Here is a basic truth:

If I feel that I am wronged, no matter how strong of a boundary I draw, if I cannot remove my ego from the equation, the other party still has all the power.

Every person with a physical body has a Negative Ego. This is a part of us that is a holdover from the time of little technology and lots of predators above our weight class, so to speak. The Negative Ego told us “don’t leave the cave, and you won’t get eaten.” While it’s a fear-based message, it was pretty useful at the time. But it’s still there, even though humans are now an apex predator. And it thinks that, if it’s not in charge, we’re going to die. That survival-level fear means it is going to do anything in its power to maintain control. If it can hook us through the stories it tells us about what something means, it will.

So, there may not be sabertooth cats anymore, but there’s that person over there, and whatever we think they have done may be just enough to hook us, to spin us out, so we don’t find another way to be, another operating system to run things.

How can we sidestep this process?

* Find the actually verifiable information. Where am I? Am I warm or cold? Is it light or dark? What do I smell? What do I see? What do I hear? What am I physically feeling?

* Get right-sized. What part did I play in setting up the situation that is causing me discomfort? How important is this situation in the grand scheme of things? How invested am I in being right?

* Redirect the attention. What can I focus on that’s not ego-based? How can I get out of myself for a minute? Where can I be of useful service, not in a way that will feed my ego, but in a way that will actually lighten someone else’s burden?

These things will help remove the hook, the attachment, that our ego has used to try to control us. Otherwise we run the risk of abusing ourselves on behalf of others, when they may not even actually know they have a part to play in this scene.

And when I remove the hook, I take my power back, and I am free.