
to under you know, to show that we don't really
have that big of a problem. You know, it's just
you know, really really just being real. Right, And so
right before the break, I was talking about intellectualizing and
(24:20):
how many of us intellectualize. We explain away the behavior
of others using logic, logic, logic and reason versus emotions
and all that stuff are totally different. Instead of understanding,
harmful behavior is harmful no matter what the reason for
it is. So we can we can rationalize it, we
(24:41):
can intellectualize it, but harmful behavior is harmful behavior, no
matter what the reason. So it's like, you know, you know, yeah,
you know, someone so smoking a lot of weed. They're
smoking weed all day long. You know, they're constantly smoking weed.
They're not sober at any time of the day. But
I know that their may is really challenging, and you know,
(25:03):
their wife has this issue, that issue, and their job
has been really hard, you know, you know, or so
and So's day drinking now and starting to drink at
seven am in the morning, and you know, but I
know that this is happening. Or their mother is old
and they're having to take care of her. I mean, yes,
that's rationalizing. Yes, they're they're having to be a caretaker
(25:25):
and the caretaker position is causing a lot of stress
in their life. Therefore their day drinking scotch, you know,
vodka whatever during the day in the morning, and we're
basically rationalizing what they're doing. That's not good because when
we're rationalizing and intellectualizing. At first, it makes sense like
(25:48):
you know, hey, they got a lot on their plate,
and you know they're just doing this right now. But
a lot of times this type of behavior it's not
just it just didn't start right now. It might have
wrapped up, but it didn't start. But also it's like,
why are we accepting the fact that this person has
to have copious amounts of vodka to deal with their day?
(26:12):
I mean, you know, how do we rationalize that? I mean,
some of you don't go through way more stress than
these people, and you don't even drink, So how do
we rationalize bad, poor, unhealthy behavior? But see, it's easy
to oh so and so you know, it's easy for
us to write things off. And I'm not you know,
I'm the first person to say it's very important to
(26:33):
respect others and to accept other people's pain and to
understand that and to practice empathy. But at the same point,
there's a part where we practice empathy and there's a
part where we also lose perspective of what's really healthy. Right, So,
like I'll give you a great example. You know, I
had a friend of mine that their brother passed away
(26:56):
you know about a year ago, a year and a
half ago, and love them dearly, but they haven't been
the same, and they they're doing quite a bit of
extracurricular activities, very rarely sober, very challenging to get in
touch with, you know. And eventually I'm gonna have to
say something, and I'm planning on doing that here in
the next few days, because there's only so far you
(27:17):
can go along and rationalize and intellectualize until again, you're
enabling that person to continue down that path. And I'm
not saying that, oh, your decision is is that important,
or what you feel is the god you know, the
gospel truth. But if you really are a good friend
and you really do care about this person, you have
(27:39):
to think about that, if you really are a good friend,
Because think about it, people that you're really not that
close to, do you even care what they're doing? I mean,
do you even ask them? Do you even think about it?
I mean I don't and I don't think about stuff
like that. I mean not that I don't care, it's
just something that doesn't come up. And so when you
(28:00):
have the ability to have the knowledge of what's really
taking place, and you're able to see it, and you're
a good friend and you're supposed to be there for them.
You were supposed to at least say something because again,
to me, it's like in life, you're if you're given
that information, you're giving it for a reason. Now I'm
(28:21):
not telling you to go tell everybody else about it.
Hell no, I'm saying you need it. You have an
oath to a friend to say, hey, I'm concerned, you know,
and you don't not in front of other people, not
to make them feel bad, but hey, I'm concerned because
this is what I've been seeing and this is and
I don't.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Want you to hide what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
But if I wasn't really there for you, or I
didn't really care, or even for your spouse or your
significant other, I mean stepping up to the plate, stop rationalizing,
stop intellectualizing, and say, hey, you know, there's some stuff
that has you know, kind of raised it's it's made
me raise my eye a bit, and we need I'd
like to talk about it. And sometimes people are going
to talk with you, and sometimes they're not. Sometimes people
(29:00):
will want to change these things, and sometimes they won't.
And then and then it comes to the fact of
how long do you stay around and try to work
with them, uh while they're fighting you and fighting themselves.
And that's the biggest thing is that you know, because
as a friend or as a loved one, or as
a spouse or significant other, you know, you don't want
(29:21):
to just jump ship. That's just not the way it is.
But how long are you going to continue to keep
you know, putting the light out there, you know, talking
about the truth and and having the conflict and maybe
having the arguments and that person fighting with you. You know,
it's gonna it takes a lot of wherewithal to try
(29:41):
to continue into that conversation. It takes a lot of
depth to keep trying to push that and coming up short.
It takes a lot of patience, It takes a lot
of dedication and emotional time, and it takes somebody that
really really cares. And there's a lot of people that
(30:02):
don't really care. There's a lot of people it's just
too much for them. It's a lot of people it's
just it's like, hey, but I mean, if you've been
trying to do this for years with a loved one,
a spouse, significant other, and you're getting nowhere, you know,
there's time to cut bait. I mean, because that person,
they're just gonna continue to bring you down. And that's
their life choice. If that's their life choice, that's their choice.
(30:23):
You can't change that. You can't change what somebody doesn't
want you to change. I mean, that's not for yours
to change. We can't just sit there and change people's trajectory.
Oh no, I feel like you want to do this
in your life. I think you need to do this.
I think you would be a better leader than this.
I think you should do this. I think you should
do that. Well, that's great, that's awesome. But you know
(30:43):
what they're gonna say, you need to focus on your
own life. You need to focus on your own stuff.
And that's true, and it's so hard to let that be.
It's so hard to turn around and say, you know what,
that's so right. If I don't focus on my own life,
nobody else will. This person can't even get any of
(31:04):
their stuff together, period. How are they going to help me?
And if I continue to focus all of my energy
on this other person, I am going to completely lose myself.
And probably this person's going to also take me completely
down because they're not going to change as well. I've
realized that you have people in life that are go getters, motivated,
(31:27):
and people we go in and out of that motivation sometimes,
but you have people that that's at their core and
people that that's not at their core. And if you're
trying to make somebody motivated and successful and wanting to
do something and that's not their core, that's not them,
that's not who they are at their core, you're gonna
have a fight.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
You're gonna have a.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Fight on your hands, and that fight's probably not going
to go very well because it's just, you know, you're
trying to change somebody's direction trajectory. And you know, I
think this is very important for everybody listens, because I
know that sometimes some people might say, well, man, I
mean this really puts a perspective on my marriage. Well yeah,
it might, but I mean, are you happy so far
(32:09):
throughout all this?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Probably not.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
You've probably been dealing with a lot of negativity, a
lot of anger, a lot of crises, Probably have been
putting a lot of things on the back burner, probably
not really spending time with people that you have, probably
overlooking a lot of just things you need to do
for yourself, you're probably not going to the doctor or
taking care of yourself. You're probably not taking care of
things that you need to take care of for yourself,
(32:32):
and so your health is deteriorating while this other person
is taking up the rest of your energy. And so,
you know, when we think about it, we have to
stop making excuses, especially when it becomes unhealthy. Also, denial
is a big thing, and so besides intellectualizing and rationalizing,
(32:52):
we have to look at denial. We have to look
at denial because denying when somebody or denying the reason
why they did it, or you know, or giving that
excuse if they weren't really doing that on purpose, they
were just in a bad mood, or they were under
the influence, or they haven't slept. All these things are
very interesting. I had a coin the other day. Why
(33:14):
can't you know she did that? But that's not her.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
It's not her.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
She just hadn't slept and she was on adderall. And
but I mean, this has happened a lot of times.
