Demagnetizing Your Emotional Punchbag Allure

Ever feel like you have a “KICK ME” note pasted on your forehead? When you’ve been an emotional punchbag, it sometimes feels like you magnetically attract people to keep on landing blows on you, even long after you’ve left your tormentor far behind and learned some serious coping skills.

It's as though there is some mystical magnet that still invites random people to dump their shit on you. But here's the thing: one of the reasons you're popular amongst the emotion dumpers is that you may have too much empathy. As odd as it sounds, an oversupply of empathy is as unhealthy as a lack of it.

Signs That You Are An Emotional Punching Bag

1. Do you often feel like you're shouldering more of the emotional hard labor than your partner or team member?

2. Are your concerns regularly brushed off by others who redirect the conversation towards themselves when you talk about your problems?

3. Do you seldom feel like someone is really listening to you?

4. When your partner is angry at someone else, does it feel like they're directing it at you- even though you've done nothing wrong?

5. Are you exhausted after every conversation, but your partner feels refreshed?

6. Do others take your energy freely, but go missing in action when you need help?

7. Are you taken for granted?

8. Do you sometimes feel like the other person's parent rather than their friend/colleague/SO?

9. Does your life revolve around someone else?

10. Do you feel like you've lost touch with who you are and have lots of self-doubt, but little self-esteem?

11. Does your partner take their frustrations out on you?

12. Do you feel that you need to walk on eggshells around your partner?

13. Are you being gaslighted often? And do you sometimes wonder if you’re going crazy?

14. Do you often wonder if you were right or wrong about a recent incident with your partner?

15. Do you often feel full of self-doubt?

16. Do you often find yourself explaining reasons for the other person's bad behaviour- either to yourself or to others?

17. Do you breathe out and relax when the person isn’t around?

18. Do your kids treat you like their emotional dumping ground?

    
    

19. Does feeling lonely with people around feel better than not being alone?

If you answered yes to many of these questions, you're probably someone's emotional punching bag. While they may be trying to control or manipulate you by drawing you in with loving behaviours, then turn 180 degrees to manipulate you once you're hooked, it is likely that you are already aware that the relationship is unhealthy. The problem is that you stay on the roller coaster and endure more. You stay. You.

If you're seeking ways to leave, escape, and live a better life, it begins with understanding how you became an emotional punching bag. Especially if this is not the first person who has treated you as their personal emotional dumping ground.

How Do People Become Emotional Punchbags?

In simple terms, it's because there are other people with less than good intentions who find it easier to dump their pain and negative emotions on another person, with any regard for the receiver's well-being. It is undeserved, but, strangely, often it's the people who escape from one emotional dumper to find themselves in a relationship with a new emotional dumper.

It's not about fault - people who end up feeling like emotional punchbags are generally good, kind, caring people; otherwise, they wouldn't try to help. But a healthy relationship is both give and take, and one person should never be afraid to stand up for themselves, even if it takes a difficult conversation.

But three specific predispositions put you at particular risk of being an emotional punching bag:

1. Childhood Trauma

Hypervigilance is a survival mechanism often found in people who have suffered from a difficult childhood. The child has learned the hard way that acute awareness of others' emotions keeps them safe from an angry and unpredictable parent.

The embedded survival skill follows the child into their adult lives, as trauma affects the limbic nervous system, leaving a permanent imprint in the brain, often leading to PTSD. This imprint can lead to an unhealthy dynamic when choosing a partner and is also closely related to increased empathy.

People with unhealed childhood trauma sometimes subconsciously drift towards that familiar feeling they had as a child- that feeling of being unloved and having to work hard to be accepted. It doesn’t go away, and when an abusive partner steps in, taking over the role from the abusive parent, it feels right- what they deserved.

Worse still, a child who has been conditioned to be an emotional punching bag for a parent, the dynamic feels natural, and the child grows up unwittingly seeking the same uncomfortable comfort zone.

2. The Empath

Overwhelmingly, it’s empaths who tolerate abusive behaviour. Far from being weak, empaths are often the strongest people around. Aside from carrying their own pain, they naturally slip into the shoes of another- they feel and understand the pain that someone else might be feeling.

An empath has many strengths, including:

• A heightened sense of intuition

• Awareness of others' emotions

• They are exceptional listeners

• Empaths can form deep, meaningful connections

• Their compassionate and sensitive nature means they are often exceptionally creative and are usually the best caregivers

• They can detect manipulation from a mile away

• They advocate for others

But this means they tend to tolerate unhealthy behavior. Empaths must also develop firm boundaries to avoid emotional exhaustion and address signs and symptoms of PTSD to maintain their well-being.

An empath's weaknesses include:

• Going out of their way to avoid conflict.

• Getting so involved with others' needs that they lose track of their own needs and wants.

• Burnout from helping others and sharing their pain and suffering.

Empaths must leverage their strengths, not just to make the world a better place, but also to make their lives better. The kindness so willingly shared with others sometimes needs to be redirected within.

This lack of balance- putting other needs before their own, naturally inclines the empath to feel more comfortable when being used as an emotional punching bag.

3. The Chronic People Pleaser

Easy-going empaths tend to go with the flow and display passive behaviour. They like to keep everybody happy. But this can lead to unhealthy boundaries in relationships, breeding unhealthy dynamics.

But it’s a short distance between keeping the peace and being an emotional punching bag. Relationships that start on the ‘wrong foot’ generally worsen over time. A relationship that begins without healthy boundaries often ends in tears, where one person's needs are consistently being met. By pleasing "the people," people-pleasers create a dynamic that is toxic for everyone in the relationship, which clear boundaries could have easily avoided.

How To Stop Being An Emotional Punching Bag: Finding An Empathy Balance

Empathy- human kindness- is more than an admirable quality. It's a necessity if the human race is to survive. But a little balance is called for. An empathy balance.

An empath is often the person who carries far more pain than the person they feel empathetic towards, and focuses on helping the other, ignoring their own needs. In the same way, helping others is not only an honourable way to live and an important factor in feeling comfortable within your identity, but it turns the attention away from the person who needs help- the empath themselves.

Finding the empathy balance means being more assertive, giving up people-pleasing—you can't please all the people all the time anyway—and especially maintaining healthy boundaries.

To find the empathy balance:

1. Know yourself well and stick to what you will and won’t accept when it comes to how somebody treats you.

   
   

2. Listen to your instincts.

3. Recognize when a conversation turns from being a regular vent into an emotional punching session. Stay in touch with your emotions while listening to someone else. Look out for changes in how you feel when emotions are directed at you, rather than just an outburst of the person's frustration or pain at other things or people. You are trying to help them, but they are no longer asking for help when they turn it towards being about you. They're looking for a dumping ground.

4. Understand the difference between kindness and letting someone walk all over you. You can still be kind and compassionate while still communicating your needs.

5. Say stop. When someone is dumping their anger and negativity on you, gently- but firmly, say stop. If necessary, explain the effect it has on you, and, if it escalates, step away from the conversation, even if it's just to make tea, giving them a chance to reconsider.

6. Stop accepting other people’s drama.

7. But primarily, prioritize you. Be your best self, for yourself first, so that you can be your best for others.

You teach people how to treat you – what you accept will persist. And the longer you accept being treated as an emotional punching bag, the more you let yourself down. You, especially you, the empath, are a valuable, deserving person: treat yourself accordingly.

Take that "kick me" sign down, demagnetize the undeserved abuse, and go forward into a better, happier life using your magnetic personality- your kindness tempered by rational tolerance, your caring balanced with care for yourself.

Read more gezinta healing articles