You are fortunate to have developed the skills associated with having a healthy observing ego. Thanks for reading the article and for your post.

Touche! It’s a whole lot easier to do when the person in front of us is just the person in front of us as opposed to the person we have projected a part of ourselves onto without remembering we are reliving something we feel stressed out over fearing we will not being able to control.

In a perfect world wouldn’t it be nice if we could be mindful of the connection between respect and consideration for others and respect and consideration for ourselves? One challenge many of us face are the insecurities borne of people not validating beliefs we may be wedded to in order to maintain an ilusory sense of control over what will happen to us. Self doubts can be insidious and pernicious when we fail to make the distinction between “the right way”
and what is “right for us” and not right for others.

Thanks for your post. We are all human so we are not islands and need the support of those we are attached to regulate our self worth. How hurt we get depends to some degree on our expectations of others and how we interpret our reactions. When we don’t achieve a degree of separation form others and we are unaware of idealizing them at our own expense we can fall prey to being defined by them. It’s like being rejected by a boyfriend and deciding that if I were more worthy of his affections he would not reject me
regardless of his weaknesses and limitations.