And sure it might be adderall fueled. It might be
you know, you know, the no sleep, you know, being
up fueled. But again it's coming out of her mouth. Again,
she's doing this again.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
This is her. It's not somebody else, it's her.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
So it's really it's like when we deny these things,
we're also kind of denying our truth, but we're also
hurting ourselves.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
So stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I am not talking more about denial, acceptance, bargaining, and
self blame, So stay tuned. We got a little more
coming up Ligature Life Perspectives with your host me Ashley Burgess, will.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Be back in. I'll be back to this time. You
know what.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I'll be back this time in two shakes.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Get in here. You're listening to Perspectives with Ashley Burgess.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Welcome back live to Libtry Life Perspectives and I'm your host,
Ashley Burgess.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
We're discussing when is it unhealthy.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
To be making excuses for other people's behaviors, choices, addictions, negativity, meanness.
You know, at what point does that become unhealthy? And
you know, right before the break, I was talking about,
you know, intellectualizing and rationalizing and making reasons for.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Why people do what they do.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Oh, you know, they've been having to take care of
their mother and you know, you know it's got to
be stressful, you know, I mean, I don't agree with,
you know, opening a bottle of vodka at seven am.
But you know, it's stressful times and that's probably just
the way they're handling things and that's not good.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yes, that might be a part of.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
The stress, but that's not the whole reason someone's drinking.
And to sit there and also rationalize that this is
all based on the fact that his mother's like not well,
all these things are just like it's it's jeopardizing not
only the relationship you have with this person, but also
you're enabling this person to continue with this activity.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
And you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
You know, I was talking to a client recently, and
you know they said that their their significant other you know,
was drinking, you know, like at nine am in the morning,
you know, on it like on a Tuesday, and all
kinds of stuff. And they're like, you know, it wasn't
until somebody came by their house that was doing some
work for them made a comment, you know, to my
to my client, you know.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Hey, is is your is your is your husband? Okay?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
And what do you mean why I just saw him,
you know, just down in some scotch in the kitchen.
I it's in the morning. I just didn't know, and
you you start rationalizing all this stuff, you start accepting
all this stuff, and the stuff that other people kind
of look at as who what's up with that? You're like, oh, yeah,
you know, and then you kind of start thinking that's
not really good that I'm just accepting that behavior, thinking
(36:17):
it's okay. It's not okay. It's a definite sign to somebody.
And you know, we use these excuses the same thing
as that person about the you know, the mother that's
being sick is probably used that excuse over and over
and over again to justify what they're doing. You know,
I mean, how many times have we justified over drinking
based on work? How many times do we justified being
(36:39):
in a toxic relationship because we don't want to be alone?
How many times have we justified, you know, accepting poor
behavior because we don't want to start a fight. How
many times were we justified I don't want to have
an argument. I don't have conflict because when I was
growing up, I used to have conflict. I don't like
conflict now, So I just accept this, even though what
I'm accepting is really pissed poor I'm accepting really crappy behavior.
(37:00):
And I'm very upset with it, and it turns me off,
and it's a horrible situation. And it makes me upset
and angry, and it makes me do bad at work,
and it makes me not focus on my stuff. But
yet I'm gonna continue to do this because I don't
like conflict. Yeah, when I was a kid, there's conflict.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
So I'm just gonna avoid conflict at all costs. I
don't like conflict. So think about that. So it's like
and and and then when we talk about denial, so
a lot of us and vent reasons we deny, like
we deny the reality of what they're doing. Oh no,
I you know, I probably I probably saw it wrong,
or I probably heard it wrong. I probably overestimated that,
(37:38):
or you know. I mean so then we started questioning
our memory or how it happened or what was said
in an effort to deny because not or we oh,
we forget what really happened. We wrot really forget. We
just change the narrative in our denial of how bad
it really is, right, how bad it really is. I
(38:01):
had a quie recently where there's significant other you know,
broke down the door and all that stuff, and the
cops show up, and you know, a month after it
all happened, I didn't break down your door. I don't
know what you're talking about. I just threw salsa at
your door. I didn't break it down. Well, yeah, and
the police report they threw salsa to begin with, then
broke the door down, then had an altercation with my client. Okay,
(38:24):
but but it's like, okay, I mean, but what we're
telling a narrative. We're creating a false narrative in order
to you know, accept our behavior and not really look
at it for the truth. And then another side of
the coin is we accept other people's abuse, We accept
other people's stuff. We just accepted, Oh, I'm just gonna
accept it. We all have our issues, and that's fine.
(38:48):
There's a little bit of issues we can accept because
that's just the way life is. But just global acceptance
on somebody that's obviously doing quite a bit of things,
it's not necessarily a good idea. It's just like, ah,
I'm just gonna universally accept you know, I'm going to
accept that because you know, yep, I want everybody to
accept what I'm doing too. And that's part of it, too,
(39:10):
is that I realized when we're accepting a lot of behavior,
we're also we're also probably doing stuff that we don't
really want to deal with either.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
You know, I.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Realize that, you know, when somebody stops drinking and there
was somebody that is over drinking, there's only a period
of time that that continues until that person that has
stopped drinking starts making comments and pointing out how over
how much that other person is over drinking. I mean,
when when we're all drinking together and everybody and and
the alcohol is flowing, it's one thing, it might be
(39:44):
a big difference between how much one person drinking versus
the other, what have you. But when somebody stops, it
takes a little bit of time. But all of a sudden,
it's like the realization of I'm not I'm not going
to keep accepting that. I was accepting that because I
didn't want personal judgment on my own about me from
that person, and I'll I didn't want to judge myself.
But now I'm looking at the situation with a little
more clarity. But also, you know, it's like, Okay, so
(40:05):
I've realized that when we accept all.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
These kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
You know, it could be because we just love people,
and I have a tendency of accepting people because I
don't want to judge it. But there's sometimes that we
have to not just accept and we got to just
bring it up. We have to see it at least
for the at least acknowledge the truth, at least acknowledging
the fact that the truth is X y Z.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
And that's super important.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
You know, A couple of things I want to talk about,
you know before the end of today's podcast is bargaining.
You know, a lot of us are in relationships where
you're finding yourself bargaining with that person in your relationship,
trying to bargain. You know, you're trying to convince them
to stay around. Maybe many of y'all are, you know,
(40:52):
dealing with somebody that's constantly saying they're going to divorce you,
leave you. Maybe many of you have in a relationship
for ten to fifteen years or wife keeps saying that
kind of stuff. It really hurts you. So you keep
doing more and more and more and more. But more
never changes anything. It just keeps the same. It's the
same status quote. No matter how much you do. Even
if there's a little short reprieve of a day or two,
it's still not good enough.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
And you got to.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Start looking at yourself in the mirror and realizing it's
not about you that's not good enough. It's them that's
not good enough for themselves, and they're just making everybody
else's life live in hell because that's what they want.
