These are my personal opinions always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.

All right, the challenge is for you to turn off your empathy and your compassion.

And I'll give you the next step in a minute.

Go ahead. Go ahead and turn those off and you'll find it difficult if you are an empathetic person. If you are a kind, caring, generous, supportive person,

it will be difficult to turn off your empathy and your compassion.

Sometimes we have people in our lives that will take advantage of our empathy and compassion

because they know we are empathetic and compassionate.

They know that if they give us a sob story, talking about certain people, if they give us

a sob story, that we will either fall for it or give in or give them what they're looking

for because they're trying to take advantage of us.

And I'm talking about a very specific situation.

Somebody wrote to me and said,

I would love to hear about the people that use their emotions and vulnerabilities as weapons to manipulate.

She said, my ex responds to all situations, big or small, in an overly emotional way,

a.k.a. throws a tantrum. And he used to wait for me to mother him back to a calm state.

It was exhausting, especially because we have children, and that's like dealing with another child.

And if I refused to play that game, he became cold and distant.

If I explained that his emotional outbursts were overwhelming me, he would start self-flagellating

and love bombing, such as, I'm a bad husband, my job is awful,

you're everything to me, I can't live without you. He would breadcrumb me by sharing deeply

personal vulnerabilities, but then beg me for my unconditional love and acceptance, while at the

same time refusing to discuss it any further. I left him and I'm healing.

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