They want you to be in hell too, And so
this bargaining and oh, you know, you know, I had
some clients recently that had to cut out their their
family and there and they were they're you know, they're
(41:34):
they're significant other. One of them to cut out their
kids from a previous marriage. It's like whoa, whoa, whoa.
You really got to start looking at yourself and analyzing
what you're accepting in your life. And if you start
bargaining with those type of chips, you know, you're you're gone.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
You know you're you're.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Gonna be very lost, and it's gonna take a lot
of time to pick up the pieces later on on
the road, because that person will leave you in destitute.
And it's interesting because the reason why they do that
is now they've taken away everything, and now they can
really bully you and beat you down. But see, people
don't realize that. They think that they're bargaining with them
and they're gonna get something out of it, but in reality, uh,
(42:10):
they don't get anything out of it.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
You just lose even more. And those types of people
aren't wanting the best for you.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
And that's one of the big things that I think
we need to look at too, is not making excuses.
Stop making excuses for people that don't want the best
for you. Stop making excuses for people that are using you.
Stop making excuses for people that are manipulating you.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Oh they had they had a terrible childhood.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
You know how many people I've heard have a terrible
childhood and the and the work that I do. Jesus,
you know how many people? I mean, come on, Oh
they have this challenge or whatever. Okay, But the fact
is is that you keep making excuses for their bad behavior,
You keep enabling them, and you keep wondering why is
this happening to me?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Because you're enabling them. Everybody.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Most people I've met had a bad childhood. About how
half the clients I work with there was some sort
of abuse, neglect, something. Okay, So you know, you got
to take that off the table already. Stop making excuses
for people's poor behavior, especially when it brings down your
self esteem, takes away from your self worth, takes away
from your value, takes away from you know, your your
(43:20):
peace of mind. I mean, all those things are valuable,
and you have to be the one to safeguard it.
You have to be the one to think about this.
You have to be the one to do what you
need to do to safeguard you. Nobody's gonna safeguard you,
especially if you're around somebody that you're enabling or you're
accepting their bad behavior, or you're bargaining with them. We're
(43:41):
already falling short as far as the leadership role is concerned.
When you start finding yourself bargaining in a marriage or
you know, in a romantic relationship, that's when that other
person is playing you because you think that you can
convince them, But in reality, it's not about convincing them.
(44:02):
They are already upset with themselves. They just want to
make you as upset as they are in their own life,
and they're gonna play with you. They're gonna manipulate you.
They could be very narcissistic. They could be even malignant
narcissistic where they're taking advantage of you and they're actually
getting pleasure from that taking advantage of you. And that's
something that we all have to talk about in upcoming show,
is because there's a difference between having a little bit
(44:22):
of narcissistic tendencies versus being a complete malignant narcissist, where
we have to be very careful of that because those
type of people really do you know that they will
push your buttons. They will they will try to get
you to argue, to fight, and if you're a conflict avoidant,
you know, they will run game on you. They will
run all over you, they will take advantage of you.
(44:43):
They will take advantage of every single piece of you emotionally, mentally, physically, financially.
And so these are the things that we really need
to kind of talk about because this is the real
issues that many of us are dealing with. And you know,
please share this with family and friends, Please share this.
You know we're on apple Spot, you know a speaker,
We're on iHeart. You know we're or on all all
(45:04):
the places where you hear a podcasts. You know we're
here on the radio where everywhere, so share this with folks,
because if you're if you're dealing with this right now,
if you're making excuses for other people's behavior, if you
have a friend that's making excuses for other people's behavior,
if you have a friend that's making excuses about their
own behavior, this is stuff that we all want to share.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
We need to be enlightened.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
And the thing is is that until we really focus
on this and really work on this, we're you know.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
We're slaves. Were slaves.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
We're slaves to the situations, slave to the other person's
actions attitudes, slaves to our own actions and attitudes. We
are definitely not a free person. And this is what
we need to really focus on. So I hope this
show has helped you. If you haven't already, check out
the website, go to Ashleyburgess dot com. We redid the website.
It has a new face. It's got a facelift, a
(45:52):
whole body lift, a mommy makeover.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It's got a whole makeover, and you got to check
it out. Also, we have the membership site back up
on the website. You can join for free and we
will be doing some live shows from there as well,
and we're looking into the technology for that right now,
so check that out. And also, if you haven't already
subscribed to the YouTube channel, we have almost two hundred
thousand subscribers, come on and jump in.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
What are you waiting for?
Speaker 2 (46:17):
We put up new content all week and it's good stuff,
so check it out. Let us know how you're feeling
and write a comment. Let us know what you want
to talk about. Well, you know, if you want a
certain type of content talked about, we'll we'll make it possible.
We'll definitely work at it and put it up there.
So check that out. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Go
to YouTube put in Life Coach Ashley Burgess. Hit that
(46:38):
subscribe button. It'll let you when new videos come out
every day of the week. Talk to you later. Hopefully
you have liked this show. We have a new show
coming out next week and live your true life perspectives
with your host me, Ashley Burgess. We'll be back in
I'll be back this time, you know it. I'll be
back this time in three.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Shakespe
You're in a good place now. You are listening to
Perspectives with Ashley Burgess.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome back Live to Live Your True Life Perspectives and
I'm your host, Ashley Burgess. We know that it's good
to be empathetic. We know it's good to care for
other people. We mostly try to give the benefit of
the doubt to others. We want to care about others.
(00:34):
We care about people deeply. We acknowledge people's pains, we
acknowledge people's stressors, we acknowledge the issues they're going through.
But when does making excuses for others in our life
and for ourselves become unhealthy? When does this become unhealthy?
And that's what I want to talk about in today's
(00:56):
podcast because I think it's something we don't talk about enough.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
We don't really talk about it at all.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
When does it become unhealthy to continue to make excuses
for others and ourselves? And how do we understand when
it's kind of that gray line or the black line,
or the horizon line or the Okay, you've reached a
place where it's not a good position to be in.
You've reached a place where you're making these excuses and
it's no longer healthy, and let's determine that today. Because
(01:24):
I want to talk about it in perspective of other
people making excuses for other people. I want to talk
about it in perspective of making excuses for ourselves and
our own actions, and how that gets in the way
of us doing things we need to do, or how
it gets in the way of us continuing to do
things that we shouldn't do.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
And so we're going to really examine.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That today because I think it goes hand in hand,
because I think that the less excuses we give ourselves
for the most part, sometimes the less excuses we give others.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
But sometimes it can be.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You know, from my perspective, if you know, doing what
I do in the career that I am in, I
don't make judgment calls on people. If I make judgments
calls on people, I wouldn't be a very good coach
at all. I wouldn't be very good at my job
and what I do. So I have to dispel judgment
on a daily basis, and in that process that works
(02:18):
in session.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Theoretically.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That's a really great concept in sessions because I'm looking
at it from every angle. Understand the perspective of where
people are coming from, walking in their shoes and understanding
different choices, good, bad, and different. However, when it comes
to my personal life, my friends, family, coworkers, what have you,
often I can obviously not make any judgment. But sometimes
(02:42):
in the process of not you know, making any judgment,
you know, a lot of things happen in the process
that aren't necessarily healthy, They aren't necessarily good, they aren't
actually good for myself or even others. And so we're
gonna talk about that today because I think we need
to uncover that. I think everybody needs to know where
(03:04):
that line of demarcation is, because if we know where
the line of demarcation is, we can make sure that
we are actually, first off, staying in more of a
healthy realm.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Understanding the truth.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Because you know, it's easy to start skewing the truth
to make things work for us, or at least we
think it's working. But again, we're just hurting ourselves, you know,
we're just lying to ourselves, or we're lying.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
To other people, or we're doing both.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Because most of the time, when we lie to ourselves, right,
we have to lie to others because it comes hand
in hands, you know, it's part of the deal. You know,
if you're lying yourself, you're lying to others just automatically.
And that's one of the things that I think is
an ultimate interesting excuse. And I've given it to others.
I go, well, I know they're at least lying to themselves,
so it's not just me that they're lying to. Okay,
(03:52):
that's great, at least I recognize that reality. However, how
does that help them? And then how do we bring
light into the subject matter? And my biggest thing is
that we really got to look at our own backyard
first off, because we really can't, you know, kind of
like bring light to a subject if we're not bringing
(04:13):
light into our own life. So like, if we're doing
things that we're making excuses for our own stuff, and
we're doing it on a constant basis and we're not
working to be better. If we sit there and point
it out on others, they're probably gonna turn around and
be like, okay, you know, pot kettle, sure, okay, well
let me point out what you got going on?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And so I know that everybody's got stuff hidden from
their eyesight. Everybody has a set of blinders. Some people's blinders, well,
some people got lots of sets. Other people might have
one set, other people might have two sets. Okay, so
there's lots of things going on here. Nobody's perfect, no one.
(04:52):
Everybody's got some sort of blinder on that's enabling them
to do something that's not healthy for them. It's enabling
them to continue to you know, have a pattern of
reaction action, you know, what have you. And in this situation,
we have to really realize that because we all have
that within us, and we all probably see it more
(05:15):
in other people. So we have to check ourselves first
and really analyze that before we check others. But I
think this is a really cool conversation today that it's
not about judgment. It's just about getting better than we
were yesterday. This isn't a judgment show. You know, we
don't really talk about judgment, but it is a show
about like, let's look at how we really feel, let's
look at what we've been doing in the past, and
(05:37):
let's move forward. Okay, So when does making excuses for others?
When does that become unhealthy for us? And I think
the first morning sign is when you're taking on the
blame fully on yourself, When you're blaming just yourself when
(05:58):
you're blaming yourself, when you're blaming yourself for someone else's
negative behavior, when you're blaming yourself for someone else's negative behavior.
So when somebody else is doing some crazy stuff out
of line, maybe doing drugs, alcohol excessively, going off, yelling, screaming,
causing fights, you know, fighting with you, all that stuff,
(06:19):
and you start holding onto that, and you start dealing
with that, and you start holding onto all that saying, Okay,
you know this is all me, you know this is
all me. I'm the creator of this, I'm the reason
why this person's doing this, and you're not at all
looking at the fact that this person is a human
being that can make decisions for themselves. And so when
(06:40):
we take on negative blame, you know, we're also believing
that we cause them this pain, that we cause them
to do this. That's not healthy. That's very codependent. It's
very codependent thinking. It's probably something that you've dealt with
in childhood. You probably felt that way around mom or
dad that you know, when they acted bad, you know,
when they acted wrong, when they went out drinking and
(07:02):
came home stumbling drunk, or they started fights, you were
to blame and that's normal because that's what kids do.
We assume, Okay, well, I'm the one that caused this
to happen. I'm the cause for the problem, and that's
not it. And so some of this stuff is learned,
and a lot of it's learn from our childhood, unfortunately,
(07:22):
and a lot of it is learned from our childhood.
We take on things we don't need to take on
based on the consideration of how our family dynamic was,
and that's something that we really need to look at
as well, but not that much in today's show, because
that would take up at least five shows of its own.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
So think about that.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
When was the last time you took you blamed yourself
for something someone else did? And sometimes we do have blame.
I'm not saying that there's never any blame, that we're
always innocent. That is not the case. You really got
to look at yourself in these situations and analyze it. However,
I think there is a lot of times that we
do blame ourselves and necessarily something we need to be doing.
(08:02):
And I think that that comes, you know, part and
partial from the fact of our family dynamic.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So look at it. Has somebody been nasty.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Mean, angry, volatile with you, and you've owned it all.
You never once thought about what the other person contributed.
I mean, and that happens. I've been there before where
you're not The first thing you think about is not
what they did, it's oh god, you know I contributed
to this. And then you you know, you ruminate in it,
and you feel bad about it, and you try to
(08:29):
calm they don't answer the phone. You apologize, and you're apologizing. Yes,
everybody has some room to apologize, but you're basically apologizing
for everything and allowing this person completely off the hook.
And that leads me into a next pattern. And I
call this enabling behavior. You know, enabling behavior is very
(08:51):
interesting when you excuse others and allow someone to engage
in harmful behavior without facing any consequences, not taking any responsibility.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Enabling behavior is one of the worst things we can do.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Enabling somebody else to do things that's not good for
them is one of the absolute worst things we can do.
Because see, the thing is, it's always gonna come back
to you.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
It's always gonna come back to you.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So, for example, you know, you live with somebody that's
you know, pretty much an alcoholic right.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
And you know you enable them. You allow them to drink.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
You accept that and all that stuff, even though they
need to be going to rehabit, you continue to do it.
Eventually they throw it in your face and say, you're
the one that allowed me to drink. You're the one
that went to the liquor store. You're drinking too, Look
at you, You're no better than me. And so they're
gonna throw it in your face at some point. But
then there's that flip side when you say, hey, you're
(09:50):
not gonna have any alcohol. We're not gonna do that,
and they start fighting you. You're a bad person, you're
a mean person. You're trying to control me. I can't
believe you're doing this to me. I'm a grown d old,
I can drink. I can't believe you're doing this to
mean you're not allowing me to drink. You're a bad person,
You're mean. And then all of a sudden, guess what
you give in. Can't handle it. After a couple of days,
(10:11):
you go two days dealing with it over and over again.
You're not drinking because you don't want them to drink,
and then you give in because you don't want to
hear it anymore, and for for like one hour, they're
actually great to be around.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
You're like, oh man, they're actually.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Fun and they're they're cool, and they're you know, they're normal,
more normal, And it all flips around again, right, because
they're an alcoholic. You know, the first two drinks, anybody's fun.
After that, it is not fun anymore. When somebody when
it's five am in the morning, somebody's not going to
bed because they're still drinking. Okay, but then they can
throw it in your face. You're the one that got
the alcohol. You were drinking with me, right, So it
(10:47):
sucks because there's no middle ground here.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
You either do it, damned if you do, or damned
if you don't.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
So when we're trying to be talking more about this,
because this is a very interesting dynamic that I think.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
A lot of people are going through.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
A lot of people are experience and scene and we
want to make sure that we're living our life as
healthy as possible. We want to make sure we're doing
the right thing, and we want to make sure that
we're not enabling others literature life perspectives. With your host
me Ashley Burgers, will be back in I'll be back
this time in two shakes.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Turn it up and jump in the deep end on perspectives.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Now here's Ashley, Welcome back, live to literature life Perspectives,
and I'm your host, Ashley Burgess. It's okay to care
for others.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's a good thing, and so it's a great thing
to be able to be empathetic, to care about others feelings,
to care about others pain. However, there is a demarcation.
When is it unhealthy to make uses for other people
for their behavior, for their actions, for their choices. When
(12:05):
is it unhealthy for us to make excuses for our behavior,
our decisions, our actions, our choices.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
This goes hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
We can't just look at other people's actions and choices
and discernment and judge that if we're not looking at
our own.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I find that it's.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Interesting, Like right before the break, I was talking about
enabling behavior, when we enable someone else, we actually do
them a complete disservice. And some of you will be like, well,
if I don't enable them, I have to hear grief.
If I don't enable them and give in, I have
(12:41):
to have pain and suffering all day, all night because
they want to drink, or they want to do drugs,
or they want to do this, or they want to
do that. And so either I give in or I
just get yelled at and I go through the process.
And that's the determination you have to make about dealing
with the relationship like that, knowing that this person one
obviously has an addiction problem, has other issues as well.
(13:06):
You know, it's it's a matter of time that you're
either going to just fall into the full on enablement,
losing your identity, you know, creating great harm in your
own life.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Because I found that when you're dealing with either enabling
or not enabling, when it becomes that cut and dry
and it's either you do it or you don't, you
either get peace or you don't get peace. That's when
we're in a relationship that's actually very toxic, and that
might be something that you might need to be aware of, uh,
if you're dealing with a relationship like this, because if
(13:40):
you're in a relationship like this, you're in a very
toxic relationship. It's a very challenging relationship. And that's something
that we want to definitely understand.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Two. Enabling behavior.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
You know, when we enable people to also not do
things like if we enable somebody to not not work,
if we enable somebody not to to get out of bed,
if we enable somebody to stay at home and never
to drive and to stay at home, if we enable
somebody to sleep all day, all these things prevent this
person from doing what they need to do. And I
(14:16):
know it's almost like the prevention when people are about
to hit rock bottom. When people are about to hit
rock bottom, many of us enable them, right, We enable them.
We keep enabling them, enabling them to not hit rock bottom,
which is absolutely the worst thing we can possibly do.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
And I've been there before where I enabled somebody for
a long, long period of time for several years, thinking
I was doing the right thing by them, thinking I
was protecting them, and I wasn't. I was doing the
exact opposite, you know. And I didn't want to have
the argument. I didn't want to have the conflict, you know.
(14:58):
And that's another is and that kind of jumps into
where I want us to talk about now, is avoiding conflict.
In the avoidance of dealing with conflict, I would allow
certain things to happen because I didn't want to have
the fight.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
I didn't want to have the argument. I knew what
was going to happen.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
But inevitably, and I hate to say this, but the
more you fight it, it's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
It's inevitable.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
If somebody is very upset, very angry, if somebody is
you know, avoiding responsibility, if somebody is under the influence
of drugs and alcohol, if somebody is abusing pharmaceutical drugs,
if there's a combination of all of those, and they're
avoiding doing, you know, any sort of work, if they're
avoiding being a part of society, any of that, and
(15:50):
we're not speaking up and saying, hey, you know, you
really got to start doing this, or hey you need
to go back to school, or hey you need to
get a job, or hey you need to do the
bare minimum things that you've been saying you're gonna do
this whole time, that you still haven't stepped up the
plate to do. And then we got to look at ourselves. Okay,
and this enabling and this avoiding conflict, you know, avoiding conflict. Wow,
(16:15):
I mean, conflict's gonna show up. Okay, you can avoid
it all you want, Good luck, cause it's gonna still
come for you. So why are we enabling somebody to
eventually screw themselves over who eventually screw us over? And
it's interesting when I look back through my life. The
few people that I have enabled and then tried not
(16:36):
to hit rock bottom and did everything I could for
them not to hit rock bottom, they still hit rock bottom.
I mean not bad, not like horrible, not like some
of the stuff you hear. I mean I did help
a little bit, But at the same time, they could
have started getting help a long time before. Also, I
could have been working on my life and focusing on
my needs and things I needed to do a long
(16:59):
time prior to two if I would have stopped enabling.
You know, the thing is is that we get lost
in other people's negativity. We get lost in other people's
problems because it becomes easier for us because we have
problems too, they just might not be as huge of
a problem or as a parent as a problem. For example,
(17:20):
you have a job. You try to go to work,
maybe you get stuff done. Maybe you have days you don't,
but you show up and you do it. You get
out of bed, you take your shower, you take care
of your responsibilities, you know all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
But you got someone.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Over there that you're you're interacting with on a daily
basis that's doing none of that. And so it makes
you look like you got everything going on, like you
got your life, you know, kind of you got things
working for you. But you have to really start analyzing
because you can't judge yourself off that other person's life.
(17:54):
You can't judge that. And you also have to look
at who are you trying to avoid conflict in your life?
And a lot of times when you're trying to avoid conflict,
you have somebody the other person likes conflict. You can't
avoid conflict with somebody that likes conflict. It doesn't work
that way. There's a lot of people out there that
love argumentation. There's a lot of people out there that
(18:17):
love to fight. That's what they do. Okay, they're the Karens,
They're the negative nancies in the world. They're the ones
that make life shitty. That's what they do. That's their life.
That's like their entire mantra. And you don't know it
when you first meet them, because it's not like they
tell you that. I mean, most people wear masks, right,
It's it's funny. The fascination with masks in our society rights,
(18:43):
our mask fascination of Oh, people love to wear masks
like a you know, at balls and Halloween and Maddy Girl,
and the list goes on back in you know, in
Italy and Venice, back in the day when they would
wear these masks to these you know, these parties and
all these sex parties, all this going on. Very interesting dynamic,
but people gravitate to masks, and especially if somebody's initially
(19:06):
wearing a mask in the beginning of relationship. And so
many of you out there that are married to somebody
or been in a long term relationship, or maybe it's
not really been that long, but you see how the
mask came off over time, and that can be very
alarming and scary because the person that you thought you
were with is really not the person that you're with.
That was the version that they were selling you, you know,
(19:27):
in order for you to get warm and fuzzy and
tell them your personal stories and give them all this
information about you so later on they could use it
against you. I call that forever ammunition. If you're dealing
with somebody that's using forever ammunition on you, meaning that
you did something five ten two three year ago, and
they keep bringing it up and every argument, every single
(19:47):
day of your life. You'll need to watch that video.
Check out my YouTube channel. Go to life Coach Ashley
Burgess Ashley Burgess. Either way, go to YouTube, you'll find
my channel. We're almost at two hundred thousand subscribers right now,
and put in the search bar forever ammunition. I think
it might actually help you to understand the conflict and
what's really happening as far as the power dynamic and
(20:10):
what they're wanting. Anyway, let's go back to this enabling behavior,
so we have to look at it and turn it
around on us too. Are we enabling ourselves in any way?
And I know we've all been there before where it's like, oh, no,
I don't I don't drink that much. You know, I
don't drink that I you know a lot of people
drink more than I do. And and you know, okay,
(20:32):
we've all had that conversation. We've all had that conversation.
But I mean, it's okay to to kind of sit
there and minimize. But then there's a part where minimization
isn't going to work anymore. So are we enabling ourselves?
Speaker 3 (20:46):
I mean, some of us.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Might be workaholics and we work all day, we work
late nights, you know, and we're all, this is right,
this is good.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
We have to look at that.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So it's not always just an addiction of some sort,
but you know, things become that way. You know, maybe
we're buried in our work because we're with conflict in
our relationship. You know, maybe there's some conflicts we're not
dealing with with our family dynamic, and it causes us
to bury ourselves in work, or it causes avoidance, or
it causes drinking, or it causes you know, marijuana usage
(21:15):
or other drug usage to escape from what we're dealing with.
And so it's like really analyzing these types of situations
and getting a good read and a good beat on
things so that we can actually make some honest, honest
decisions about.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Where we are now.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
You know, it really does go both ways, making excuses
for others and making excuses for ourselves. And when when
I return, I'm talking about intellectualizing, because intellectualizing is what
a lot of us have a tendency of doing. It
can come second nature, depends on how you raise and
when we do that, we'll talk about all that and
(21:55):
how that can also confuse us even more of what
we're doing. And so there's a lot of things that
we're doing here and we just need to get it.
We just need to get a good handle on things.
Because the more we understand why we do things, and
the more we understand what we're actually doing instead of
sugarcoating it or coloring it or acting like it's something
(22:15):
else or what have you, that's when we really understand
not only where we stand, where other people stand, we
understand why we do what we do. All those great
things come to pass, makes us a better person, makes
us more aware of who we are.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Okay, so stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
I will be right back Live your True Life Perspectives
with your host me, Ashley Burgers, will be back in
I'll be back this time.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
You know it.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I'll be back this time in two shakes.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
This is Jake Busey and you're listening to Perspectives with
Ashley Burges.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Welcome back Live to Literature Life Perspectives, and I'm your host,
Ashley Burgess. On today's show, we've been talking about when
is it unhealthy to be making excuses for others and
their actions and their choices and their addictions and what
have you.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
When is it unhealthy? Because you know, making.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Excuses for people is one thing, you know, giving people
the benefit of the doubt, But when does it really
get in the way of their growth, our growth, the relationship,
the connection all that, When does it really cause problems?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
And I found that the first.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Thing that we have to be aware of is enabling
enabling others to make poor choices, basically allowing ourselves to
be enabled by others, enabling ourselves.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
To do things.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Oh yeah, no, I only had a bottle of wine,
you know, you know, Diane had two bottles of wine,
so I got that going for me.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Or yeah, I'm only taking one sleeping pill and na,
da da da dah.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I mean it's like, you know, really not not like
underestimating it, not you know, you know, basically defining ourselves
against someone else that has some sort of major addiction
to under you know, to show that we don't really
have that big of a problem. You know, it's just
you know, really really just being real. Right, And so
right before the break, I was talking about intellectualizing and
(24:20):
how many of us intellectualize. We explain away the behavior
of others using logic, logic, logic and reason versus emotions
and all that stuff are totally different. Instead of understanding,
harmful behavior is harmful no matter what the reason for
it is. So we can we can rationalize it, we
(24:41):
can intellectualize it, but harmful behavior is harmful behavior, no
matter what the reason. So it's like, you know, you know, yeah,
you know, someone so smoking a lot of weed. They're
smoking weed all day long. You know, they're constantly smoking weed.
They're not sober at any time of the day. But
I know that their may is really challenging, and you know,
(25:03):
their wife has this issue, that issue, and their job
has been really hard, you know, you know, or so
and So's day drinking now and starting to drink at
seven am in the morning, and you know, but I
know that this is happening. Or their mother is old
and they're having to take care of her. I mean, yes,
that's rationalizing. Yes, they're they're having to be a caretaker
(25:25):
and the caretaker position is causing a lot of stress
in their life. Therefore their day drinking scotch, you know,
vodka whatever during the day in the morning, and we're
basically rationalizing what they're doing. That's not good because when
we're rationalizing and intellectualizing. At first, it makes sense like
(25:48):
you know, hey, they got a lot on their plate,
and you know they're just doing this right now. But
a lot of times this type of behavior it's not
just it just didn't start right now. It might have
wrapped up, but it didn't start. But also it's like,
why are we accepting the fact that this person has
to have copious amounts of vodka to deal with their day?
(26:12):
I mean, you know, how do we rationalize that? I mean,
some of you don't go through way more stress than
these people, and you don't even drink, So how do
we rationalize bad, poor, unhealthy behavior? But see, it's easy
to oh so and so you know, it's easy for
us to write things off. And I'm not you know,
I'm the first person to say it's very important to
(26:33):
respect others and to accept other people's pain and to
understand that and to practice empathy. But at the same point,
there's a part where we practice empathy and there's a
part where we also lose perspective of what's really healthy. Right, So,
like I'll give you a great example. You know, I
had a friend of mine that their brother passed away
(26:56):
you know about a year ago, a year and a
half ago, and love them dearly, but they haven't been
the same, and they they're doing quite a bit of
extracurricular activities, very rarely sober, very challenging to get in
touch with, you know. And eventually I'm gonna have to
say something, and I'm planning on doing that here in
the next few days, because there's only so far you
(27:17):
can go along and rationalize and intellectualize until again, you're
enabling that person to continue down that path. And I'm
not saying that, oh, your decision is is that important,
or what you feel is the god you know, the
gospel truth. But if you really are a good friend
and you really do care about this person, you have
(27:39):
to think about that, if you really are a good friend,
Because think about it, people that you're really not that
close to, do you even care what they're doing? I mean,
do you even ask them? Do you even think about it?
I mean I don't and I don't think about stuff
like that. I mean not that I don't care, it's
just something that doesn't come up. And so when you
(28:00):
have the ability to have the knowledge of what's really
taking place, and you're able to see it, and you're
a good friend and you're supposed to be there for them.
You were supposed to at least say something because again,
to me, it's like in life, you're if you're given
that information, you're giving it for a reason. Now I'm
(28:21):
not telling you to go tell everybody else about it.
Hell no, I'm saying you need it. You have an
oath to a friend to say, hey, I'm concerned, you know,
and you don't not in front of other people, not
to make them feel bad, but hey, I'm concerned because
this is what I've been seeing and this is and
I don't.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Want you to hide what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
But if I wasn't really there for you, or I
didn't really care, or even for your spouse or your
significant other, I mean stepping up to the plate, stop rationalizing,
stop intellectualizing, and say, hey, you know, there's some stuff
that has you know, kind of raised it's it's made
me raise my eye a bit, and we need I'd
like to talk about it. And sometimes people are going
to talk with you, and sometimes they're not. Sometimes people
(29:00):
will want to change these things, and sometimes they won't.
And then and then it comes to the fact of
how long do you stay around and try to work
with them, uh while they're fighting you and fighting themselves.
And that's the biggest thing is that you know, because
as a friend or as a loved one, or as
a spouse or significant other, you know, you don't want
(29:21):
to just jump ship. That's just not the way it is.
But how long are you going to continue to keep
you know, putting the light out there, you know, talking
about the truth and and having the conflict and maybe
having the arguments and that person fighting with you. You know,
it's gonna it takes a lot of wherewithal to try
(29:41):
to continue into that conversation. It takes a lot of
depth to keep trying to push that and coming up short.
It takes a lot of patience, It takes a lot
of dedication and emotional time, and it takes somebody that
really really cares. And there's a lot of people that
(30:02):
don't really care. There's a lot of people it's just
too much for them. It's a lot of people it's
just it's like, hey, but I mean, if you've been
trying to do this for years with a loved one,
a spouse, significant other, and you're getting nowhere, you know,
there's time to cut bait. I mean, because that person,
they're just gonna continue to bring you down. And that's
their life choice. If that's their life choice, that's their choice.
(30:23):
You can't change that. You can't change what somebody doesn't
want you to change. I mean, that's not for yours
to change. We can't just sit there and change people's trajectory.
Oh no, I feel like you want to do this
in your life. I think you need to do this.
I think you would be a better leader than this.
I think you should do this. I think you should
do that. Well, that's great, that's awesome. But you know
(30:43):
what they're gonna say, you need to focus on your
own life. You need to focus on your own stuff.
And that's true, and it's so hard to let that be.
It's so hard to turn around and say, you know what,
that's so right. If I don't focus on my own life,
nobody else will. This person can't even get any of
(31:04):
their stuff together, period. How are they going to help me?
And if I continue to focus all of my energy
on this other person, I am going to completely lose myself.
And probably this person's going to also take me completely
down because they're not going to change as well. I've
realized that you have people in life that are go getters, motivated,
(31:27):
and people we go in and out of that motivation sometimes,
but you have people that that's at their core and
people that that's not at their core. And if you're
trying to make somebody motivated and successful and wanting to
do something and that's not their core, that's not them,
that's not who they are at their core, you're gonna
have a fight.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
You're gonna have a.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Fight on your hands, and that fight's probably not going
to go very well because it's just, you know, you're
trying to change somebody's direction trajectory. And you know, I
think this is very important for everybody listens, because I
know that sometimes some people might say, well, man, I
mean this really puts a perspective on my marriage. Well yeah,
it might, but I mean, are you happy so far
(32:09):
throughout all this?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Probably not.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
You've probably been dealing with a lot of negativity, a
lot of anger, a lot of crises, Probably have been
putting a lot of things on the back burner, probably
not really spending time with people that you have, probably
overlooking a lot of just things you need to do
for yourself, you're probably not going to the doctor or
taking care of yourself. You're probably not taking care of
things that you need to take care of for yourself,
(32:32):
and so your health is deteriorating while this other person
is taking up the rest of your energy. And so,
you know, when we think about it, we have to
stop making excuses, especially when it becomes unhealthy. Also, denial
is a big thing, and so besides intellectualizing and rationalizing,
(32:52):
we have to look at denial. We have to look
at denial because denying when somebody or denying the reason
why they did it, or you know, or giving that
excuse if they weren't really doing that on purpose, they
were just in a bad mood, or they were under
the influence, or they haven't slept. All these things are
very interesting. I had a coin the other day. Why
(33:14):
can't you know she did that? But that's not her.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
It's not her.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
She just hadn't slept and she was on adderall. And
but I mean, this has happened a lot of times.
And sure it might be adderall fueled. It might be
you know, you know, the no sleep, you know, being
up fueled. But again it's coming out of her mouth. Again,
she's doing this again.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
This is her. It's not somebody else, it's her.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
So it's really it's like when we deny these things,
we're also kind of denying our truth, but we're also
hurting ourselves.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
So stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I am not talking more about denial, acceptance, bargaining, and
self blame, So stay tuned. We got a little more
coming up Ligature Life Perspectives with your host me Ashley Burgess, will.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Be back in. I'll be back to this time. You
know what.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I'll be back this time in two shakes.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Get in here. You're listening to Perspectives with Ashley Burgess.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Welcome back live to Libtry Life Perspectives and I'm your host,
Ashley Burgess.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
We're discussing when is it unhealthy.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
To be making excuses for other people's behaviors, choices, addictions, negativity, meanness.
You know, at what point does that become unhealthy? And
you know, right before the break, I was talking about,
you know, intellectualizing and rationalizing and making reasons for.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Why people do what they do.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Oh, you know, they've been having to take care of
their mother and you know, you know it's got to
be stressful, you know, I mean, I don't agree with,
you know, opening a bottle of vodka at seven am.
But you know, it's stressful times and that's probably just
the way they're handling things and that's not good.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yes, that might be a part of.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
The stress, but that's not the whole reason someone's drinking.
And to sit there and also rationalize that this is
all based on the fact that his mother's like not well,
all these things are just like it's it's jeopardizing not
only the relationship you have with this person, but also
you're enabling this person to continue with this activity.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
And you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
You know, I was talking to a client recently, and
you know they said that their their significant other you know,
was drinking, you know, like at nine am in the morning,
you know, on it like on a Tuesday, and all
kinds of stuff. And they're like, you know, it wasn't
until somebody came by their house that was doing some
work for them made a comment, you know, to my
to my client, you know.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Hey, is is your is your is your husband? Okay?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
And what do you mean why I just saw him,
you know, just down in some scotch in the kitchen.
I it's in the morning. I just didn't know, and
you you start rationalizing all this stuff, you start accepting
all this stuff, and the stuff that other people kind
of look at as who what's up with that? You're like, oh, yeah,
you know, and then you kind of start thinking that's
not really good that I'm just accepting that behavior, thinking
(36:17):
it's okay. It's not okay. It's a definite sign to somebody.
And you know, we use these excuses the same thing
as that person about the you know, the mother that's
being sick is probably used that excuse over and over
and over again to justify what they're doing. You know,
I mean, how many times have we justified over drinking
based on work? How many times do we justified being
(36:39):
in a toxic relationship because we don't want to be alone?
How many times have we justified, you know, accepting poor
behavior because we don't want to start a fight. How
many times were we justified I don't want to have
an argument. I don't have conflict because when I was
growing up, I used to have conflict. I don't like
conflict now, So I just accept this, even though what
I'm accepting is really pissed poor I'm accepting really crappy behavior.
(37:00):
And I'm very upset with it, and it turns me off,
and it's a horrible situation. And it makes me upset
and angry, and it makes me do bad at work,
and it makes me not focus on my stuff. But
yet I'm gonna continue to do this because I don't
like conflict. Yeah, when I was a kid, there's conflict.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
So I'm just gonna avoid conflict at all costs. I
don't like conflict. So think about that. So it's like
and and and then when we talk about denial, so
a lot of us and vent reasons we deny, like
we deny the reality of what they're doing. Oh no,
I you know, I probably I probably saw it wrong,
or I probably heard it wrong. I probably overestimated that,
(37:38):
or you know. I mean so then we started questioning
our memory or how it happened or what was said
in an effort to deny because not or we oh,
we forget what really happened. We wrot really forget. We
just change the narrative in our denial of how bad
it really is, right, how bad it really is. I
(38:01):
had a quie recently where there's significant other you know,
broke down the door and all that stuff, and the
cops show up, and you know, a month after it
all happened, I didn't break down your door. I don't
know what you're talking about. I just threw salsa at
your door. I didn't break it down. Well, yeah, and
the police report they threw salsa to begin with, then
broke the door down, then had an altercation with my client. Okay,
(38:24):
but but it's like, okay, I mean, but what we're
telling a narrative. We're creating a false narrative in order
to you know, accept our behavior and not really look
at it for the truth. And then another side of
the coin is we accept other people's abuse, We accept
other people's stuff. We just accepted, Oh, I'm just gonna
accept it. We all have our issues, and that's fine.
(38:48):
There's a little bit of issues we can accept because
that's just the way life is. But just global acceptance
on somebody that's obviously doing quite a bit of things,
it's not necessarily a good idea. It's just like, ah,
I'm just gonna universally accept you know, I'm going to
accept that because you know, yep, I want everybody to
accept what I'm doing too. And that's part of it, too,
(39:10):
is that I realized when we're accepting a lot of behavior,
we're also we're also probably doing stuff that we don't
really want to deal with either.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
You know, I.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Realize that, you know, when somebody stops drinking and there
was somebody that is over drinking, there's only a period
of time that that continues until that person that has
stopped drinking starts making comments and pointing out how over
how much that other person is over drinking. I mean,
when when we're all drinking together and everybody and and
the alcohol is flowing, it's one thing, it might be
(39:44):
a big difference between how much one person drinking versus
the other, what have you. But when somebody stops, it
takes a little bit of time. But all of a sudden,
it's like the realization of I'm not I'm not going
to keep accepting that. I was accepting that because I
didn't want personal judgment on my own about me from
that person, and I'll I didn't want to judge myself.
But now I'm looking at the situation with a little
more clarity. But also, you know, it's like, Okay, so
(40:05):
I've realized that when we accept all.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
These kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
You know, it could be because we just love people,
and I have a tendency of accepting people because I
don't want to judge it. But there's sometimes that we
have to not just accept and we got to just
bring it up. We have to see it at least
for the at least acknowledge the truth, at least acknowledging
the fact that the truth is X y Z.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
And that's super important.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
You know, A couple of things I want to talk about,
you know before the end of today's podcast is bargaining.
You know, a lot of us are in relationships where
you're finding yourself bargaining with that person in your relationship,
trying to bargain. You know, you're trying to convince them
to stay around. Maybe many of y'all are, you know,
(40:52):
dealing with somebody that's constantly saying they're going to divorce you,
leave you. Maybe many of you have in a relationship
for ten to fifteen years or wife keeps saying that
kind of stuff. It really hurts you. So you keep
doing more and more and more and more. But more
never changes anything. It just keeps the same. It's the
same status quote. No matter how much you do. Even
if there's a little short reprieve of a day or two,
it's still not good enough.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
And you got to.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Start looking at yourself in the mirror and realizing it's
not about you that's not good enough. It's them that's
not good enough for themselves, and they're just making everybody
else's life live in hell because that's what they want.
They want you to be in hell too, And so
this bargaining and oh, you know, you know, I had
some clients recently that had to cut out their their
family and there and they were they're you know, they're
(41:34):
they're significant other. One of them to cut out their
kids from a previous marriage. It's like whoa, whoa, whoa.
You really got to start looking at yourself and analyzing
what you're accepting in your life. And if you start
bargaining with those type of chips, you know, you're you're gone.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
You know you're you're.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Gonna be very lost, and it's gonna take a lot
of time to pick up the pieces later on on
the road, because that person will leave you in destitute.
And it's interesting because the reason why they do that
is now they've taken away everything, and now they can
really bully you and beat you down. But see, people
don't realize that. They think that they're bargaining with them
and they're gonna get something out of it, but in reality, uh,
(42:10):
they don't get anything out of it.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
You just lose even more. And those types of people
aren't wanting the best for you.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
And that's one of the big things that I think
we need to look at too, is not making excuses.
Stop making excuses for people that don't want the best
for you. Stop making excuses for people that are using you.
Stop making excuses for people that are manipulating you.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Oh they had they had a terrible childhood.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
You know how many people I've heard have a terrible
childhood and the and the work that I do. Jesus,
you know how many people? I mean, come on, Oh
they have this challenge or whatever. Okay, But the fact
is is that you keep making excuses for their bad behavior,
You keep enabling them, and you keep wondering why is
this happening to me?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Because you're enabling them. Everybody.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Most people I've met had a bad childhood. About how
half the clients I work with there was some sort
of abuse, neglect, something. Okay, So you know, you got
to take that off the table already. Stop making excuses
for people's poor behavior, especially when it brings down your
self esteem, takes away from your self worth, takes away
from your value, takes away from you know, your your
(43:20):
peace of mind. I mean, all those things are valuable,
and you have to be the one to safeguard it.
You have to be the one to think about this.
You have to be the one to do what you
need to do to safeguard you. Nobody's gonna safeguard you,
especially if you're around somebody that you're enabling or you're
accepting their bad behavior, or you're bargaining with them. We're
(43:41):
already falling short as far as the leadership role is concerned.
When you start finding yourself bargaining in a marriage or
you know, in a romantic relationship, that's when that other
person is playing you because you think that you can
convince them, But in reality, it's not about convincing them.
(44:02):
They are already upset with themselves. They just want to
make you as upset as they are in their own life,
and they're gonna play with you. They're gonna manipulate you.
They could be very narcissistic. They could be even malignant
narcissistic where they're taking advantage of you and they're actually
getting pleasure from that taking advantage of you. And that's
something that we all have to talk about in upcoming show,
is because there's a difference between having a little bit
(44:22):
of narcissistic tendencies versus being a complete malignant narcissist, where
we have to be very careful of that because those
type of people really do you know that they will
push your buttons. They will they will try to get
you to argue, to fight, and if you're a conflict avoidant,
you know, they will run game on you. They will
run all over you, they will take advantage of you.
(44:43):
They will take advantage of every single piece of you emotionally, mentally, physically, financially.
And so these are the things that we really need
to kind of talk about because this is the real
issues that many of us are dealing with. And you know,
please share this with family and friends, Please share this.
You know we're on apple Spot, you know a speaker,
We're on iHeart. You know we're or on all all
(45:04):
the places where you hear a podcasts. You know we're
here on the radio where everywhere, so share this with folks,
because if you're if you're dealing with this right now,
if you're making excuses for other people's behavior, if you
have a friend that's making excuses for other people's behavior,
if you have a friend that's making excuses about their
own behavior, this is stuff that we all want to share.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
We need to be enlightened.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
And the thing is is that until we really focus
on this and really work on this, we're you know.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
We're slaves. Were slaves.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
We're slaves to the situations, slave to the other person's
actions attitudes, slaves to our own actions and attitudes. We
are definitely not a free person. And this is what
we need to really focus on. So I hope this
show has helped you. If you haven't already, check out
the website, go to Ashleyburgess dot com. We redid the website.
It has a new face. It's got a facelift, a
(45:52):
whole body lift, a mommy makeover.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It's got a whole makeover, and you got to check
it out. Also, we have the membership site back up
on the website. You can join for free and we
will be doing some live shows from there as well,
and we're looking into the technology for that right now,
so check that out. And also, if you haven't already
subscribed to the YouTube channel, we have almost two hundred
thousand subscribers, come on and jump in.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
What are you waiting for?
Speaker 2 (46:17):
We put up new content all week and it's good stuff,
so check it out. Let us know how you're feeling
and write a comment. Let us know what you want
to talk about. Well, you know, if you want a
certain type of content talked about, we'll we'll make it possible.
We'll definitely work at it and put it up there.
So check that out. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Go
to YouTube put in Life Coach Ashley Burgess. Hit that
(46:38):
subscribe button. It'll let you when new videos come out
every day of the week. Talk to you later. Hopefully
you have liked this show. We have a new show
coming out next week and live your true life perspectives
with your host me, Ashley Burgess. We'll be back in
I'll be back this time, you know it. I'll be
back this time in three.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Shakespe
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